Purchase specifications and trade-offs

A. New head node

Dedicated chassis
(1 U)
$3,000

One of four (a Quad), in one chassis.
(2U)

Consider Option 2 for cost savings (if any).
To do: Calculate cost savings (if any, considering ).
Any other considerations, such as risk or recovery challenges?
Note 1: Head node has lower proc, lower memory, and 256 GB SSD drive for (OS and applications).
Note 2: Price for Option 1 includes a large drive 4TB "WD black" for temp. user data (~$2,700+$250.

B. New storage machine

Synology-branded dedicated storage array.
$3,000, plus five 4TB hard drives ($250ea). Total price is for 12-16TB initial storage, depending on risk choices.
$4,250

Home-brewed dedicated storage array, perhaps running OpenNAS software.
To do: Get price of appropriate hardware.

Consider Option 2 for cost savings (if any).
BUT, must also consider risk, support, and staffing effort.
To do: What connector? If ethernet: iSCSI (all compute node writes through head node) or NFS (theoretically could be accessible by compute nodes)? If not ethernet, what connector technology, at what price and complexity?
Note 1: Five 4TB HD's can allow for 1 drive to fail (16TB) or 2 drives to fail (12TB).
Note 2: Price for Option 1 includes five large 4TB "WD red?" for temp. user data (~$2,700+$250).

C. New computational node

8 nodes (in 2 Quads), with higher computational processors.
Each node: 2 * E5-26700v2; 2.5GHz, 10 cores/ proc (thus, 20 cores/ node). Add $2,500 per node compared to Option 2. Thus, $5,100 each node.
$40,800

16 nodes (in 4 Quads), with standard computational processors.
Each node: 2 * E5-26200v2; 2.1GHz, 6 cores/ proc (thus, 12 cores/ node). $2,600 per node.
$41,600

Consider Option 2 for increasing number of cores from 160 to 192, but with slower set of processors.  See Czarek's note, from 4/14, below.
For either choice, to do: Storage: Fast or large? Or both?
Note: Buying in multiples of 4 (Quads) is most cost-effective.

D. Arrange an efficient back-up plan

EZ-Backup
To do: Get actual annual cost, at current amounts and compression.

(At current quantities of backed-up data, ChemIT cannot recommend an alternative.)

On-going to do: Evaluate cost-effectiveness as volume grows. At current TB's of backup (including compression and versioning), costs are as were predicted (no surprises), and thus were at the time considered to be affordable and cost-effective compared to investing in own hardware and staffing.

E. Components for networking, power. And new rack.

Under $2,700.

Specifics:
Networking (~$1,500)
    1 switch (Cisco SG300-52; ~$750)
    Network cabling (price dependent on above decisions. Expect well under $1K)
Power (~$700)
    UPS (APC SMC1500-2U; $500; for head node only)
    2-3 PDUs (power distribution units; a.k.a. power strips; $100 each)
        Qty depends on above decisions (amperage calculations)
Rack (~$500)