On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 9:56 AM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:

Here is our latest minicluster design.

We used the gumstix stagecoach.

It's nice, 196 Ovaros in a box. We had a number of failed attempts on
an enclosure design:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/Strongbox?authkey=Gv1sRgCI6PwZXM57iZ8gE#

That was my first design, it was really quite compact and fun, and it
was a huge pain to assemble. It hit the basic high points however: 7
nodes per stagecoach, 7 stagecoaches per shelf, a switch per shelf
that reduced the outgoing enet cables to one. Power was a huge issue;
5V 80A per shelf, which was not fun. 10 GA wires never are.

I know at least some people on this list know Mitch Williams. He came
up with this:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/StrongboxAtSC10?authkey=Gv1sRgCJbWpcfci73HxwE#
It's quite elegant: self-contained shelves, with power supply,
Rigrunner for fuses,
continues the use of an 8-port switch per shelf, so each shelf has one
120V power cable and one enet cable coming out.

Plan 9 is in the works. This is a nice test and development platform
for software. We're going to make the design available in a way that
people can easily build their own.

ron