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Plug and play server fun!
I've finally done it! I've launched the mothership! Now all my systems boot from a central server. I can now plug all my headless, diskless servers in, turn them on... and they boot automatically via PXE! ...and they act as processing nodes that just pop up on my network and do their thing... becoming part of my processing plant. So much awesome!
What do I use all that horsepower for? Three things... 3D rendering, password cracking, and cryptocoin hashing. ...all of which are hobbies of mine.
One thing's for damn sure. To do any of those three things, it requires a HELL of a lot of processing power. ...and I truly have enough systems in this house I don't need to turn on the heat this winter. The house is literally heated by the systems alone. I've started volunteering at a computer recycling plant again, so I can get a lot of second-hand high-end processing hardware for free. ...and man oh man the stuff I build with all this shit. xD My house is fast becoming one giant-ass datacenter.
What it took for me to actually make all this happen...? Hours and hours of work... research... programming... and I ran into a lot of problems along the way. But now I have a very solid, very stable system that is truly plug and play. No more fiddling around with hard drives. Now all data is stored on the mothership. Cool! :D
Well my studio upstairs looks like NASA mission control. I already have a short stack of servers under my christmas tree. Time to build a city of servers in my basement...
Sometime I'll have to upload a picture of the systems themselves. ...maybe when I get a proper rack figured out. xD
I'll tuck this in scraps eventually. :)
What do I use all that horsepower for? Three things... 3D rendering, password cracking, and cryptocoin hashing. ...all of which are hobbies of mine.
One thing's for damn sure. To do any of those three things, it requires a HELL of a lot of processing power. ...and I truly have enough systems in this house I don't need to turn on the heat this winter. The house is literally heated by the systems alone. I've started volunteering at a computer recycling plant again, so I can get a lot of second-hand high-end processing hardware for free. ...and man oh man the stuff I build with all this shit. xD My house is fast becoming one giant-ass datacenter.
What it took for me to actually make all this happen...? Hours and hours of work... research... programming... and I ran into a lot of problems along the way. But now I have a very solid, very stable system that is truly plug and play. No more fiddling around with hard drives. Now all data is stored on the mothership. Cool! :D
Well my studio upstairs looks like NASA mission control. I already have a short stack of servers under my christmas tree. Time to build a city of servers in my basement...
Sometime I'll have to upload a picture of the systems themselves. ...maybe when I get a proper rack figured out. xD
I'll tuck this in scraps eventually. :)
Category All / Miscellaneous
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 800px
File Size 399.3 kB
Wow!
I couldn't think of one question to ask so here's a few. Sorry.
a) Whats your electric bill like?
b) how many computers do you own?
c) What are their specs?
d) What software are you running that gives you the PXE capability
f) What do you mean by processing node?
g) You're awesome!
I couldn't think of one question to ask so here's a few. Sorry.
a) Whats your electric bill like?
b) how many computers do you own?
c) What are their specs?
d) What software are you running that gives you the PXE capability
f) What do you mean by processing node?
g) You're awesome!
You're fine! :3 I'll answer your questions as best I can!
a) Eh, it's expensive... xD Several hundred dollars a month. But since I don't run the heat during the winter, it's not as bad as it could be.
b) To be honest, I have completely lost count. We could go any way you like with that... working systems or non? Ones I leave on all the time or no? Macs? PC's? Laptops? Servers? Gosh... At any given time I'm running at least two dozen servers on my network, not counting miscellaneous network appliances like routers and switches and such.
c) Specs vary all over the map. I'm in the middle of a transitional phase... I'm swapping out older, less powerful servers for much more efficient, and higher-end hardware. One of the machines I just got this past week has a 24-core processor in it (you can see in the upper left window on my screen there), and 64 GB of RAM. It's pretty kickass. I've got a few 16-core servers too, and a couple 8-cores as well. Everything save my webserver that runs dual core is being phased out at this point.
d) PXE boot is kinda interesting. My main server platform is Ubuntu Server 16.04, but in order to make PXE work, you have to have things installed like TFTP and NFS (I use tftpd-hpa and nfs-kernel-server from the apt repositories). Further, in order for the server to receive the BOOTP request, you have to have your DHCP configured right. Most standard installations place the DHCP responsibility on the netboot server, but I already have a router for that (as do most people with home networks). Luckily I have the enterprise-grade DD-WRT on my router, so it was just a simple matter of redirecting BOOTP requests to my netboot server when my router receives them.
f) Processing nodes are basically just computers that process things. Either they process data through the CPU or sometimes a GPU array. I have servers that do both. Netbooting my systems makes node deployment quick and easy, and I've written my own scripts and programs to kickstart the processing as soon as the system boots. I don't even have to touch 'em... they just do what they're supposed to do. :3
g) Why thank you! :3 I work on a lot of projects... this being just one of them!
a) Eh, it's expensive... xD Several hundred dollars a month. But since I don't run the heat during the winter, it's not as bad as it could be.
b) To be honest, I have completely lost count. We could go any way you like with that... working systems or non? Ones I leave on all the time or no? Macs? PC's? Laptops? Servers? Gosh... At any given time I'm running at least two dozen servers on my network, not counting miscellaneous network appliances like routers and switches and such.
c) Specs vary all over the map. I'm in the middle of a transitional phase... I'm swapping out older, less powerful servers for much more efficient, and higher-end hardware. One of the machines I just got this past week has a 24-core processor in it (you can see in the upper left window on my screen there), and 64 GB of RAM. It's pretty kickass. I've got a few 16-core servers too, and a couple 8-cores as well. Everything save my webserver that runs dual core is being phased out at this point.
d) PXE boot is kinda interesting. My main server platform is Ubuntu Server 16.04, but in order to make PXE work, you have to have things installed like TFTP and NFS (I use tftpd-hpa and nfs-kernel-server from the apt repositories). Further, in order for the server to receive the BOOTP request, you have to have your DHCP configured right. Most standard installations place the DHCP responsibility on the netboot server, but I already have a router for that (as do most people with home networks). Luckily I have the enterprise-grade DD-WRT on my router, so it was just a simple matter of redirecting BOOTP requests to my netboot server when my router receives them.
f) Processing nodes are basically just computers that process things. Either they process data through the CPU or sometimes a GPU array. I have servers that do both. Netbooting my systems makes node deployment quick and easy, and I've written my own scripts and programs to kickstart the processing as soon as the system boots. I don't even have to touch 'em... they just do what they're supposed to do. :3
g) Why thank you! :3 I work on a lot of projects... this being just one of them!
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