Diskless BOINC Farms

[Bender10]

drezha,

I ran my confuser through the calculator, BOINCpe and 'Normal' setup.

BOINCpe-----300w psu required. (2 fans, CDROM, on-board video)
Normal-------370w psu required. (just added a HD and pci-e video card)

Interesting estimate....

[Bender10]

BOINCpe again.

I got the 'network share' thing working. BOINCpe provides a way to 'backup' the BOINC folder manually and during a user controlled shutdown. All that is required is the 'network share' to be identified and included in the 'persistency service'.

This service will backup the BOINC folder once every day. So, at the most you will lose 24 hrs. of data if the system crashes. The 'persistency service', stores data by mac address, and searches for that address to restore the data.

[drezha]

Sounds very similiar to the Folding diskless I've run but that backed stuff up every hal hour or hour (But it was based on Linux and I believe it used rsync which is a fantastic command that only transfers whats been changed in a file, thus small network bandwidth)

[Bender10]

Could be, I know they are not mapping new territory here. I think this is just a re-write of an old idea to provide simple 'diskless' computing to the windows segment of DC. This software has other abilities that I have not touched on yeti.

I think its worth a spin. If it's gonna crunch, why bother with all the windoze 'bells and whistles'? The biggest part is getting the system to recognize a NIC. The rest is a piece of cake!

my .02

I can post my cheat sheet of settings that I have used for the .bat and .ini files, if someone wants to play with this also...

[Bender10]

I just had a "Hard Drive" event with my "Diskless" BOINCpe TEST Box. Yes, I had a stupid Hard Drive in it...

Well the hard drive failed, and locked up the computer. I shut it down, removed the offending piece of junk, rebooted and was back to normal in less than 5 minutes. With no loss of data. Cool...

[LeBo]

Hey Bender10, did you ever get the onboard NV Lan to work. That's my problem also.

[Bender10]

There is a list of plug-ins available on the BARTpe page. There is one for the NV Lan driver there. There are many plug-ins created by other users, you may have to look around. I forgot where in there I found it. I just haven't got around to trying it out. Maybe early this coming week.

Let me know if you try it....before I get to it.

[LeBo]

I am now running it on a 2 Gig flash drive. Boots up and runs on it, no running drives what so ever.

[Bender10]

That's Great!!.

I guess I should head down to Staples...., and buy my wife a couple of 'Mothers Day' gifts....

Actually a 256 or 512 will work, due to the size of the image/files. And the size of the programs you install.

I still only have 1 box on BOINCpe. My other 2 are still running off hd's. I should have these on BOINCpe by the end of the week. Maybe on sticks....

Nice Going!

[drezha]

Actually a 256 or 512 will work, due to the size of the image/files. And the size of the programs you install.

If I didn't use this as a desktop I'd manage to run off a 64Mb USB key Damn Small Linux with folding. Requires more play than BOINCpe I would assume.

Damn, now I want an old system to play with now I sold all my systems bar my new desktop and my laptop.
My dig out the old laptop