Queueing Aspects of Integrated Information and Computing Systems in Geosciences and Natural Sciences - Advances in Data, Methods, Models and Their Applications in Geoscience - page 5

5. Hardware resources
Most scientific projects consider software and hardware issues to be treated separately. This
would most likely be a problem for developing integrated systems on a solid holistic base. As
for overall costs, for example with power consumption and staff, only very few institutions
will be able to operate and develop those systems. The more complex these systems get, the
less can the distinction between infrastructure resources and systems resources be recognised.
As for understanding the complexity of these issues to be inseparable in the dimension
of future integrated systems, the following paragraphs will illustrate some most important
hardware components.
5.1 Resources infrastructure
An unabdicable premise for safe and reliable operation complex and large systems
are concepts and implementation of power resources, unbreakable power supplies, air
conditioning, electronics, physical security and many more infrastructure components.
Figure 1 shows infrastructure components necessary to operate a larger computer installation
for the purpose of scientific computing: generator, air conditioning, power supplies, and
electronical and physical security measures.
Fig. 1. Infrastructure components necessary to operate larger computer installations.
5.2 Resources cooling
Besides the infrastructure, various measures associated directly with the computer systems
are necessary and this will depend on the type of installation. Figure 2 shows one type of rack
water-cooling (SGI, 2011).