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Hardware Procurement Status and Plans

Hardware Procurement Status and Plans. Andrew Sansum e-Science Centre, CCLRC-RAL Tier1 Board May 2004. Equipment Purchased. All Kit ordered from Compusys CPU Cluster: Dual 2.66GHz Xeon CPUs 224 Nodes (2GB RAM) 32 Nodes (4GB RAM) Disk 20 Servers

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Hardware Procurement Status and Plans

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  1. Hardware Procurement Status and Plans Andrew Sansum e-Science Centre, CCLRC-RAL Tier1 Board May 2004

  2. Equipment Purchased • All Kit ordered from Compusys • CPU Cluster: • Dual 2.66GHz Xeon CPUs • 224 Nodes (2GB RAM) • 32 Nodes (4GB RAM) • Disk • 20 Servers • Each with 16 SATA drive Infortrend RAID arrays • 3.5TB per ARRAY • Delivery: • Should have arrived by now • Lost in Atlantic no delivery before 1st week in June • 3 week delay in deployment • Early production phase should be 6 weeks after deployment Tier1 Group

  3. Tender Process • Obtain requirements from experiments • Review tender options (Autumn) select GCAT • Government procurement catalogue • Companies have already completed pre-tender • Informal hardware review – test Opterons etc etc. • Contacts with suppliers • Initiate Tender (early February) • Prepare tender documents • Identify suppliers and obtain primary supplier details • Tenders out door • Tender closed – (Mid March ) • Evaluation (Me + HAG) • Order out door end of March Tier1 Group

  4. GCAT Good or Bad? • Good • Very fast – less than 8 weeks to order • Our usual suppliers can bid • More chance we get what we want • MUCH, MUCH less work • Reduces risk: • No duffers • Less risk that process breaks (go back to GO do not collect …) • BAD • 3-5% overhead for Tier 2 companies (cheaper than EU route for Tier 1s), but not obvious how this reflects into price. • Complicates contractual • Less competition • Less chance of finding new companies • Nagging suspicion that it is all TOO easy and we have missed some snag! Tier1 Group

  5. Next Procurement • Must do better – devolve more work – start sooner • Need to: • look at new storage architectures (iSCSI?) • Spend on network? • Buy tapes (outside this tender) • Buy H/A servers? • Aim for delivery by December of main volume • Must decide very rapidly if GCAT or EU route • EU procurement probably needs 7 months from EU Journal entry • Must start now • Staff committed on installation • GCAT much faster – but take more time than last time. Need to think about it but probably 4 months. Probably can start in August. Tier1 Group

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