So I started a new job and and part of my job is to analyze business cases for IT projects. My job is of an operational and financial capacity and I'm not too familiar with scientific research infrastructure (I'm more knowledgeable in ERP systems).

So if a business case proposes to replace SGI Origin SMP Compute Servers (never even heard of them) with commodity based systems (Dell, HP, IBM, etc servers) and do not specify the benefits in quantifiable form (i.e. net increase in computing throughput) should I challenge the business case or do I just stfu cause the scientists know what they're doing.

Oh, the current cluster is used to crunch mad numbers basically.

[Edited on December 17, 2007 at 10:29 AM. Reason : .]

12/17/2007 10:25:48 AM

Quote :

"benefits in quantifiable form"

i know google uses commodity based/old systems to crunch numbers but you still need to have a pretty good backing for such a move.

12/17/2007 3:16:46 PM

yeah i'd do the research before committing to the commodity hardware approach. everybody wants to be like google cus they are sexy, but it's not right for most i'd bet. it might be right if you have hardware budget constraints, but you're probably going to have increased maintenance costs

12/17/2007 3:25:29 PM

Quote :

"i know google uses commodity based/old systems to crunch numbers but you still need to have a pretty good backing for such a move."

yea. I dont think its unreasonable at all for you to ask for the info. Also, dont let them try to use google as an example, since they use custom hardware, os, and software. Their results dont apply to you.

If they're looking at making a very large cluster out of these things you should probably also make them factor in replacement and maintenance costs if they haven't already. Also, are they looking to 100% replace this thing and then sell it off, or continue to use it and just add the other stuff as an additional cluster.

Just out of curiosity, i wonder what they're using for an SGI system now and what type of hardware and number of devices they think they'll need to replace it.

12/17/2007 4:45:19 PM

The current SGI is used for computational biology and chemistry. They want to replace the SGI cluster with commodity based system and retire the SGI to testing for a few years until it fully depreciates.

12/17/2007 5:48:43 PM

how old is the SGI cluster?

12/17/2007 5:51:13 PM

^ You know, it doesn't say how old in the business case. But one of the big business justification is that the commodity based system will be much cheaper maintenance.

12/18/2007 10:33:11 AM