Thanks for the detailed reply, Brian.
Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org wrote:
I assume you read 2004 November Sys Admin on the Opteron, including avoiding cheap mainboard designs? http://www.samag.com/documents/sam0411b/
Yea, but who *is* this guy? :)
I assume you want 2-way. The S2891 is a nice, 2-way board for 1/2U. The S2892 is nice if you want more of a traditional SSI EEB mainboard. They are true NUMA and don't cut corners on the CPU and memory.
Don't really need physical 4-way. I'm planning on 2-way dual core. 1/2U doesn't matter, it'll be a tower case. I mostly want the 'server' features like dual NICs and on-board video.
??? Why "dumb" SATA channels ???
Why not a 3Ware Escalade 8506-4+ or a LSI Logic MegaRAID 300-8X?
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.
serial console support in the BIOS,
Any PhoenixBIOS will typically give you that.
I did not know that. I've seen too many 'workstation' mobos without serial console support to make that assumption.
USB 2.0 and IEEE-1394 ports,
On a server? The last thing you want is any storage over those two. I've been ripping out a lot of external storage solutions that use USB 2.0 or IEEE-1394 because they put server stability at risk.
Not for primary storage. Mostly just future proofing here. I've been meaning to setup a backup system using external hard drives instead of tape. That wouldn't fly over USB 1.1.
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So, Brian, having given me all that good information (thanks again), what specific models do you suggest? What are *you* running on?
Kirk Bocek