Linux Networx veteran Nate Fuhriman has formed a new cluster computing professional services firm aimed at providing installation, monitoring and tuning services for small and medium cluster sized systems. Essentially, HPCIntegrators as its called, will not only install and tune your system, but they’ll perform all the remote management as well.
In this ever-changing world of high-performance computing, Nate exhibits a deep knowledge about a variety of cluster configurations & always seems to know exactly how to configure a system and/or to solve the problem,” said Herb Riley, R-Systems CEO and customer of HPC Integrators. “It provides such a peace-of-mind to have someone as seasoned as Nate working with our systems.”
Hm. This is certainly an interesting idea. Old hats in HPC know full well that much of the cost of owning an HPC system is the warm body management. Systems administration in an HPC environment can easily become somewhat complex compared to the average enterprise organization. There simply aren’t very many texts published on “How to Tune Your Machine for Application X” [hint hint hint, J.West].
The article is quoting average pricing beginning around $1,000 per month for remote system management. Before you scream and run away, think about it. This is a steal! If Nate and his associates doing a relatively good job, they’re saving you thousands of dollars a year. $12,000 a year versus $60,000+ [or much higher] for skilled systems administrators.
Kudos to Nate for taking the initiative in such a tough economy for entrepreneurs. For more info, read the full article at HPCWire or head over to the HPCIntegrators website here.