[AG-TECH] Hardware concern ...

[Bonnett, PG (Paul)]

Hi Nate,

I manage 4 nodes (and a backup) that currently meet your description; 3
on AGTK2.4 and 1 on Insors.

All run a single PC (though we do add in a second machine for IG Pix
Presentations when involved with other Insors sites).
2 PC's are dual Opteron 940, 1 Dual Athalon, 1 dual Xeon, and the Insors
box is unknown until the contract expires (at which point it will become
an AGTK3 node).
No points for guessing which system we favour here! 

The Athalon unit is a bit slow - but is just there in a fallback
position, needing only minor mods to drop in place of the other boxes,
should one fail.
The others do the job admirably; We use Iwill, Tyan & Supermicro
Motherboards, and if pressed I would say the Supermicro is fastest, but
the Tyan is easiest to setup.

2 systems are on 1Gb links, and the others are still 100Mb; we don't see
any issues there, though there is a plan to upgrade them (when the other
fires are doused).

We frequently join sessions with 4 to 6 other sites, all of which send
us 3 or 4 streams, plus the 4 we generate using the Winnov 4 input
capture card, without any major problems (other than Multicast - which
doesn't work across our site, but that's another story) using Unicast to
a variety of bridges here in the UK and at ANL.

We have been using Matrox QID video cards up to now, but have found in a
test PC that 2 Dual Nvidia cards work really well at a third of the
price; though there are some quirks to setting them up I could share.

We're currently working on a project to control the projectors
(Panasonic) from the PC's as they keep being left on by users.

I'd be happy to join you on AG sometime if you'd like more information.

Regards,
Paul Bonnett
Access Grid Videoconference Support & Development
Rutherford Appleton Labs
e-Science Centre
R1 Room 2.21
Tel: 01235 778329
 
P.Bonnett at rl.ac.uk
 



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov [mailto:owner-ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov] On
Behalf Of Nathan P Johnson
Sent: 17 May 2006 14:55
To: ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov
Subject: [AG-TECH] Hardware concern ...



Hi everyone:

We are thinking of converting our three-PC full room node ( three
projectors, AP 400 etc. ) to a single PC design, possibly using a PC
setup from INSORS. Has anyone set up a room node with three projectors
and everything running on a single PC? If so what has the experience
been during large conferences when there are a large number of incoming
video streams and so on. 

Thanks in advance for your help.

Nate

Nathan Johnson
sysAdmin
Dahlem Supercomputer Lab
Speed Scientific School
University of Louisville
(502) 852-0164
nathan.johnson at louisville.edu