FEF:Processing Cluster

Processing Cluster
The Free Earth Foundation (the non profit that was formed and tasked with keeping this place running) has voted to dedicate a substantial portion of their budget (50% maximum) to build a cluster of machines to process data for use in World Wind and other applications. There will also be a donation drive in order to quickly raise money for the purchase of cluster machines.

Specifications
It has been determined that the best course of action is to use large numbers of second hand machines. These machines, while somewhat slower individually, achieve a much lower cost per gigahertz, allowing us to achieve a larger ammount of processing power at a lower cost. We are planning the initial build to be 100 machines large, using one of the two following machines (or a mix of both):

IBM Pentium 3 1 Ghz 256 MB SDRAM 20 GB IDE Hard Disk 10/100 Ethernet

or

Compaq Pentium 3 866 Mhz 256 MB SDRAM 12 GB IDE Hard Disk 10/100 Ethernet

with the former costing 70$ each, and the latter 50$ each. We have initially purchased 5 of the IBM's for benchmarks and testing.

Current Status
The FEF Cluster has been up and running for some time digesting various data sets for Worldwind.Please send queries if you have any data that you are willing and have the licence to share with the rest of the world. The cluster statistics can viewed below.

Ganglia Cluster Monitor