On 05/16/2014 10:28 AM, Dave Stevens wrote:
Quoting Joseph Hesse joehesse@gmail.com:
Hello,
I want to build a lightweight server and install centos. Does anyone have a recommendation for a suitable motherboard?
Thank you, Joe
there are lots of motherboards that might do; in my experience make sure it has lots of top end for memory, 32 gigs is not hard to find. you also need to consider how many cpus cores drives other peripherals. really it's a large topic. check ebay too, I found a nice supermicro two cpu opteron board with 8 cores and 16G ram for $250.
D
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Thank you for your reply.
I am currently using, as a server, a workstation computer. It was built with a gigabyte motherboard and has 8G ram and a 1000G Sata 3 drive.
It is accessed with ssh and runs an ftp server, a web server and a samba server so my wife can back up her pc to it. It is running behind a router.
This computer more than meets my needs as a lightweight server except the hardware is dying and I want to replace it.
The question in my mind is: should I just buy another workstation class motherboard and duplicate what I already have or buy a motherboard which is intended to be used as a server?
Thank you, Joe
On 5/16/2014 11:09 AM, Joseph Hesse wrote:
The question in my mind is: should I just buy another workstation class motherboard and duplicate what I already have or buy a motherboard which is intended to be used as a server?
I won't run a server that doesn't have ECC main memory. most desktop hardware doesn't support ECC.
at home, Im using a HP MicroServer N40L
for my public internet server (at a coloc site), I just picked up a HP DL180 G6 with 24gb ram, and 2 x Xeon X5650 cpus (6 cores each at 2.66ghz) and SAS2 raid with 14 3.5" SAS/SATA bays for $740 from ebay. At work, we paid $6500 each for a similarly configured machines about 3 years ago. this is a 2U rackmount server, and far too noisy for anywhere but in a rack in a data center...
John R Pierce wrote:
On 5/16/2014 11:09 AM, Joseph Hesse wrote:
The question in my mind is: should I just buy another workstation class motherboard and duplicate what I already have or buy a motherboard which is intended to be used as a server?
I won't run a server that doesn't have ECC main memory. most desktop hardware doesn't support ECC.
<snip> Oh, right, *all* the servers here use ECC DIMMs. And you really, REALLY don't want to go there: a) price, b) n/s is not buffered is not registered, none of the above compatible in the same bank, and oh, yes, dual rank is *not* compatible with single rank or quad rank... I kid you not. I've had servers simply not boot by mixing two of those, and let's not forget not fitting in the slot...., and c) see a).
mark, semi-guru on DIMMs....
On 05/16/2014 11:23 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
hardware doesn't support ECC.
<snip> Oh, right, *all* the servers here use ECC DIMMs. And you really, REALLY don't want to go there: a) price, b) n/s is not buffered is not registered, none of the above compatible in the same bank, and oh, yes, dual rank is *not* compatible with single rank or quad rank... I kid you not. I've had servers simply not boot by mixing two of those, and let's not forget not fitting in the slot...., and c) see a).
ECC is such a horrible pain in the rear. If you don't have things like "SLA" in your casual vocabulary, pretty much any desktop board works find for Centos6. For spare/personal/backups servers, I use whatever old hardware sits in the junk room.
Anything using ECC is such a pain to match up correctly that I tend to buy motherboard/RAM/CPU from a vendor as a package unit so it's warranted to work together. Registered/Unregistered, CAS timing, single/double/quad ranked, never mind voltages, and making sure your CPU supports it!
For all the promises of better uptimes, I've had far more trouble with mis-matched ECC than I've ever experienced in bad non-ECC RAM. Truly, this is a sorry showing for ECC.
Ben
On 6/3/2014 11:26 AM, Lists wrote:
ECC is such a horrible pain in the rear.
seriously? where did you EVER get this from?
any server thats storing data which is even remotely important, not having ECC means that soft bit errors go undetected, leading to VERY hard to detect data corruption. and the more memory you have, the higher the frequency of soft bit errors.
sure, you need to get the correct spec memory, you can't mix and match random parts.... no different than anything else, from spark plugs or tires for your car to clothes . go ahead, try and put volvo 940 spark plugs in your mercedes 300te, see how well /that/ works. and I really can't get into my son's "M" t-shirts anymore, being that i'm kinda XL.
