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We are decommissioning a 15 node Itanium cluster.

We don't know what to do with it. Being geeks we want to put it (or its individual nodes) to some cool use, but since it is Itanium we are a bit unsure what that could/would be.

We are not bringing it back as production servers and we are considering giving them away, if anyone wants them.

It's not the most spiffy hardware, but being 2U rack servers they pack an ok amount of cpu and memory, they're about 3 years old perhaps.

Ideas to what runs well on them? Or something one can use them as?

Gomibushi
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    Good question, but strongly recommend switching it to Community Wiki as there's no one "right" answer – Mark Henderson May 16 '10 at 23:51
  • I was going to say I'm interested but then I noticed you're in Norway. Is that where the hardware is located as well? – John Gardeniers May 17 '10 at 01:18
  • @John, if you are serious about getting some shipped to AU and the OP is serious about giving them away, let me know and maybe we can split a shipping deal. I drive down to Melbourne often enough and I have some non-profit clients who I could use them for. – Mark Henderson May 17 '10 at 06:15
  • Not to get your hopes up, I do think we can find a home to them a bit closer to here. Some university guys seemed interested. If not, I'll shoot you an email. – Gomibushi May 17 '10 at 11:41
  • Not a problem Gomibushi, let us know if you have any spare at the end of the day ;) – Mark Henderson May 17 '10 at 22:27

4 Answers4

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How about contacting the Computer Society at a nearby University?

andol
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How about a BOINC cluster?

Tom O'Connor
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They would definitely be of interest to various parts of the OpenVMS community, since the Itanium is the only currently produced processor supported by OpenVMS.

Oh yeah, I'll take two of them... :-)

Joe Internet
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Use them as office heating in the winter ;) .

High thermal heating efficiency and (if needed) even a little number crunching. Or better: have them on as heater in the winter and donate the cycles to folding(at)home ;)

deploymonkey
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