[Beowulf] Supermicro 2U

[Greg Lindahl]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 03:59:44PM -0500, Mark Hahn wrote:

>> New. Shiny. http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/2UTwin2.cfm
>
> I'm a bit puzzled.  cpu/mem density is the same as for their older  
> dual-node-1U line.  I guess it's handy to have 3 normal disks per node.

Did you notice the recent discussions about 2U fans being better than
1U fans? This unit has 4 80mm fans. And it has only 2 (redundant)
power supplies instead of the 4 you'd have with 2 1Us.

>> offer the best of both worlds if blade servers and discreet rackable servers.
>
> I still don't really understand why blades are considered attractive...

Most blade servers that I've looked at cost more than 1U servers.
That's not very attractive. Then again, I buy 2Us mostly because I
don't need extreme power density anyway.

-- greg