[nmglug] Clusters, Netbooting, BOINC, yadda-yadda-yadda

[Tim Emerick]

My mom passed away some years ago from cancer so when I heard about World Community Grid and their Help Cure Cancer project I felt like I needed to jump on board.  I've been a long time SETI at Home and BOINC cruncher so this was a no brainer for me.  A little memorium to her if you will.

I collected a bunch of unused PC's from some business acquaintences and have cobbled together 12 working PC's that are humming in a stack in the corner of my garage. I have installed Ubuntu/Gutsy-Server and BOINC and they are managed remotely via ssh and BoincView (http://boincview.amanheis.de/) therefore they do not have a keyboard/mouse/monitor hooked up to them.  They are basically the MB, PSU, and HD.

As I accumulate more machines I am starting to think about things like my electric bill, the space consumed in the garage, cooling, and accessibility of each machine.  Therefore I would like to ask some questions and hopefully some of you can give me some feedback, links, pointers, or ideas so I can keep going with this project that has become personal to me.

Anybody know how much power a MB/HD/PSU would consume in a general sense?  I installed a 20amp circuit in the garage just for this project and I sometimes wonder if it's overloaded with the 12 machines running on it.

My ice-box of a garage this winter is a great cool room for these machines but I'm wondering what do to about the summer.  I've just insulated and drywalled my garage so this summer should not be as hot as it usually is but I think the machines will still need some sort of cooling.

To conserve power and/or space I've stumbled on some options that I could implement alone or in combination.  Does any of them make sense?

 - turn the machines into a diskless cluster and BOINC would then see my cluster as a single multi-processor machine. (Is the power savings all that great without the HD?)
 - netboot and use a single networked drive to store each machines BOINC files (Same HD power question as above only each machine is standalone instead of cluster member)
 - Multiple motherboards share a single power supply. (Does the PSU draw the power or do the components draw the power?)
 - Eschew the cases for a wall mounted or stacked open air motherboard type setup. (Save space.  See the Ammonite link below)

Really, if I had the resources this Ammonite setup looks really really cool.  http://jessen.ch/ammonite/

Anyway, I welcome any comments and thanks in advance.
 
Tim Emerick