Monthly Archives: December 2010

Synthetic workloads

By pervila | Published: 29.12.2010

An open research problem concerns whether a given machine M is operating correctly at a given point in time t. There are a number of proprietary checking programs that can be run against a specific sub-component, e.g., hard disk, but these are mostly offline tests and unsuitable for our operating environment. It would have quickly [...]

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Interlude: Snowdrifts of Independence Day

By pervila | Published: 9.12.2010

Very busy day today, so I’ve only got time to do a small teaser update. As the blogs still lags behind the actual research project, I’m publishing this sneak peak of what the situation looks this week. The following Picasa web album contains pics of the operational phase 3 Helsinki Chamber: http://picasaweb.google.com/mikko.pervila/Snowdrifts# During our Finnish [...]

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Servers in a tent

By pervila | Published: 8.12.2010

After the tent had been erected on the roof, we gradually installed and moved servers into it. The attached timeline shows how between Feb. 19th and Mar. 10th each server was moved into the tent and left to execute its synthetic workload. In a later post, I will describe the workload in more detail. As [...]

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Phase 2: Enter the tent

By pervila | Published: 6.12.2010

As the phase 1 prototype had survived the conditions we had thrown at it, the next question was this: could the single PC have been a fluke, somehow hardened by the years of serviced it had endured as a workstation against the extremes of local cold? More computers were necessary to find out which ones [...]

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Cooling test, Phase 1

By pervila | Published: 2.12.2010

The background for our test lies in an experimental, proof-of-concept test done by Intel using Air Economizers. The video and excellent white paper are still available for interested readers. Roughly, Intel’s test described a two-compartment server facility where one side was operated using standard A/C and the other using air economizers only. The purpose of [...]

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Cooling with a Helsinki Chamber

By pervila | Published: 1.12.2010

The purpose of the so called Helsinki Chamber (HC) is to provide a low-cost cooling setup that avoids conventional air conditioning used by server rooms and small data centers

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