Am 03.06.2014 um 20:26 schrieb Lists lists@benjamindsmith.com:
On 05/16/2014 11:23 AM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
hardware doesn't support ECC.
<snip> Oh, right, *all* the servers here use ECC DIMMs. And you really, REALLY don't want to go there: a) price, b) n/s is not buffered is not registered, none of the above compatible in the same bank, and oh, yes, dual rank is *not* compatible with single rank or quad rank... I kid you not. I've had servers simply not boot by mixing two of those, and let's not forget not fitting in the slot...., and c) see a).
ECC is such a horrible pain in the rear. If you don't have things like "SLA" in your casual vocabulary, pretty much any desktop board works find for Centos6. For spare/personal/backups servers, I use whatever old hardware sits in the junk room.
Anything using ECC is such a pain to match up correctly that I tend to buy motherboard/RAM/CPU from a vendor as a package unit so it's warranted to work together. Registered/Unregistered, CAS timing, single/double/quad ranked, never mind voltages, and making sure your CPU supports it!
For all the promises of better uptimes, I've had far more trouble with mis-matched ECC than I've ever experienced in bad non-ECC RAM. Truly, this is a sorry showing for ECC.
It’s also a bit of a sorry showing for the admin putting together the system.
As for the original request: Maybe take a look at a HP Microserver or one of the entry-level ML-servers?
On 06/03/2014 11:52 AM, Rainer Duffner wrote:
It’s also a bit of a sorry showing for the admin putting together the system.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Remember the old saw about simplicity and reliability? ECC ignores that saw completely, resulting in a complex, error prone hardware landscape fraught with incompatibilities.
With desktop systems, it's pretty straight forward to get memory that "just works". Yes, with ECC, all the specs are in the Motherboard manual, but there are far more variables to consider. And, even when you buy exactly to spec, I've had issues with systems that worked fine for days at high loads and passed extensive Memtest, but locked up sporadically (every few weeks), at a tremendous cost to diagnose. The only way I've found to be confident that a purchase will work is to buy only hardware on a specific hardware compatibility list, and typically I buy the hardware together. Most of our hardware is in this category.
I'll consider my irreverent point of view, that this complexity is unnecessary and counter-productive, as somewhat unpopular and leave it at that.
-Ben
PS: As an aside, we've had extremely good results with SuperMicro - we shop for them almost exclusively. The only problems we've had was with onboard SAS controller on a specific model on EL6 - worked fine on EL5. We ended up disabling SAS and going with onboard SATA with no further issues.
On 6/3/2014 12:26, Lists wrote:
Registered/Unregistered, CAS timing, single/double/quad ranked, never mind voltages, and making sure your CPU supports it!
All of those specs are listed in the motherboard manual. If you're buying your RAM from a reseller that doesn't give you the corresponding specs to match up against the mobo specs, stop buying from that vendor.
There are vendors that will match up your specific motherboard with the RAM that works in it, and will exchange the RAM for the right stuff if by some tiny chance they specified the wrong stuff. (e.g. Crucial)
Warren Young wrote:
On 6/3/2014 12:26, Lists wrote:
Registered/Unregistered, CAS timing, single/double/quad ranked, never mind voltages, and making sure your CPU supports it!
All of those specs are listed in the motherboard manual. If you're buying your RAM from a reseller that doesn't give you the corresponding specs to match up against the mobo specs, stop buying from that vendor.
There are vendors that will match up your specific motherboard with the RAM that works in it, and will exchange the RAM for the right stuff if by some tiny chance they specified the wrong stuff. (e.g. Crucial)
Buried in some of them, and others, well, it tells you what it will take... and it *assumes* that you're just building the system, and buying all the DIMMs as one batch, *not* that you're replacing a failed DIMM. But you've got to match even things like cl2whatever. If it doesn't have *exactly* what's on the other DIMMs, it won't work.
mark
Am 03.06.2014 um 22:39 schrieb m.roth@5-cent.us:
Warren Young wrote:
On 6/3/2014 12:26, Lists wrote:
Registered/Unregistered, CAS timing, single/double/quad ranked, never mind voltages, and making sure your CPU supports it!
All of those specs are listed in the motherboard manual. If you're buying your RAM from a reseller that doesn't give you the corresponding specs to match up against the mobo specs, stop buying from that vendor.
