I've actually realized that I've only got a couple of computers that I can run this project on - I don't think most of my computers would be able to finish WUs before the deadlines.

• To re-issue work to another computer, if no results have come back yet. (Unfortunately many computers accept tasks and then "go dark".)
  
• As a crude prioritisation mechanism. For instance, the RAPID-RAPIT/CHAAOS researchers wanted to get some results in a hurry last year (I'm guessing for IPCC AR5--but I'm not confident about that), so those units have a very short deadline. But I understand that they are still taking and using results that come in after deadline.
  

So don't worry about the deadlines. Keep crunching!

# vm.swappiness controls how aggressively the kernel swaps out inactive processes. Default 50, lower=less quick to swap things out.
vm.swappiness=10

# vm.vfs_cache_pressure controls how fast the kernel reclaims memory used to cache
# copies of inodes and directory entries. Default 100, lower -> slower to reclaim them.
vm.vfs_cache_pressure=10

# enumerate disks, set scheduler for each
for d in `ls /dev/sd[a-z]`; do
   disk=`basename $d`
   echo deadline > /sys/block/$disk/queue/scheduler
done

... elevator=deadline ...

I ran CPDN on 32-bit (not 64-bit!) Ubuntu in a VirtualBox session and it worked right out of the box. No problems at all.

Thanks for the advise, but, I am not sure that I want to install a 32 bit OS and throw away half of my RAM. Does anyone know of a 64 Linux distro that comes with 32 compatibly libraries already installed.

Enlarge Write-Ahead Cache

This option is configurable in Vista or Windows 2003 server only.

Windows gives the NTFS filesystem a default cache to use for information, but if you are opening and closing a lot of different files in rapid succession, this cache can be exhausted, causing reads and writes to take longer than necessary. There are two setting sizes: normal, and large. From the Microsoft Documentation:

Increasing physical memory does not always increase the amount of paged pool memory available to NTFS. Setting memoryusage to 2 raises the limit of paged pool memory. This might improve performance if your system is opening and closing many files in the same file set and is not already using large amounts of system memory for other applications or for cache memory. If your computer is already using large amounts of system memory for other applications or for cache memory, increasing the limit of NTFS paged and non-paged pool memory reduces the available pool memory for other processes. This might reduce overall system performance.

To set the cache to its larger size, click Start --> Run, type 'cmd' and hit enter. Then type:

fsutil behavior set memoryusage 2

In the event of any issue, or degradation of performance as a result of this change, you can set the cache back to its normal size. To revert to the default configuration, click Start --> Run, type 'cmd' and hit enter. Then type:

fsutil behavior set memoryusage 1

the recommendations I've read say stay around 20C below TjMax for stability and long life.