Planning to build a medium-range box for a Linux/Debian ba..

On Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:30:25 -0800, lbrtchx wrote:

> ~
> I am planning to build a medium-range box for a Linux/Debian based
> J2EE server and I am looking for the most stable system with:
> ~
> a) 2 processors
> ~
> b) 2 onboard Gigabit NICs
> ~
> c) support for 4+ Gb or RAM
> ~
> d) at least 4 ports for the latest SATA

I suspect you can have the above, or the requirement below

> ~
> e) most quiet and energy efficient case + motherboard + processor
> combo

On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:25:51 +0000, phil-news-nospam typed this message:

> On Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:48:36 +0100 Aragorn <aragorn.RemoveThis@chatfactory.invalid>
> wrote: | On Saturday 27 December 2008 14:30, someone identifying as |
> *lbrtchx@gmail.com* wrote in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/ |
> |> ~
> |> I am planning to build a medium-range box for a Linux/Debian based
> |> J2EE server and I am looking for the most stable system with: |> ~
> |> a) 2 processors
> |> ~
> |> b) 2 onboard Gigabit NICs
> |> ~
> |> c) support for 4+ Gb or RAM
> |> ~
> |> d) at least 4 ports for the latest SATA |> ~
> |> e) most quiet and energy efficient case + motherboard + processor |>
> combo
> |
> | You will need a workstation-class motherboard and processors then.
> These | are more expensive and they will typically require ECC
> registered memory - | which I advise, since the machine will be up 24/7.
> You might want to take | a look at Tyan or Supermicro.
>
> I use the Tyan S2927A2NRF board for my server. It has 2 AMD S1207
> sockets which I have both populated with dual core Opterons for 4 total
> cores. It supports up to 64GB RAM though I only have 8GB in place. It
> fits (tight) in a regular ATX case and doesn't require those special
> long cases.
>
> It has 6 SATA ports. I use one for DVD-R and four for HDs. There is
> RAID but I don't use it. I use all 4 rear USBs for external HDs, and
> one of the Firewires for a 5th external HD. 6TB of storage on here and
> I could upgrade it to 9TB easily, or more in the future.

So what is a medium-range box?? Will it rich Israel? Or Japan?

On Monday 29 December 2008 19:25, someone identifying as
*phil-news-nospam@ipal.net* wrote in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/

> On Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:48:36 +0100 Aragorn <aragorn.DeleteThis@chatfactory.invalid>
> wrote:
> |
> | On Saturday 27 December 2008 14:30, someone identifying as
> | *lbrtchx@gmail.com* wrote in /comp.os.linux.hardware:/
> |
> |> ~
> |> I am planning to build a medium-range box for a Linux/Debian based
> |> J2EE server and I am looking for the most stable system with:
> |> ~
> |> a) 2 processors
> |> ~
> |> b) 2 onboard Gigabit NICs
> |> ~
> |> c) support for 4+ Gb or RAM
> |> ~
> |> d) at least 4 ports for the latest SATA
> |> ~
> |> e) most quiet and energy efficient case + motherboard + processor
> |> combo
> |
> | You will need a workstation-class motherboard and processors then.
> | These are more expensive and they will typically require ECC registered
> | memory - which I advise, since the machine will be up 24/7. You might
> | want to take a look at Tyan or Supermicro.
>
> I use the Tyan S2927A2NRF board for my server. It has 2 AMD S1207 sockets
> which I have both populated with dual core Opterons for 4 total cores.
> It supports up to 64GB RAM though I only have 8GB in place. It fits
> (tight) in a regular ATX case and doesn't require those special long
> cases.
>
> It has 6 SATA ports. I use one for DVD-R and four for HDs. There is RAID
> but I don't use it. I use all 4 rear USBs for external HDs, and one of
> the Firewires for a 5th external HD. 6TB of storage on here and I could
> upgrade it to 9TB easily, or more in the future.

I have a Tyan S2915 (Thunder n6650W) over here. It still needs setting up
properly, though, but it's a lot of work - it'll be used as both a
workstation and a server using Xen and isolated virtual machines.

I don't remember how many PATA channels it has - they're not being used
anyway - but I believe it does have four SATA connections with nvRAID, plus
an on-board SAS (without RAID). It also has two sockets, populated with
dualcore Opterons, and it supports (and holds) 32 GB of ECC registered
DDR-2 667 MHz (8x 4 GB).

There are two firewire connectors and multiple USB connectors. The
motherboard has 4 PCIe slots (2x 16-lane and 2x 8-lane), and I believe two
PCI-X slots and one PCI slot. There is on-board sound from an Azalia
codec, and it has two Gigabit ethernet adapters (forcedeth).

It's got two videocards. One is an older PCI GeCube Radeon 9250, which will
be used solely in character mode for the Xen management domain, and the
other one is an ASUS GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB, connected to two SGI 21" CRT
monitors for use as a workstation in one of the unprivileged domains.
There is no floppy drive, the DVD writer is connected to an SATA port and I
have a PCIe Adaptec SAS/SATA RAID controller, with four 147 GB SAS disks in
RAID 5. I may however add two removable SATA drive bays and ditto hard
disks for the server virtual machines, which would then be connected to the
RAID controller in RAID 1.

This motherboard is eATX, so it does require a (slightly) deeper chassis.
Mine is mounted in an aluminium CoolerMaster CM Stacker 832 chassis, with
extra 12 cm fans. The four hard disks are mounted in a disk rack at the
bottom of the chassis, right behind their own dedicated 12 cm fan, which is
not the translucent, LED-illuminated one that comes standard with the
chassis but a regular one with ball bearings. The chassis has vents on the
side with a grid you can attach four 12 cm fans to, or one 30 cm fan. It
gives off a lot of heat through the side but it stays pretty cool on the
inside. Almost everything in the chassis can be mounted or unmounted using
thumbscrews.

Oh, and as the sides are basically "open", I've had it /pimped./ It's got
one red and one blue neon tube in it. :p

As I've said, I still need to fully install this machine - there are several
conditions with regard to this room and myself that prevent me from doing
that right now - but I've already did a preliminary install of a very basic
Gentoo. I've opted for Gentoo for all virtual machines on this computer as
it allows me to tailor everything, particularly since it'll be used with
Xen.

What I can already tell you is that it's blazing fast. Compiling and
linking a Xen-patched (dom0) 64-bit Linux kernel using all four cores and
ccNUMA memory addressing takes only about 50 seconds, versus over 5 minutes
for a regular vanilla 32-bit kernel on my dual Xeon HT machine (using all 4
hyperthreads).

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)