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20050302: A question about hardare specification

>From: "Alex Huang" <address@hidden>
>Organization: UNCA
>Keywords: 200503021647.j22GlPv2014570 egrants hardware recommendation

Hi Alex,

re:
>I am thinking to apply for 2005 Unidata Community Equipment Award.
>The purpose of the proposal is to replace the 5-year old PC that has
>been serving as a server for LDM, GEMPAK, and McIDAS-X in the
>Meteorology Lab of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, UNC at
>Asheville (UNCA).

Sounds like it is time for a hardware upgrade :-)

>Can you please tell me what hardware specification that can manage the
>data stream and running these software applicaitons (including IDV) for
>the next few years?  I am thinking to use Fedora Core 3.0 and Dell dual
>Intel CPU server.

I think that you are on the right track.  I would suggest specifying
the fastest CPUs, most RAM, and most disk you can get in a bundle from
Dell.  I would also suggest you look into a 64-bit processor based
machine.

As a minimum, I think you should aim for a system with dual Xeon 3.2
Ghz processors, 2 GB of RAM, and at least 250 GB of hard disk.  Depending
on what else you might want to do with the machine, you might consider
getting dual Ethernet interfaces.  I would also look for a bundle that
contains a graphics card that supports OpenGL.

We have recently purchased dual 2 Ghz Opteron processor machines from
Sun (SunFire V20Z) with 4 GB of RAM and 10000 RPM SCSI disks.  These
machines are great as servers, but not so good as workstations given
their poor video support.  Their cost is, however, impressive: ~$3000.
Their performance as LDM servers running Fedora Core 3 is _very_
impressive.  The thing that they have over Dual Intel machines is that
they have 64-bit processors, and that is the direction that computing
is heading.

Please let me know if you would like more information than the above.

>Thank you for your time and assistance.

No worries.  Good to hear from you!

>Regards,
>Alex
>Dr. Alex Huang
>Professor and Chair
>ATMS, RBH 236B, CPO #2450
>UNCA, Asheville, NC 28804
>828-232-5157 (O) address@hidden
>www.atms.unca.edu
>www.unca.edu/~ahuang

Cheers,

Tom
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