Simon’s Blog

A few weeks ago, on 26 January, I blogged about our impending purchase of some computer hardware. We’re building a high-performance compute grid to meet the needs of one of our key projects - developing a new technology that can automatically, and intelligently, analyse large volumes of high-definition digital video. On that original entry, I said:

We’re in the process of buying some computer hardware to build a high-performance, scalable computer system to enable some complex (read CPU-intensive), fully-automated analyses of large volumes (think hundreds of terabytes) of high-definition digital video. For this system, my first choice of operating system is Solaris x86. We’re planning on managing the system by using Sun N1 Service Provisioning System and Sun Grid Engine. We’re developing all the video analysis software for this system in Java, and using Netbeans as our IDE.

Now, we’re a UK-based start-up tech company, and, at the time of my previous post, there was a discussion going on in the blogosphere about Sun’s ability to do business with start-ups (see my original blog for links). Sun’s CEO, Jonathan Schwartz had responded on his blog to a post made by Automattic founder, Matt Mullenweg about his (not too positive) experiences of trying to do business with Sun, and Jonathan had also been blogging about Sun’s desire to engage with start-ups aka “Tomorrow’s Fortune 500“.

So, with all the discussion going on, the question in my mind was: could Sun deliver what we needed? What did we need? Simple - some great hardware (and Sun currently make some of the best x86 hardware in the industry), at a great price (CAPEX is an issue for us). A few hours after writing my blog, I received an e-mail from Dan Miller, SVP of Sun’s Global System Practice, saying that he and Jonathan had read my blog and that Sun wanted to help.

After some pushing from my end to make things happen, and some pushing from Sun’s end (thanks for the help there Dan - it was noticed, and appreciated), we finally got there yesterday, and have agreed a package that I’m really happy with.

We will be buying 26 X2100 servers, and 1 X4100 server…

…along with all the pieces to tie them together (the equipment rack pictured at the top of this blog entry, plus network switches, cables etc.). The process took longer than I’d have liked - from 26 January to 13 February - but we got to the right place in the end. Thanks to everyone at Sun and at Sun reseller Q Associates who helped here.

We’re really looking forward to having the grid up and running…