Need some DC advice.

SokaMoka

Banned
Feb 24, 2006
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Hi everyone, this is the first time I post here in DC.

Today I was talking with the head of our IT department at my University's college of engineering building, after we talked he invited me to the server room to take a look, and showed me the equipment they have in there and my university relies on Sun servers and they had a pretty impressive quad-processor $ 25 k 16 GB server as the main server, well that's there new server, however he told me that after they obtained this server they had to disconnect the older server, if I am not wrong it's a quad sparc 1.5 GHZ one (I can get the detailed specs later if needed), it's a pretty powerful server, fiber connected harddrives lots of memory and what not.

He told me that it's a shame that they don't have any good use for that solaris server it's just sitting there collecting dust, and I thought about it for a minute and it struck me, I told him about medical research projects that rely on distributed computing to perform the calulations ....etc. And he loved the idea.
Now this is a good server and it would be able to run 24/7 - 365 on a very highspeed connection,and since there is no other need for it, it can purely run folding projects and whatnot.

So, the situation in short is that, we have a good server, no other use, it runs solaris and I was told if I give my department enough info they will gladly approve my request to let me setup the server so that it will be able to contribute to the ongoing scientefic research.

I would appreciate you guys input on how to take full advantage of this situation (like which most suitable project to pick, setup advice, ...etc) and contribute as much as possible.

Thank you.
 

scottish144

Banned
Jul 20, 2005
835
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Best Solaris Project I can think of is F@H or D2OL. Easy enough to install, but I don't know how well either project handles multi-cores. BOINC has the best multicore support, but none of its projects (except SETI) have a solaris app :(
 

SokaMoka

Banned
Feb 24, 2006
521
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Originally posted by: scottish144
Best Solaris Project I can think of is F@H or D2OL. Easy enough to install, but I don't know how well either project handles multi-cores. BOINC has the best multicore support, but none of its projects (except SETI) have a solaris app :(

I hope there are good projects out there for multi-processor Solaris boxes I want to utilize that server % 100.
 

Spacehead

Lifer
Jun 2, 2002
13,201
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SokaMoka, if you end up wanting to run F@H on that server & need setup help, you might want to post in one of the F@H daily stats threads. GLeeM & others are pretty helpful.

You can run multiple F@H clients under Windows... i assume you could with that server too(i know nothing about Solaris).
 

GLeeM

Elite Member
Apr 2, 2004
7,199
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I can't help either.

I don't think F@H can run Solaris :(

It can run Linux and FreeBSD though.
 

scottish144

Banned
Jul 20, 2005
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Originally posted by: GLeeM
I can't help either.

I don't think F@H can run Solaris :(

It can run Linux and FreeBSD though.

Hmmmmmmmmm. Distributedcomputing.info is wrong then. Just checked the F@H site and they don't have a Solaris App for download :(
 

Rattledagger

Elite Member
Feb 5, 2001
2,989
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Well, among the BOINC-projects both Seti@home and Einstein@home has Sparc/Solaris-applications... but neither is medical research...

Have seen something about atleast one other BOINC-project planning on releasing solaris-application, but can't remember which project at the moment... :eek:


BTW, since it's just sitting there collecting dust, another way to help DC would be to donate the server to SETI@Home, that is mostly running-off old Sun-400/440 MHz-Sparcs...
 

scottish144

Banned
Jul 20, 2005
835
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D2OL FTW then?

Edit: Does Solaris have a linux/windows/mac emulator? If so, you may be able to run the porjects via emulator. Probably won't be as fast, but it would work. After extensivly searching distributedcomputing.info, I still think D2OL appears to be the best option. There are other pojects, but they deal with mathematics and searching for aliens, neither of which will make much of an impression on your boss. D2OL deals with testing potential meds for SARS, Ebola, AIDS, Smallpox, and several other high profile diseases.