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20020520: questions about thelma's replacement

>From: Robert Mullenax <address@hidden>
>Organization: Universal Weather and Aviation
>Keywords: 200205201844.g4KIiTa13691 thelma replacement

Robert,

>We are looking at some new ingest machines that will be handling very large
>amounts of data.  I saw in your CONDUIT update that thgelma was replace by
>a PC, which turned out to be incapable of handling the load.

It is not quite true that the PC was incapable of handling the load.
What is true is that the PC has some hardware problem (exactly what it
is we are not 100% sure of) that causes contention in the SCSI bus after
the machine has been up for a relatively short amount of time (like 3
days).  We will be experimenting with the PC that was thelma to try
and isolate exactly what was causing the problem.  We could not afford
to do this kind of what if testing in a machine that was feeding realtime
data to a large number of users, so we had to make a switch to a
more stable platform.

>I was curious what were the specs and OS on the PC,

OK.  We are actually talking about two different PCs tht had/have problems.
One was the PC incarnation of thelma; the other is the machine atm.geo.nsf.gov.
Here are the specs (very similar to each other):

1 Custom Computer System - Contour Systems Group
2 Intel P3-1000 FCPGA 133 CPU
1 Gigabyte GA-6VX7D ATX VIA S370
1 Enlight Mini Server tower
2 512 MB 133 Mhz Registered Memory
1 Adaptec 29160 LVD U2W Ultra 160 Controller
3 IBM 36.7 GB SCSI U2W 68 PIN Hard drive 10K RPM
2 Enhance-Tech H/D bays w/LCD readout
1 TEAC 3.5' 1.44 Floppy
1 CDROM 52x IDE Drive
1 ATI 32MB EXPERT 2000 AGP Video
1 3COM 905CTX-M PCI 10/100 LAN card with driver
1 Logitec 3 button mouse
1 Keytronics PS/2 keyboard
1 68 Pin 7 Connector SCSI Cable
------
$5595          -  price for equivalent unit today would be significantly less

1 Custom Computer System - Contour Systems Group
2 Intel P3-1000 GHz Socket S370 Boxed CPU
1 Gigabyte GA-6VX7D ATX VIA S370
1 Enlight 8950 Mini Server Case w/wheels
1 400 x 400 watt hot swap redundant power supplies
4 GB Intel AppR. PC133 SDRAM
1 Integrated LVD Ultra 160 Controller
1 Integrated ATA100 Controller
2 36 GB SCSI U160 68 PIN Hard drive 10K RPM
2 Enhance-Tech H/D bays w/LCD readout
1 TEAC 3.5' 1.44 Floppy
1 CDROM 52x IDE Drive
1 4 MB integrated video
1 integrated 10/100 Ethernet Adapter
1 Logitec 3 button mouse
1 Keytronics PS/2 keyboard
1 Customer installed Solaris x86
------
$5375          -  price for equivalent unit today would be significantly less


>and what model of Sun Workstation replace the PC?

Sun SunFire 280 R, dual 900 Mhz processors and 8 GB RAM.  For relay
purposes, the dual 900 Mhz processors are overkill.  The really important
feature is fast I/O.

>I was surprised to hear that the PC couldn't handle the data.  

When it was running, the PC was doing fine.  The hardware problem, however,
would eventually cause a problem that required a reboot to clear.

>Thanks,
>Robert Mullenax
>
>Robert Mullenax
>Weather Systems Administrator
>Universal Weather and Aviation

Later...

Tom

>From address@hidden Mon May 20 13:33:09 2002
>Subject: RE: 20020520: questions about thelma's replacement 

Ahh...okay I understand.I was just a bit confused as I get
faster disk I/O with our Dells with U160 SCSI than I do with
our 280R (750MHz).

Thanks,
Robert