Installing cpu client on two hundred E8400's.

[0o0]

Hey guys, we've got a great idea to install folding clients on these e8400's that are being used for internet browsing and word processing. They will probably won't be folding under HWC's name though, probably for TDSB. We bought a kilowatt thingy, and it appears that a bunch of Dells use 50 watts idling desktop winxp at 3ghz (no power savings I guess?), and load at 75w folding 100%. I don't think the admin has ever heard of steady state, so instead he does frequent re-images. The end users will not know that a cpu client is installed, but the computers will be on for about 12 hours a day, minus weekends and holidays when they will all be off. We don't have the resources to -oneunit or -pause each computer, so unless there's an automatic way to batch stop all of them, one unit will be put to waste each weekend. We know for sure we want a console client installed as a service, here are my questions (I'm the tech guy, the other 2 guys are good with words and are writing proposal letters to TDSB etc)

-high performance smp2 vs. old regular 2008 client, which one would be more suitable and why?
-right now the computers are set to suspend (i.e. 'sleep' in windows), we want to get each PC to auto start and shut down (low power idle) every day, excluding weekends. How can this be achieved, other than through manually entering it into bios?

thanks.

[ilya]

I won't be of much help to you since I'm a pretty noob folder, but this is nice to see.

Someone help this guy out!

[_dangtx_]

whatever you do, go for regular,timeless. just in case.

[0o0]

Originally Posted by _dangtx_

whatever you do, go for regular,timeless. just in case.

that's what I've been thinking, but OTOH e8400's are capable of bigger WU's and it'd be a waste on regular client I think I'll ask the admin if there's some way to run a batch -oneunit command on all the PC's, it may be possible because they've all got that 'vPro' logo on them. What's the difference in ppd between smp2 and regular?

[Zero82z]

Originally Posted by 0o0

-high performance smp2 vs. old regular 2008 client, which one would be more suitable and why?

Old 2008 client? What client would that be? Anyway, SMP does not currently support running as a service, so your only option is to use the uniprocessor client (two instances per PC of course).

[0o0]

Originally Posted by Zero82z

Old 2008 client? What client would that be? Anyway, SMP does not currently support running as a service, so your only option is to use the uniprocessor client (two instances per PC of course).

It's on the from page 6.23, last update sometime in 2008. It's the one I was testing out this afternoon. It was a console version and offered to install as a service. It also offered to run -advmethods flag.

[Zero82z]

That's the one you want.

[0o0]

Ok, so if -advmethods is used with that one, will it get a3's? What's the difference between it and the one on high performance clients page?

[Zero82z]

That client cannot run SMP units. It will only receive standard uniprocessor units that only run one thread each. They produce less PPD than the SMP clients, but require basically no maintenance and will run as a service while the SMP client will not. -advmethods will allow them to receive more experimental units, but they still will not be able to run A3 or other SMP units.

[_dangtx_]

yup, stick with normal units. less ppd, greater chances of completion, super long delay till eta drops