First implementation of a diskless computing farm for the LHCb italian Tier-1 prototype

Aim of this paper is to outline the designing criteria which guided us in the design and the realization of a computing farm for the LHCb Italian Tier-1 prototype. The hardware architecture, with particular attention paid to the disk data storage and to the disk-less implementation of the farm nodes, is described. The disk-less network boot procedure is also described in detail. Other important issues, concerning system debugging, hardware health monitoring and remote power control, are also discussed.