The ransom.ece.arizona.edu machine is a high-powered rack server machine intended for heavy computational use by many simulataneous users. This machine is different from the ece3 and ece2 machines because it runs Windows, not *nix or Solaris.

Important usage notes

• The ransom machine is not backed up!! Save your important information on your shared/user drive, or in CVS/SVN
• The ransom machine could be rebooted at any time, and is not an enterprise machine. Thus, you should only use software robust to restarts (i.e., have your simulations write periodic files, or just be good natured enough to take it professionally when the machine is restarted).

How to use ransom

Login via the Remote Desktop Program, using your ECE account information. If you cannot login, it is because your login has not been allowed by Prof. Sprinkle. Thus, you should email him to add you to the remote desktop users, giving a good reason (like, "Hey, I'm your research assistant", or "I have $100 to donate to your 'buy Jon a new windsheild for his Mercedes' fund").

Ransom can hold arbitrarily many simulataneous connections, but it has been limited to 30 for productivity's sake. If you login to ransom, and close your connection (rather than logging out) then when you reconnect, the machine will have maintained the same state as when you disconnected. This is, of course, not true if the machine has rebooted while you were disconnected.

Using ransom for computation and research

You might find ransom useful as a machine to run your Matlab or Mathematica simulations, or to maintain logins to a unix machine with persistance. If there are other needs you have, or software you would like to install, contact Prof. Sprinkle.

Specifications

 2 x Intel Xeon CPU
  E5310 @ 1.60GHz
 4GB RAM (to be upgraded to 16GB)
 750GB HDD
 Running Microsoft Windows Server 2003
  Enterprise x64 Edition
  Service Pack 2