DESIGNING

When we first decided that we wanted to buy a new cluster we got quotes from several different vendors. These quotes varied up to 50% for the same configuration based upon the add-on features that each company provided. However, even the lowest figure was 30% more than what we calculated if we built the cluster ourselves. Once we decided that the 30% cost differential was significant enough to make building it ourselves worthwhile, we had to determine what exactly we wanted to build.