[CentOS] Re: Opteron Mobo Suggestions

[Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

From: Kirk Bocek <t004 at kbocek.com>
> Yea, but who *is* this guy? :)

I heard he is a jerk.  ;-ppp

> Don't really need physical 4-way.
> I'm planning on 2-way dual core.

On a server where throughput is king, everything is I/O.
Dual-core just gives you more computing.

> I mostly just want to see how two or three striped SATA drives will 
> perform. If the on-board ports don't perform, I can always add a 
> separate controller later. My understanding is that NCQ support isn't 
> here yet for Linux but that it should provide a boost.

Do you understand what NCQ does?
It allows an intelligent drive to queue for the bus,
because the bus is dumb.

So what do you think an intelligent strorage controller does?
(light bulb!)

3Ware Escalade 7000/8000s are the undesputed king of queuing in ATA.
You can't beat real-time ASIC+SRAM queuing!  It can service requests
faster than anything.

That's why 3Ware calls it a "storage switch," because it's like having
a "layer 3 switch" instead of a "layer 3 router" (traditional
microcontroller+DRAM).  And it's _ideal_ for RAID-0, 1 and 10.

> Not for primary storage. Mostly just future proofing here.

Throw in a $10 card.  Besides, they all come with it these days.

> I've been meaning to setup a backup system using external hard
> drives instead of tape. That wouldn't fly over USB 1.1.

Put in an out-of-band GbE card or iSCSI HBA instead.  Trust me on
this, you do _not_ want USB or FireWire.

> So, Brian, having given me all that good information (thanks again), 
> what specific models do you suggest? What are *you* running on?

I like the HP DL385 (2-way) and DL585 (4-way) servers.  They use the
reference AMD designs -- including (2) AMD813x's in the DL585:  
  http://www.samag.com/documents/s=9408/sam0411b/0411b_f5.htm  

Do you need 4-way for computation?  Or throughput?
If the latter, then dual-core on 2-way is not going to give you anything.


--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org