From: Kirk Bocek t004@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@ieee.org
Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org wrote:
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!)
Yes, I understand. I also don't have an unlimited budget. If I can get most of the benefit without needing a $300-800 add-on, that's a big plus.
Put in an out-of-band GbE card or iSCSI HBA instead. Trust me on this, you do _not_ want USB or FireWire.
I conceptually understand iSCSI, but how would I use a GbE NIC in a backup solution? Don't forget that a backup solution would depend on hot-pluggability. That's why I was thinking of USB/IEEE-1394.
I like the HP DL385 (2-way) and DL585 (4-way) servers.
Cool, I will take a look at HP's offerings. Do you have any motherboards alone that you would recommend?
Kirk Bocek
Kirk Bocek wrote:
Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org wrote:
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!)
Yes, I understand. I also don't have an unlimited budget. If I can get most of the benefit without needing a $300-800 add-on, that's a big plus.
A 3ware 8000 should be < 300$
Put in an out-of-band GbE card or iSCSI HBA instead. Trust me on this, you do _not_ want USB or FireWire.
I conceptually understand iSCSI, but how would I use a GbE NIC in a backup solution? Don't forget that a backup solution would depend on hot-pluggability. That's why I was thinking of USB/IEEE-1394.
I don't really know, but you could get a pretty cheap NAS with a gigabit nic to do your backups instead of using USB/Firewire.
I like the HP DL385 (2-way) and DL585 (4-way) servers.
Cool, I will take a look at HP's offerings. Do you have any motherboards alone that you would recommend?
Kirk Bocek
Kirk Bocek wrote:
I like the HP DL385 (2-way) and DL585 (4-way) servers.
Cool, I will take a look at HP's offerings. Do you have any motherboards alone that you would recommend?
HP just announced a version of the DL385 that supports the dual core Opterons. So for a LOT less money, you can now get a "store bought" dual socket/quad-core rackmount system.
As for my personal motherboard selection, there's the Tyan S2882D which has two processor sockets and supports dual-core opterons.
Details here:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8sdpro.html
I haven't used one of these yet, but I have several on order for use in machines doing video processing (which benefit mightily from multiple CPU cores and gobs of memory...the board supports 16gb). I'll let ya'll know how it works with two dual core opterons (opteron 270 dual core parts) as soon as all the fixins arrive and I throw it together.
Cheers,
C
-
Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith＠ieee.org> -
Chris Mauritz -
Kirk Bocek -
Ugo Bellavance