I've have mixed experience with ACT.  They were responsible for a cluster I
was involved with bringing online at a previous employer.  As Skylar
stated, their software library was useful for managing/maintaining the
cluster.

However, I was thoroughly unimpressed with the hardware.  From a selection
of 80 1U processing nodes, we had to replace at least 50% of the chassis
fans within the first year.  The fans would seize up, and when we opened
the chassis, we found a fine red dust in the chassis, centered around the
fans.  We found this dust nowhere else in our datacenter.   Mind you, this
is between 4 and 5 years ago.

However, the amount of time I had to exert in checking every node in the
rack and push back from ACT's support staff at the time would have me
seriously examining support contracts, turnaround times, advanced
replacement requirements, and what quality assurance practices they're
observing.

I would strongly suggest rigorous acceptance testing as part of any
purchase plan.  Not just for ACT, but any cluster acquisition.  Make sure
the hardware meets the processing requirements for node interconnect,
floating point or integer mathematics, memory capacity or whatever
acceptance criteria is applicable to your environment.

-John Reddy



On Fri, Dec 20, 2013 at 6:20 PM, Skylar Thompson
<[email protected]>wrote:

> On 12/20/2013 02:40 PM, [email protected] wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone have experience with "Advanced Clustering Technologies"
> > as an HPC vendor?
> >
> >       http://www.advancedclustering.com/
>
> I've never bought their hardware, but their online HPL tool is pretty
> useful for getting a first-pass HPL.dat file.
>
> http://www.advancedclustering.com/faq/how-do-i-tune-my-hpldat-file.html
>
> Skylar
>
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