The New Open-Source Linux Test Farm Is Almost Operational

Written by Michael Larabel in Arm on 5 March 2015 at 03:35 AM EST. 7 Comments
ARM
Here's another update on the construction of the new Linux benchmarking test farm.

See the aforelinked article for more of the back-story and links to the other updates. Long story short, this new environment for conducting automated Linux benchmarking is almost ready... Likely tomorrow the first of the servers will have transitioned into the new environment that's much better cooled, has three times greater power capacity, is much easier to maintain, and much more organized than the previous environment for the LinuxBenchmarking.com farm that showcases the Phoronix Test Suite, OpenBenchmarking.org, and Phoromatic.

Since the previous update, I finished up painting, laying the floors, and nearly done with all of the molding, for the main build tasks at hand. I've been doing the construction work due to enjoying it, keeping costs to a minimum, and have long been doing construction work even before the Phoronix days more than a decade ago.


The two initial StarTech 42U server racks have been assembled, I'm still in the process of moving my favorite glass desks there for those that are needed to support the server farm, and some other furniture also moved into place.

I've had a VGA projector laying around for a few years so wired up HDMI through the ceiling to the walls for showcasing the Phoromatic dashboard on a large display. This can also be used for showcasing Phoromatic / Phoronix Test Suite changes in YouTube video walkthroughs or when clients/vendors are visiting. There's also chairs and table down there for when working on Phoromatic / PTS code or when meeting with any visting hardware vendors for Phoronix or Phoronix Test Suite enterprise/commercial customers.

More information on these StarTech 42U racks will come in a future Phoronix review.


So far things are coming together nicely and the initial power-on of the first batch of systems will hopefully happen tomorrow.


There's many low-cost server cases I'm currently evaluating and building out for these initial racks.

Stay tuned for another update this weekend and there will be a full article and video walkthrough when everything is all setup in the next week or so. This is a big change to where the work initially started.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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