Diskless BOINC Farms

[Bender10]

I did some more work with BOINCpe today. Here's where I am..

According to their support people, 'Since BOINCpe is running a stripped down XP, most DC projects could be run on the BOINCpe platform'.

So I tried this...

Booted my new X2 4800 with the BOINCpe CD. Connected to my file server, and ran the D2OL install package. D2OL was installed on the 'RamDrive', and is crunching along quite nicely (1 instance so far). I am also running BOINC at the same time.

1 Gig Ram (256 mb RamDrive), and a CD-ROM.. ..not bad.

BOINCpe does not come with a browser, so you have to type in the project address (for BOINC) to 'Attach' to a project (no cut and paste). A browser can be added to the CD image, that's next....

**I also just installed RealVNC...now it's headless AND no HD!!

[Lagu]

Very nice tecnique. Did you do a clean install? Can you tell if D20L or Boinc are running faster using RAM memory only?

Lagu

[Bender10]

I'm going to do a side-by-side comparison with another 4800 in the next day or so...most likely on D2OL or PrimeGrid.

** I started a D2OL (dual) run this morning...

[Bender10]

Lagu,
I don't think there will be an increase in speed running diskless. I'm just back on my kick of building an inexpensive 'Cruncher'. There should be a small power usage reduction also.

This is not new. There have been 'diskless' seti/other farms around for years. This approach is just real easy IMHO, to setup and manage.

If this will parallel (it should) the performance of a well stocked computer (maybe OC'ed a little ), why buy all the extra crap. If I (we) can purchase a cheep ($15) CD, Motherboard, dual core CPU, Ram and a case w/ psu for ~$350 (X2 4800) and crunch away, Cool!! True, the price of HD's is way down...

Of course, if you want to build the best and baddest, that's great too.

But, I don't need to play games, surf, or whatever on a cruncher...That's what my 1 expensive box is for.. And If I want to give the 'diskless' computer away in the future, buy a HD and OS of the day and voila...

[Lagu]

Ok, understand

[jmblazek]

If I (we) can purchase a cheep ($15) CD, Motherboard, dual core CPU, Ram and a case w/ psu for ~$350 (X2 4800) and crunch away, Cool!!

Howdy Bender!

I still keep tabs on your progress and look forward to your latest results. I know this isn't your goal right now but as you know, you can save another $15 for the CD if you can successfully implement PXE/BOOTP network boot or booting from a USB stick.

That puts total costs around ~$335 which is ever closer to the $300 threshold.

Keep up the good work!

p.s. I'm also curious about the wattage used in your diskless system. Here's a list I got from TigerDirect. I don't know how outdated it is...if anyone cares to update it, that would be great!

Component                Wattage Required 
Motherboard                    15-30 
Low-End CPU                    20-50 
Mid To High-End CPU            40-100 
RAM                            7 per 128MB 
PCI Add-In Card                5 
Low To Mid-Range Graphics      20-60 
High-End Graphics              60-100 
IDE Hard Drive                 10-30 
Optical Drives                 10-25

[Bender10]

Hi jmblazek,

I have not looked into the actual power reduction for this setup yet. That's good info, I'll start looking around.

I know this diskless thing is not new territory, but this application (BOINCpe) is kinda interesting. And it will play on a 'Flash' drive (with a little work), but PXE is an option that has not been explored..yeti..

Right now I'm having a problem getting the on-board Lan to work. Lucky I have a box of 3com cards hanging around...They run on anything. I have to isolate the correct weird nVidia driver.

The great thing so far is you seem to be able to run any DC software on this by just loading it on the 'Ram' drive. The instructions were not too clear on this point. The instructions mainly deal with the ability to add software to the CD image itself.

[drezha]

You could use this to help.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/p...ulatorlite.jsp

[Scooter]

The way I did with my just crunching computers is stick a little old 3.2GB hard drive in it with XP .....gives that old hard drive a little more life cuz it wasnt doing anything else anyway .....recycling works well for me !!!

[Bender10]

Well, I don't see any large increase/decrease in crunch times (didn't think I would) . I just compared this to my other 4800. All times in Tanpaku and PrimeGrid are about the same. I didn't think there would be any difference.

The only glitch (workable) is with the reduced XP OS, there might be some .dll's missing that may be required by some apps. BOINCpe Tech Support will help in adding these to the 'default' image. Right now the default 'Image' is about 175 Meg.


People are using this as a 'crunch' platform for BOINC. And now I know it will run (most) any DC app that will play on XP. Works for me. I just have a few tweaks to work on.

1. Back up the 'Ram' drive to the network to avoid loss of data in case of a shutdown. I just have to get the network drive assignment right...

2. Boot from a 'Flash' drive, maybe...

3. Work out the on-board nic driver problem. Always a pain...

4. Add DC apps to the CD image. This will save 'Ram' drive space and not require manual loading of the non-BOINC projects I want to run.