On Mon, 07 Mar 2005 00:19:08 +0000, Gary Heston wrote:

In article <rlGWd.978$Lc3.504@newsfe1-gui.ntli.net>,
Martin 53N 1W  <ml_news@ddnospamddml1dd.co.uk.dd> wrote:

bk wrote:

  [ ... ]

... I myself imagine powering being supplied by 
christmas tree light extension cords.

For the low priority that 'infrastructure' is given, very likely.

s@h had to go to the trouble of installing their own data pipe out to 
the outside world, helped by a very generous sponsor. I very much doubt 
they've got the high profile or funding required to also get their own 
dedicated redundant power supply.

  [ ... ]

Ok, let's cool off a bit and clear up a thing or two.

<g>

First, the power issues are affecting the entire Space
Science Lab, not just the S@h project. It's not a matter
of an extention cord or an extra outlet in the S@h lab.

Second, this isn't just a matter of a couple of 200VA
UPSs from Circuit City or Best Buy to fix. For an idea
of what equipment is involved in just supporting S@h
Classic, see:

  http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/photos/page_2.html

and scroll down to the bottom; check out the third from
last picture or last picture.

A 200VA UPS might support one or two of the network
switches in one of those racks; no way would it hold
up one of the E450s or even one brick of the hard drive
array.

They already have the best power they can get from the facilities people
in this server closet. However, that entire closet won't hold a large
enough UPS to keep those racks up through a 3 hour outage.

actually, I have worked with UPS's that will do what is needed. they
usually take up entire floors of buildings, and are considered permanent
and theft-proof because you and I could not move one of the cells in the
battery.

I have no idea what equpiment has been added in support of SETI+BOINC,
but I'd guess it is another two racks worth of servers and storage
arrays. Those, of course, require additional power/backup/cooling.

the on/off/on/off aspects of the power-grid of the US (both AC and lack of
dependability) make the normal power grid truly inappropriate for most
computers.  someone's mentioned a generator.  that combined with a battery
system to run it is really the only  dependable solution

Being a network admin myself, I have a lot of sympathy for the position
they're in; I've had to deal with irate users when trying to recover
from a disaster caused by events beyond my control. I have no doubt that
they have facilities people working on the problem, but all they can do
until it's fixed is what they're doing now.


Gary

being a little too well-informed myself, I hope the power producing plants
scattered about the country wise up and start to over-lay a highly
filtered 60 khz ac system on top of the existing 60 hz grid for small
silicon peripherals used nation-wide.  they could even use the same wires.

and as for cooling off, if someone arrogantly trashes my friends again,
I'll slash them up again.

peace