I rest my case

Dogbytes™
Dogbytes™
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I've talked myself blue in

I've talked myself blue in the face to one of the devs at Seti about getting some industrial grade UPS's up and running. I've been told that they're not in the budget. Until they do something about a backup power system, you can probably expect to see more of this in the future. Pacific Gas and Electric is not known to be the the most reliable power supplier.

Maybe lab rats with generators attached to their exercise wheels might be an experimental option at Berkeley.

Edit: Berkeley doesn't have any UPS system at all. I've got six of them in various sizes; that's six more than they've got.

P.S. Some of the devs are the operations folks. @ Ned

Everette Dobbins
Everette Dobbins
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> > What I really don't

Message 4360 in response to message 4355

> > What I really don't understand is all of the angst.
> >
> > First, "denial of service" is just the wrong term. They may not have
> been
> > able to provide work, but you were (and still are) free to crunch other
> > projects.
>
> I agree with you here. "denial of service" gives the conotation of a
> deliberate act intended to cause problems to others. SETI has not shut their
> project down deliberately to cause problems. Granted, they do have to take it
> down for maintainence on occasion, but that is usually announced in advance,
> or work arounds made to lessen the impact.
>
>
> >
> > Second, why did you invest money? I still can't figure out why people
> would
> > buy computers to build farms when we've got more computing than work.
>
> I don't understand why anyone would buy a huge V-10 Pick-up truck just to
> drive back and forth from home to the office, when they could buy a
> gas/electric car and get a million times more distance on their fuel
> economy.... but they do. It is a personal choice. I don't know exactly why
> these projects intrique me so much, but they do. I am one of them who would
> spend more money on a bigger computer farm if I had the extra money.
>
>
> >
> > But, it's the whole "kick 'em while they're down" syndrome. Everyone
> here who
> > is praising Einstein and trashing SETI is able to crunch Einstein because
> of
> > BOINC, and BOINC was produced by the same folks who developed SETI
> Classic.
>
> Again, I have to agree with you here. Too many people make it sound as if
> SETI is being poorly managed or directed or that they are doing things
> intentionally to upset the "population". Granted, I know that there are
> plenty of improvements that the SETI team could make, but remember this,
> resources are limited. In ANY project or adventure that you or I embark upon,
> resources are limited. If the SETI team more just one more person, they might
> put him on as PR officer. If the SETI team had 25 hours in a day they might
> use that extra hour to completely log their daily events for us to read. If
> they had one more dollar, they might be able to buy more servers or UPS's, or
> more bandwidth.
>
> Hmmm.... I guess I started ranting. Ok I will now relinquish my soap box.
> :)
>
> Jim
> >
>
>
Im new here. I do these programs for the science but also for the competition. Thats why I have been willing to spend $25,000.00 over the last 5 years on computers Mother Boards, Memory, and CPUS. I have outrages electric bills. To me its worth every cent.

Ned Ludd
Ned Ludd
Joined: 9 Feb 05
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> I've talked myself blue in

Message 4361 in response to message 4359

> I've talked myself blue in the face to one of the devs at Seti about getting
> some industrial grade UPS's up and running. I've been told that they're not
> in the budget.

The developers probably aren't the right people to talk to, it's the operations folks that care about UPSes and such.

The best gadget I've found is an APC SU041 (I'm sure others make these as well).

One load, two UPSes, and the great part is that you can turn a UPS off and the SU041 just switches to the other one. Makes maintenance easy.

Every few months I plug an old-style analog clock into one of the UPSes, make sure it has the load, then yank the plug -- and check the run-time.

.... because it sounds like the UPSes were good enough at Berkeley, but not the batteries.



Cochise
Cochise
Joined: 11 Feb 05
Posts: 38
Credit: 3717
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Ive been in the businees

Ive been in the businees continuity racket for years. Stuff like UPS's are not a priority with folks like SETI because there is no financial pain involved in being down. Maybe this last experience will be painful enough to motivate thinking in a different way. But no matter how much of a pain in the rear it might be, if there is no $$$ involved in being down, its difficult for some to make the business case to invest in uptime.

[B^S] Paul@home
[B^S] Paul@home
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I am involved with people who

I am involved with people who *do* loose money for server downtime.... and they still don't want to invest in propper Disaster hardware... we have UPS but I couldn't tell you if it is even sufficient for our current needs.

Trying to get money from them is like trying to get blood from a stone! ... and I'd say anyone working for IT in a corporation will know what that is like. they don't see any Return on Investment for disaster kit (unless of course there ever is a problem!) so it is viewed as a cash sink hole.

Thing is, when it all goes pear shape, guess who will be given the task of recovering?!

Anyway, rant over! point was that a mainly 'good will' funded project like seti is gonna be strapped for cash at the best of times and if those making the decisions don't think disaster avoidance like UPS is high on the list then it wont get done. no matter what the techies might be screaming for!

Paul.


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Astro
Astro
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My current UPS is about dead.

My current UPS is about dead. I went to Best Buy(german translation: Wonderful Adult/child Electronics playland/store, hehehe).

THe UPSes ran from $40-$100. So, Seti can't afford $500 for all new UPSes?

hmmm

[B^S] Paul@home
[B^S] Paul@home
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> went to Best Buy(german

> went to Best Buy(german translation: Wonderful Adult/child Electronics playland/store, hehehe).

haha! :)

>THe UPSes ran from $40-$100

Would they be 'industrial grade' UPS or for single PC only? SETI servers at full whack will suck alot more juice then our little PCs so UPS will be alot bigger and more expensive!


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Bruno G. Olsen & ESEA @ greenholt
Bruno G. Olsen ...
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Paul D. Buck
Paul D. Buck
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> Would they be 'industrial

Message 4367 in response to message 4365

> Would they be 'industrial grade' UPS or for single PC only? SETI servers at
> full whack will suck alot more juice then our little PCs so UPS will be alot
> bigger and more expensive!

On this topic I worked on a contract in the million plus arena where they were going to buy 3 sets of two processor clusters (running windows for lord only knows what reason) ... but they were not interested in getting a half system (cost in the general ballpark of 80K) to do things like verify backup images and training.

i still don't get that one ... this was going to be the corporate backbone too ...

[B^S] Paul@home
[B^S] Paul@home
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> i still don't get that one

> i still don't get that one ... this was going to be the corporate backbone too ...

its coz they dont see a Return of Investment on paper somewhere. Unless you can show them (big companies) a cost saving or added benefit on a piece of paper, in black and white, infront of their noses then they will be very reluctanct to spend the money.

verifying backup would not be considered a waste of money, but it would be close enough to that for them to justify not spending money on it.

Plus to explain these things you have no choice but get technical and that just frightens most business people coz they dont understand. (not thier fault - their brains just dont work that way!)

Paul.


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