A project of this size could certainly not have been pulled off without the support of companies. Apart from the main sponsors listed below this is also true for the more than 200 Linux enthusiasts that were not deterred by time and weather and brought their computers to Paderborn so the envisioned node number for the cluster could be met. The almost 100 helpers must be mentioned here as well. They worked in three teams and four shifts to make sure that the event ran smoothly. It should be pointed out again explicitly that the Linux-Cluster was a non-profit event - the participating companies offered their services for free.
The University Paderborn had the largest part in the success of the Linux-Cluster. Besides extensive space capacities and power it supplied more than 30 computers (among others 20 PII/400 with 128 MByte RAM) as well as personnel. Another main sponsor was Hewlett-Packard. The company delivered a capable network including installation and maintenance by HP technicians. Additionally they used 17 switches of the ProCurve series worth about 400000 Marks. The main piece consisted of seven 8000M models meshed over HPs switch-meshing technology via fiber that offered a backbone switching power of 9 GBit/s. The cluster had access to 600 10/100 ports with autosensing. On top of that HP monitored the cluster net with the appropriate devices and OpenView. Peacock was the first of the computer sponsors. The company, based in Braunschweig, spontaneously put together a small series with 50 machines and sent them to Paderborn.
Other manufacturers and private individuals follow, because of space constraints they are listed in the table below (in timely order):
| Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Quant-X/Samsung | 50 Alphas with 667-MHz-CPU and 256 MByte RAM, incl. personnel |
| Siemens | 10 Intel workstations, 1 fourfold-Xeon-Server with 2 GByte RAM |
| Maxdata/Seagate | 2x fourfold-, 1x Dual-PII-Xeon/400 MHz, 2x1 GByte/1x768 MByte RAM, ICP Vortex Raid-Controller, plus about 450 GByte harddisk |
| Jolo Data | disk copier including serveral hundred disks |
| Planet Insomnia | had offered a net fallback solution for 1000 machines, which was substituted with HP later. |
| Uni Rostock/debis AG | Mini-Cluster with 1xP5 and 16xDual-P5 with 24/32 MByte RAM |
| SEH GmbH | 128 PII/350 with 64 MByte RAM on roll carts, additional roll carts simplyfied transporting the delivered private PCs quite extensively |
| LANetixx | 4 PC (PII/300-128MByte, PII/266-96MByte, PII/266-64MByte, P6/180-128MByte) |
| Packet Engines | Gigabit-Ethernet-Cards for the NFS server |
| DeTeCSM | 10 PII/300, 10 P5/166 with 32 MByte RAM each |
| LunetIX | 1 Alpha computer with 1,5 GByte RAM as backbone server |
| Creaso | supplied the necessary IDL licenses for the visualization |
| Sixt | donated a small van for the Linux user group from Augsburg for transporting their computers to Paderborn |
| Financial Sponsors | |
| Syskoplan | 2000 DM |
| Arthur Andresen | 2000 DM |
| Vereinigte Verlagsanstalten | 500 DM |
| Jörg Fehlmann | 500 DM |
Additionally a few companies donated prizes that were given out to the helpers and computer deliverers in a lottery at night (Details about this (http://www.linux-magazin.de/cluster/)).
Dieser Text ist der Zeitschriften-Ausgabe 01/1999 von iX entnommen.
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