[HH] Field Expedient Supercomputing from Canonical

[Tom Metro]

[Splitting this off into a separate thread. Before careful when you
start a new thread not to reply to an existing message. Most mail
clients will link to the old thread via headers, regardless of the
subject line changing.]

Kurt Keville wrote:
> http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2014/05/the-orange-box-cloud-for-free-man.html

Federico posted a few tweets on this portable cluster. A collection of
i5 CPUs mounted to the walls of a long, narrow box, covered in heat
sinks, with a common power supply and Ethernet switch inside.

A neat concept.

The primary application seems to be as a training tool. Canonical will
bring one to you and train you in using their cluster management tools
using it. I think the price mentioned was $10K. I'm not sure if that's
for the box, the training, or both. Do you get to keep the box, or is
just a loaner during the training period?

I'm wondering if they created custom motherboards for the nodes.

The box itself is surprisingly empty inside. Just the walls and base of
the box have circuits. Seems you could get greater density by stacking
the bards, but that may not have been feasible without putting huge fans
on it.

 -Tom