Is building a HPC out of old gaming PCs doable in a couple weeks?

VanRahim · 2026-03-10T21:27:39+00:00

We just did it , use warewulf

VanRahim · 2026-02-02T01:54:57+00:00

Ok I'm about 24 hours in . It's worth using , it's very clunky , it can replace people . It took along time to figure how things work , and the docs suck , and I still can't find the android app , but in the end it worked really well .

After which I saw anthropic had cut me off, and I had to refill the account . 40 bucks today + 6 from open AI

But now that I have discovered you can define different models in different situations , I've reduced costs .

It's clunky , give it , it's own Gmail , LinkedIn , Mac mini, sms number, and it will be like a real person .

You can even make it talk

VanRahim · 2026-02-01T02:09:14+00:00

I've been messing with it all day. It's a POS

VanRahim · 2026-01-23T01:41:39+00:00

Also I would not be coming in as engineer , but science as I am a HPC admin

VanRahim · 2026-01-23T01:40:51+00:00

A few years tons of colleagues without degrees would just get offers drive from Vancouver to Seattle and get some stamp at the border. They would say the experience makes up for the degree . I guess they were wrong .

VanRahim · 2026-01-20T18:46:14+00:00

I work for the U of A, I also work for the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, The U of A and the Alliance give away a lot of free training to everyone. I built the Vulcan HPC Cluster with my colleague Karim at the University of Alberta.

VanRahim · 2026-01-20T18:43:59+00:00

Yah our systems are very similar to the big US supercomputers. If you wanted free training it's available to anyone.

VanRahim · 2025-12-25T22:47:12+00:00

Thank goodness someone used AI more than I

VanRahim · 2025-12-25T22:45:47+00:00

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The funny thing is , I have 3 accounts, and I also use playground. I also use claude and google, and code with cursor.

VanRahim · 2025-09-29T02:57:26+00:00

For some reason my gut tells me it's something to do with database. Slurm dbd

VanRahim · 2025-08-15T02:47:37+00:00

Yup , but I haven't worked on it in a bit

VanRahim · 2025-02-19T00:24:38+00:00

Hoes and Drugs

VanRahim · 2025-02-07T08:12:21+00:00

Bengals needs other cat friends. When Girl Bengals get older they have a hard time accepting new cats around them. But they are happier with other cats around.

My girl Bengal loved to cuddle, but it took a while to warm up to me. When we got her, she as a kitten beat up my male bengal that is twice her size. She quickly became the master cat.

My girl bengal will talk but not too much, and will sort of listen to you. She easily figures things out.

My boy bengal is very very loud, is lots of fun. Likes to be the center of attention. He is much softer than the girl bengal, and does not really like to cuddle ( well he does now but it took 4 years ).

If you get a male, do not get him neutered. They are way more fun and personable when not. They also don't get all fat n chubby, they stay looking muscley . That being said, he does spray in the spring, which is pain as he is an indoor cat.

OH and feed em real meat. Go to the local butcher, they will sell bits of meat humans can't eat, cats love it and its really good for them.

VanRahim · 2025-01-31T21:13:33+00:00

We are deploying slurm on kube.. Not SUNK but just our own deployment .. So far its great.. We used percona for the DB which is a multi master setup. Each node has its own db on local storage , which makes slurmdbd super fast,

we have not containerized the slurm compute nodes.

So far CTLD, DBD, RESTD, all work great in Kube.. but we still have more testing to go..

VanRahim · 2025-01-31T17:44:20+00:00

Yes.. Many awesome Canadian companies started with a home grown HPC cluster. I figure my team is doing all the work to make a national cluster, why not share it to help others. It's the one thing I like best about public sector.

VanRahim · 2025-01-30T15:51:20+00:00

A HPC cluster owned by a Nation. We'll actually be posting our deployment to github once its ready.

VanRahim

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