Debian Cluster Replaces Supercomputer For Weather Forecasting 160
wazza brings us a story about the Philippine government's weather service (PAGASA), which has recently used an eight-PC Debian cluster to replace an SGI supercomputer. The system processes data from local sources and the Global Telecommunication System, and it has reduced monthly operational costs by a factor of 20. Quoting:
"'We tried several Linux flavours, including Red Hat, Mandrake, Fedora etc,' said Alan Pineda, head of ICT and flood forecasting at PAGASA. 'It doesn't make a dent in our budget; it's very negligible.' Pineda said PAGASA also wanted to implement a system which is very scalable. All of the equipment used for PICWIN's data gathering comes off-the-shelf, including laptops and mobile phones to transmit weather data such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, cloud formation and atmospheric pressure from field stations via SMS into PAGASA's central database."
I don't understand the difference (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Debian? (Score:4, Interesting)
Stability is a major thing with Debian, and my experience has been that this is quite true.
One thing always missing from such stories... (Score:5, Interesting)
What was the age and the specs of the SGI being replaced?
Going by Moore's law, a factor of 20 performance improvement takes about 6 to 8 years. If the SGI was at least that old, this isn't news -- it's just the state of the art these days. In other words, small clusters capable of weather forcasting are relatively run-of-the-mill.
Of course, props to linux for being the enabler in this case.
This isn't anything new... (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not paying Intel either (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Debian? (Score:5, Interesting)
Debian isn't - and never has been - a desktop distro. If you want a desktop distro built on Debian architecture, you get Ubuntu, or Knoppix, or one of a dozen others. Debian's unique selling proposition is a combination of stability, which is very important to production servers, and a rigorous commitment to free software. Packages don't make it into Debian Stable until they have been thoroughly tested. Debian also has the best package management system in the industry.
Frankly, I wouldn't run a server with anything else.
Re:I don't understand the difference (Score:1, Interesting)
SUSE and RedHat EL are the two Linux distributions you'd expect to see on a Top500 cluster. They administrators can be sure of good support from Novell or RedHat and there's little advantage in using anything else. Needless to say, 8 computers is not a Top500 cluster. I have test clusters that are powered off right now that have more than 8 nodes.
Re:One thing always missing from such stories... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are robots among debian developers, eh? ;-)
I don't think the process of migrating packages from unstable to testing is quite as automatic as you describe. At least, the most important packages (like linux, gcc, glibc, dpkg, python, xorg, gnome, kde, ...) don't migrate automatically. These transitions are made only when the maintainers think they're ready to be included in the next stable debian release and when they're sure that they don't break anything.
Yes, but haven't you noticed a definite change with the release timetables for etch and lenny? Etch was originally planned to be released 18 months after sarge, although it actually took 22 months because there was a four-month long delay. And now lenny is planned to be released in September 2008, which would be 17 months after the etch release. To me this seems like debian has lately adopted the goal of a 18-month long release cycle, although slight alterations are always possible because debian stable is only released "when it's ready."