Multi-core servers and LinuxCNC

I have a Dell PowerEdge rack-mount server. It doesn’t have much for graphics, but it has 2 complete computers, each with 32 cores and 128meg of RAM, and high-speed drives. I’ve gotten buried trying to understand if LinuxCNC real-time gets benefits from more cores. My motion controllers are Ethernet Mesa’s which these units can easily connect to and they are already running Linux. If it’s a good idea, I’d get a KVM and dedicate one cpu to the mill and the other to my lathe. I would be able to leave LinuxCNC running on each and switch the mouse, keyboard, pendant and monitor to the machine I was using. For automatic procedures, I think I could let the gcode run on one machine and just switch to the other and keep going. Thoughts?

So you have 2 physically separate rack mount servers ?

It’s a single box designed for a server farm. Similar to this: www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-2U-X10DRT-H-...e:g:V50AAOSwGOVdzZWd. That one has 2 “nodes”, which are essentially entire, se-state PC’s with their own Ethernet, USB, VGA, and drives. The enclosure provides power to all nodes and has management features, which are complicated enough to make me just use a KVM.

Loud as hell but built for web serving. Lots of cores and ram with a fast drive. Seems perfect for LinuxCNC. A KVM, would allow a single monitor, mouse, keyboard and, in my case, a USB CNC pendant to control 2 separate PC’s each connected to a Mesa 7I96, one on my mill and one on my lathe.

As long as unplugging the pendant doesn’t cause an emergency stop, I think I can switch machines as soon as one of them is running some gcode.

Never come across these before, not common in civil works . So each node is essentially a separate entity ? Each node has it's own OS independent of the other ?

If I've got it right, that each node is separate, I can't see why it wouldn't work. Sounds like a plan.

I've got a HP ProLiant ML150 with 2x Xeon E5450 Quad Core 3.00GHz with 16GB ram, should try to run some experiments on that. Just it takes like forever to go through post and boot and sounds like a tornado. Not Quite equal to your spec.