Standing up BOINC end-user "Farms"

Tom M
Tom M
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George, I was generalizing

George,

I was generalizing based on my last count of a lot of windows boxes in the bottom of the top 50.

I just looked and someone has a two Radeon VII system running Win7 parked at 12 place.

And there is another windows box in/near the top 20.

Who let them in the neighborhood?

:)

It is clear when we don't have high volumes of grp#1 tasks that the resulting rankings don't cluster quite so nicely.

I wonder how my daily driver (windows) would compete with a rtx 3080 ti pulling it along?

Tom M

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)

[AF>EDLS]zOU
[AF>EDLS]zOU
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My home hosted farm is made

My home hosted farm is made up of computers I've build/collected over the past >20 years working in IT.

I don't like throwing stuff so I'll keep old computer running as long as I can, and rotate them only if I have a newer "old" computer.

Since I do computer upgrade/maintenance for neighbours/friends/family, I usually keep their old systems whenever I install them a new one (unless they need it for kids or something else)

So I have a pseudo random/eclectic collection of stuff running :)

I sometimes (more than often) purchase HW to complete my collection. (I recently acquired an Intel ARC A750 and built a config around it.)

I won an Asus GTX98020th anniversary in 2015 in a twitter contest. I used it for a few years for gaming and then replaced it with a RTX2080.

The GTX980 went in a BOINC rig, and I purchased a ASUS GTX980Ti 20th anniversary on the 2nd hand market to make it a dual GPU config. 

Just because they visually match and look pretty :D 

I have a bunch of dual socket servers that I fire up during sprints/RAID.

I have an assortment of ARM devices; RPI2/3/3+, 5x FriendlyElec ZeroPi and a Jetson Nano

I'm occasionally renting a baremetal server at hosting companies ;-)

 

I'm a large Windows user because grey market licences are cheap and it's just easier ;) 

Tigers_Dave
Tigers_Dave
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GWGeorge007

GWGeorge007 wrote:

Tigers_Dave wrote:

.....Note that I am a professor at a relatively large (~30,000 students) US university.....

Hi Tigers_Dave,

I noticed this little blurb from your post and I congratulate you on funding yourself with the computers that you use at work, essentially a "relatively large (~30,000 students) US university".

I'm a retired Professor from a community college, and I, too, bought out of my own funds many of the items that I used for teaching electronics for nearly 20 years.  It's a small world when you finally get to know a bit more about someone.

Since you don't have a profile set up, if you'd like to communicate further on this topic, feel free to email me a PM.

 

Hi George,

I have PMed you, but I will also respond in this forum.  Thanks for the kind words and I congratulate and thank you for using your own funds to support your professional responsibilities.  I am sure that your students benefited from your generosity.  Indeed, that is a major reason why I do it!

Dave

 

"I was born in a small town, and I live in a small town." - John Mellencamp

Tigers_Dave
Tigers_Dave
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[AF>EDLS wrote:zOU] My home

[AF>EDLS wrote:

zOU]

My home hosted farm is made up of computers I've build/collected over the past >20 years working in IT.

I don't like throwing stuff so I'll keep old computer running as long as I can, and rotate them only if I have a newer "old" computer.

<snip>

Thanks for sharing your experiences and for your contributions to E@H.  I admire your philosophy of trying to keep old hardware running!

"I was born in a small town, and I live in a small town." - John Mellencamp

mikey
mikey
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Tigers_Dave wrote:mikey

Tigers_Dave wrote:

mikey wrote:

Tom M wrote:

Hi,

It occurred to me that a thread on setting up multiple slow(er) "farms" like various participants have done might be an interesting topic.

I will note that a "Farm" is a TBD limitation here.  But I will claim that two systems may not qualify. :)

Noisy Tom M 

MANY years ago someone on Seti said a 'farm' was just below a 'ranch' and that it meant more than 10 boxes, I'm not sure that 'box' thing is valid anymore with more and more cpu's out there in the 32 and up range.

That being said I have 17 boxes running Boinc right now and all but 1 has a gpu crunching some project based on my goals and it's capabilities. About half of my boxes are Windows OS's ranging from Win7 to the latest Win11 with the other half of the boxes being various versions of Linux Mint. Unfortunately some projects only run on some OS's and not on others so I'm going to keep the Windows boxes around for a long time is required for my goals. I also have a 'cheese grater' Mac that's now running Linux as it crunches faster and is easier to manage on a day to day basis for me.

I started out on Windows pc's back in the late 70's but didn't start crunching until the late 80's and have never stopped crunching since. MOST of my boxes are 10+ years old from their original purchase date and then I bought them 'off lease' as inexpensive boxes only needing a crunching gpu and a harddrive to be up and running. Buying dual Xeon quad core cpu's that do do HT already installed in a pc case  with 16gb of ram for $139 was a VERY good deal!!!

 

Mikey, seventeen boxes, no matter how cheap, is a tremendous investment in BOINC.  Thank you for this commitment! 

I am not smart enough to do actual Science type work but I can keep old pc's running so Boinc has helped me contribute some small contribution to the World of Science thru it!!

Tom M
Tom M
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mikey wrote: I am not smart

mikey wrote:

I am not smart enough to do actual Science type work but I can keep old pc's running so Boinc has helped me contribute some small contributions to the World of Science thru it!!

Mikey,

I suspect you are smart enough.  You just don't have the specific education to do it...

Tom M

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)

mikey
mikey
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Tom M wrote: mikey wrote: I

Tom M wrote:

mikey wrote:

I am not smart enough to do actual Science type work but I can keep old pc's running so Boinc has helped me contribute some small contributions to the World of Science thru it!!

Mikey,

I suspect you are smart enough.  You just don't have the specific education to do it...

Tom M 

That's alot more accurate but the end result is the same, I'm also too old to go back and get that education now so I do what I can instead

mikey

MAGIC Quantum Mechanic
MAGIC Quantum M...
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  Quote: That's alot more

 

Quote:

That's alot more accurate but the end result is the same, I'm also too old to go back and get that education now so I do what I can instead

mikey

Mikey you can be a genius just by having one computer so you can still be a farm genius with all of yours!

Any topic under the Sun can be looked up these days and you become Mikey Einstein

Of course there are plenty of things we don't want to be experts at or forget what we just read by the time we get through all of it

like me reading this long history of the 47th Problem Of Euclid/Pythagorean Theorem

Tom M
Tom M
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mikey wrote: That's alot

mikey wrote:

That's alot more accurate but the end result is the same, I'm also too old to go back and get that education now so I do what I can instead

Every once in a while you read about someone going to get their PhD in their 80's.  The last time I read about it was in Engineering.

:)

Tom M

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)

Tom M
Tom M
Joined: 2 Feb 06
Posts: 5589
Credit: 7675526000
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So the recommendation is to

So the recommendation is to go dumpster diving behind apartments at the end of the semester in University towns for prospective (old, cheap) boinc crunchers? :)

Tom M

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)

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