On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, steve ulrich wrote: > mike - > > building out your own compute infrastructure is so 2002. ;) > > i've used amazon EC2 for a very similar application where i've been > running large simulations on their infrastructure with my own VM image > that i use for my purposes. you can simply dial up the number of > processors that you purchase and use. you're charged by the hour for > the the number of CPU instances you use. > > instead of buying hardware yourself that you have to power up, replace > HDDs, etc. for and manage connectivity for you let someone pay for that > and simply use their resources on demand. Once we get things going, we'll probably be using all (80 or so) cores 24/7 for months on end. I assume the costs for Amazon EC2 would eventually surpass our initial hardware costs ($25,000). Regarding power and management troubles -- someone else is doing that and we don't have to pay them. I guess it is paid, in theory, by indirect cost money from our grants to the college. Mike