There are vendors that will match up your specific motherboard with the RAM that works in it, and will exchange the RAM for the right stuff if by some tiny chance they specified the wrong stuff. (e.g. Crucial)
Buried in some of them, and others, well, it tells you what it will take... and it *assumes* that you're just building the system, and buying all the DIMMs as one batch, *not* that you're replacing a failed DIMM. But you've got to match even things like cl2whatever. If it doesn't have *exactly* what's on the other DIMMs, it won't work.
That’s why you replace both. Or, if you build your own servers in significant quantities, you’ve got to do you’re own stock-keeping. Need 24 hard drives? Buy 30! Need 12 PSUs for 6 servers? Buy 16.
That, or buy COTS-hardware from Dell, HP, IBM, Fujitsu with a support-contract….
On 06/03/2014 01:53 PM, Rainer Duffner wrote:
That’s why you replace both. Or, if you build your own servers in significant quantities, you’ve got to do you’re own stock-keeping. Need 24 hard drives? Buy 30! Need 12 PSUs for 6 servers? Buy 16.
This may be industry standard, and I understand that. I just think that it's a poor showing that this is what you have to do to take advantage of technology meant to be more reliable than "consumer grade" stuff, which somehow manages to be quite reliable even if you mix and match.
So, the "better" one is, in practice, less reliable unless you follow extremely narrow guidelines, and not only pay more per unit, but buy more units than needed! Usually, the cheap one is flaky and unreliable, and the expensive one "just works". See: shovels, auto parts, shoes, kitchen knives, mechanic tools, bread machines, and virtually every other product category on the market.
My complaining on an obscure list won't change anything, but this is still a sorry state for ECC.
Ben
On 6/3/2014 2:58 PM, Lists wrote:
This may be industry standard, and I understand that. I just think that it's a poor showing that this is what you have to do to take advantage of technology meant to be more reliable than "consumer grade" stuff, which somehow manages to be quite reliable even if you mix and match.
consumer non-ECC memory will just pass occasional bad bits under those same circumstances of mismatched timing or voltages or whatver.
I do suppose noone remembers the SDRAM (pre-DDR) where AMD systems would support 256MB single rank DIMMs but Intel systems only supported 128MB single rank and the rather rare 256MB dual rank (oft called double sided because they usually were) but often had problems if you used 4 of these.
in fact, my previous Intel Core2Duo desktop was unreliable with 4 dimms, yet rock solid with 2, and this was regardless of the timing. 4 dimms would boot, pass memtest, etc, but the system would randomly lockup with no clues. ECC would have thrown a fault the instant there was a bad bit.
dynamic memory is much more complex than it superficially appears.
Joseph Hesse wrote:
On 05/16/2014 10:28 AM, Dave Stevens wrote:
Quoting Joseph Hesse joehesse@gmail.com:
I want to build a lightweight server and install centos. Does anyone have a recommendation for a suitable motherboard?
there are lots of motherboards that might do; in my experience make sure it has lots of top end for memory, 32 gigs is not hard to find. you also need to consider how many cpus cores drives other peripherals. really it's a large topic. check ebay too, I found a nice supermicro two cpu opteron board with 8 cores and 16G ram for $250.
I am currently using, as a server, a workstation computer. It was built with a gigabyte motherboard and has 8G ram and a 1000G Sata 3 drive.
It is accessed with ssh and runs an ftp server, a web server and a samba server so my wife can back up her pc to it. It is running behind a router.
This computer more than meets my needs as a lightweight server except the hardware is dying and I want to replace it.
The question in my mind is: should I just buy another workstation class motherboard and duplicate what I already have or buy a motherboard which is intended to be used as a server?
You *really* don't need a real server. Note that my idea of a "real" server is rackmount, has two or four physical CPUs with anywhere from 8 (used to be 4) to 16 cores each, and 8G? Everything here has at least 64G (used to be 32G, though there were some 10-yr-old compute nodes with less). The workstation you have - do you find it under a heavy load? Do you or your wife feel that it's not responsive enough? If no, then just replace what you have. I rebuilt my home system early this year, with a Gigabyte m/b, 8G RAM. Got a little crazed, so it's got 2 1TB h/ds as Linux software RAID 1, and for $30 I bought a hot-swap drive bay to fit in the case, and a 2TB drive to put in there for offline backups, like I do at work....
mark "really do gotta set up samba for my wife & the kid"
-
John R Pierce -
Joseph Hesse -
Lists -
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
Rainer Duffner -
Warren Young