Rick Westerman wrote:
> Really thanks for your answers. I think it will be good for my project.
Nelly
>>> >Really thanks for your quick answer. If you could just tell me a little more
> >about the number of processors of the server if I consider ther would be 40
> >active users ( the others working in batch): I think 4 would be good but I
> >m not sure. and about the E-cache, 6 GB (or less)?? I think that it would
> >have a need of about 0.5TB of internal/external storage for
> >Genbank,EMBL.....
> >
> That is about right.
>> >
> >I d like to know if you would choose an entry server or a midframe
> >server(SGI300, Sun enterprise4800)....
> >
> It really depends on your finances. The entry level servers will be
> cheaper per CPU because they do not have the extra hardware required by
> the midframe machines. Midframe machines may have a different (and more
> expensive) pricing structure than the entry level servers. As an
> example, when we were purchasing a GCG machine several years ago we went
> with a Sun E450 (4-CPU max, 4-GB memory max, lots of disk capacity) over
> a Sun E3500 (8 CPU max). Why? Because we could purchase a fully loaded
> 4-CPU/4-GB E450 for the same price as a 2-CPU E3500. Since no
> additional funds were looming we decided to go for the
> limited-expansion-but-many-CPUs machine; i.e., the E450 instead of the
> E3500. Of course 8 months later when more money was shaken free and we
> we able to purchase more hardware I started thinking dark thoughts about
> the upper administration. We ended up with three maxed-out E450s
> instead of one maxed-out E3500 -- which we could have had given proper
> financial forecasting. The three machines allows us to differentiate
> into user types -- GCG, Statistics, Database -- but does not allow us to
> use the processors efficiently.
>> To forestall the next question: yes, our 60+ users, run GCG on one
> E450 just fine. However when we do a large scale blast search (100s of
> sequences) we offload this to other machines. Think Linux cluster for
> this type of work.
>> -- Rick
