Introduction

Hi, my name is Patrick, and I'll be your tour guide for the next few months. You will have a front row seat watching how Purdue's research datacenter in the Math-Science building changes leading up to, and following the installation of the main section of the Coates high performance computing cluster, which is being planned for a May to June timeframe.

Following the success at Purdue with RCAC's Steele cluster installation last year, RCAC is working on deploying another cluster this year, called "Coates", after the founder of Purdue's Engineering Computer Network. Based on the response we've had from faculty interested in buying into the cluster, we expect to install between 800-1200 computers, which will give us between 3200 and 4800 more cores to run compute jobs on.

In this blog, I'll be posting pictures and information on the preparation that goes into installing the new cluster. The first few posts will be things that have already happened, catching up to today, and then I hope to post an update once a week or so.