From JhuAcmWiki

Can someone fix the list to include the important details of each item, instead of just being a list of links?

• Sure.

Proposed

• Round of desktop upgrades?
  • I've heard complaints that the desktops are slow, and if fixing the NFS+ZFS slowness doesn't help this, I'll be looking at upgrading the desktops.
• We need want [two of these].
  • This is important for our work with the JHU ProxCards.
• Let's not forget [our switches]. (I'd be amenable to others, but those would handle what we want, and I'm tired of thinking about it.)
  • [is also the same switches, new]
  • [This] also looks like it could do, and I've heard better things about HP's OS upgrades than Cisco's arm-and-a-leg contracts.
  • We need two replacement switches that are high-grade so we don't get burned like the Dell switch again.
• I'd like at least one of [these] or similar, pending research on reliability.
  • Reviews on NewEgg not promising...
  • Experimenting with SSDs for root disks, as I think it might be great for performance-critical tasks.
• We'd like at least one of [these] because our current cable is poorly-shielded, and you can hear it whenever someone pokes at the cable.
  • If we want to replace the sound system, we probably want to look around the above site.
• We also would strongly like [one of these].
  • Superceded by below.
• A testbed, for all the people who come into the office and want to recover/test their XYZ
  • Requirement of external SATA, Firewire, laptop connectors, and IDE - this probably mandates an enclosure.
  • We got IDE/SATA enclosures, so eSATA and Firewire are needed.
• A shell server, separate from centaur, so that centaur's load can be separate from the shell server.
  • I'm looking at a workhorse in [here].
• A backup server
  • Lots of hard drives. I'm talking 8x1TB drives in some redundant layer, more if we could fit them.
  • We never, ever want to run out of space on this until we can replace all the drives with a multiple of their current capacity.
  • Back up /home, configurations of everything.
  • Something like http://www.sun.com/servers/x64/x4500/index.xml
• DVI Cables
  • Rich discovered we don't have any extras in the office, which is Bad.
  • It's terrible. We have tons of LCDs and almost no DVI cables to go around.
• miniPCI cards
  • We can use the Cisco Aironets that we have laying around to make our wireless better and broader. MWAHAHAHA.
• KVM's (USB)
  • The unpopular machines are using up desk space, and going unmaintained. They can be KVM'd up with popular machines, so we have better use of space.
• Random suggestions
  • A long table, that does NOT require load bearing Pentiums.
  • LOTS of Velcro cable ties
  • JHUACM branded swag (keychains, coffee mugs, laptop stickers, etc)
  • Small hanging lamp, so people can work if others are sleeping?

Rack Stuff

• • Extremely large number, of colored ethernet cable.
    • Colored label tape
    • Colored tape, to stripe the cables behind the rack.
    • Lots of Velcro cable ties

Mac

• We're buying a new Mac. Cheap is not an option - we want this machine to be useful, both as a workstation and as somewhere to log in and test applications on OS X.
  • It follows from this that the old Mac will become a tiny server in the corner to be used as a build target.
  • This seems to imply that we want a dual-C2Quad Mac Pro, which starts out at $2800 from Apple.
  • Fascinatingly, maxing this machine out quickly becomes ridiculous - it maxes out at 32 GB of DDR2 800 ECC, which is $9100!
  • We could get a single SAS hard drive for the root, and that should be more than sufficient for anything we need - we have various network filesystems to back /home anyway. $800
  • A second optical drive is a good idea, so that's another $100.
  • AirPort Extreme, while unnecessary for our immediate needs, is useful as a test platform for various things, including b43. $50.
  • Is a 30" LCD ridiculous for this? $1800
    • Someone cross-reference Newegg for some of this - the RAM, Newegg won't provide, but everything else...
  • It just occurred to me that I'd be totally fine with replacing eridani with this, and I was considering that our desktops could use another round of upgrades. Sweet.
    • Of course, that'd be a different unit, as we'd boot Linux on eridani, but OS X on this thing...
  • We'd also want to try Parallels if we did this...and we'd want a copy of Office 2008 for Mac
    • VMWare's Fusion is better (and easier to steal)

Confirmed