Platform Requirement

The following configuration is based on these general guidelines. It covers data partition nodes, coordinator/administration node, application server and spare. We propose initially to configure all nodes as production data servers for flexibility and expandability. QA and Test nodes can be built with higher density and less I/O bandwidth per core. The following diagram captures the data path components, unit rates and relationships driving their configuration selections and sizing.

1. Ten production data servers with the following configuraiton
   1. Two quad core Intel Xeon 5400 series 3.0 GHz 12MB L2 at 1333 MHz
   2. 64 GB RAM
   3. Dual 15 GB SSD drive RAID1
   4. Dual DDR infiniband I/F
   5. Gigabit ethernet for user access network segment
   6. Management card interface
   7. Linux OS
2. Four QA/Test servers. We recommend, at least initially, to use servers identical to production servers, permitting scaling of the production on demand. Single-slot 16-core and higher density server costs and availability should make them good options for QA/Test in the future. Since currently, at least in the IBM BladeServer H architecture, all 16-core server blades require double slots, there is no density advantage in using them. Here is an AMD-based double-slot server that could be considered due to its lower power consumption
   1. Four quad core Intel Xeon 7400 series 2.6 GHz 12MB L2
   2. 64 GB RAM
   3. Dual 15 GB SSD drive RAID1
   4. Dual DDR infiniband I/F
   5. Gigabit ethernet for user access network segment
   6. Management card interface
   7. Linux OS
3. Disk array requirements
   1. Extend existing DS5000 by adding a third unit and redistributing HDDs
   2. 72 x RAID5 (4+P) 147GB HDD @15K rpm for a total of
   3. Three DS5300 with 16 Fiber channel ports each
   4. Backup support
4. Interconnect fabric
   1. Infiniband low latency switch/geteway with 32 IB 4XDDR (20Gbps) and 48 FC 4Gbps ports.
   2. Required Management/Administration utilities for managing blades and virtual IB/FC environment
5. Backup and utility (LAN-less) IB Interface