It's time to purchase hardware again, and I'm going through the usual "of that which is on the market, what will CentOS run without leaving new hardware collecting dust for a year"?
I'm looking at a number of commodity-grade machines (ie: desktop grade will suffice) with reasonably fast CPUs and able to use at least 8GB each (preferably 32GB). These will be deployed as software development systems in run mode 3 (ie: no real graphical requirement).
Does anyone have suggestions, assuming a CentOS 6.x install, what CPUs/chipsets, etc, to avoid? (Or alternately, which ones still commonly on the market are fine?)
I've typically stuck to Intel CPUs, and prefer Gigabyte or Intel motherboards. I'd prefer to minimize the likelihood of non-working or marginally-working hardware.
I've had a look at the supported RHEL hardware list, but they typically just list Xeon-based machines.
Thanks in advance.
Devin
On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Devin Reade gdr@gno.org wrote:
I've typically stuck to Intel CPUs, and prefer Gigabyte or Intel motherboards. I'd prefer to minimize the likelihood of non-working or marginally-working hardware.
As for "Desktop" grade boards - officially Intel does not support them. Although they may well with Linux, in case of problems (RMA) they will ask you to do Windows specific things before giving a RMA number. Server boards - specific versions of RHEL + SLES mentioned for the specific board; mention of CentOS or any other Linux distro results in "unsupported" OS. This has been my experience with Intel in India.
Gigabyte does list Linux for their boards, albeit as caveat -- an example here: http://www.gigabyte.in/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4388#sp
I would suggest select a board that has been in the market for about 6 months. Look up the chipset on the board and verify support for it in the Linux kernel. Also, besides costing a little less it will most likely work with the latest incarnate of the OS.
-- Arun Khan
On 11/7/2013 9:48 PM, Arun Khan wrote:
Gigabyte does list Linux for their boards, albeit as caveat -- an example here: http://www.gigabyte.in/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4388#sp
I would suggest select a board that has been in the market for about 6 months. Look up the chipset on the board and verify support for it in the Linux kernel. Also, besides costing a little less it will most likely work with the latest incarnate of the OS.
with this years's Haswell CPUs (core i3/i5/i7-4xxx), your chipset choice is the Z87 or its cheapened cousins, H87, Q87, H81, Q85 with last years Ivy Bridge CPUs (core i3/i5/i7-3xxx), it's the Z77, H77, Q77, Q75 and so forth.
both of these chipset families provide SATA3 channels, USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports. many motherboards have an additional non-intel SATA chip for more ports. my Z77 has a partial NIC on it, but the motherboard I'm using has a different Realtek NIC instead many ivy bridge and haswell CPUs have onboard video supported by these chipsets, and I believe Intel has decent video drivers for linux, but you said you're running shell only, so that doesn't even matter
you probably don't care about sound chips.
so, its mostly the extra SATA chip, and the NIC chip you'll be concerned with for compatibility.
On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 11:18 AM, Arun Khan knura9@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Devin Reade gdr@gno.org wrote:
I've typically stuck to Intel CPUs, and prefer Gigabyte or Intel motherboards. I'd prefer to minimize the likelihood of non-working or marginally-working hardware.
Gigabyte does list Linux for their boards, albeit as caveat -- an example here: http://www.gigabyte.in/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4388#sp
I would suggest select a board that has been in the market for about 6 months. Look up the chipset on the board and verify support for it in the Linux kernel. Also, besides costing a little less it will most likely work with the latest incarnate of the OS.
I had meant to add following info in my earlier response -
Supermicro makes desktop/workstation boards based on i3/i5/i7 CPUs and compatible chip set: http://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/motherboard/Core/index.cfm
OS compatibility for board chip set ==> http://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/motherboard/Core/index.cfm
HTH
-
Arun Khan -
Devin Reade -
John R Pierce