[CentOS] Tyan Thunder K8SE S2892 Report

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org
Thu Jul 28 21:18:57 UTC 2005


On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 13:30 -0700, Kirk Bocek wrote:
> Tyan Thunder K8SE S2892, BIOS 1.01
>  ...
> Antec Truepower 2.0 550W PSU

Is that the 550EPS12V?  Or just the regular 550?

The former has an 8-pin (4x2) SSI server connector.
The latter has only the 4-pin (2x2) P4 connector.

Don't confuse either with the 6-pin (3x2) SSI Workstation (WS)
connector, now known as a PCIe connector.  And no, that's not
the 6-pin (6x1) "AUX" connector.

[ Confused yet? ;-]

> Chenming 901A-0-0 RTL Case

Isn't that an ATX case, and _not_ an EATX/SSI EEB case?

> I thought I bought a plenty large case.

There are (not including newer BTX, or older formats):
   FlexATX:   9.0" x  7.5"
  MicroATX:   9.6" x  9.6"
       ATX:  12.0" x  9.6"
   Ext ATX:  12.0" x 13.0"
   SSI EEB:  12.0" x 13.0" + additional height/spacing/thermal

Most of the time, an EATX case will fit an SSI EEB mainboard, but
sometimes you don't have the headroom.  Although some ATX cases may
physically fit an EATX, they often don't have the stand-offs required,
and definitely not the height required.

> Turns out the CPU heat sink at
> the front of the motherboard sticks up far enough to interfere with the
> drive bays at the bottom of the case. I had carefully mounted the CPUs,
> heat sinks and memory before mounting the motherboard. When I tried to
> insert the motherboard, the front heat sink hit the shelf that supports
> one of the two internal hard drive cages that come with the Chenming
> case. I had to peel off the heat sink to get the board in then reinstall
> it -- something I didn't want to do. If the case was 9" wide instead of
> 8", this probably wouldn't be an issue.

Welcome to SSI EEB.  ;->

"Drive overhang" is typical of most ATX cases, and will quickly
interfere with EATX and especially SSI EEB mainboards.

> The heat sink sticks up far enough to keep me from reinstalling the
> internal hard drive cages. Not a problem since I'm using the Supermicro
> SATA cage, but it bugs me to lose expansion possibilities. Can anyone
> recommend a "low-rise" Opteron heat sink?

The problem is that you need to use a case designed for SSI EEB
mainboards.  You have a case designed for ATX, possibly EATX.  You can
tell if its EATX if you're last 2-3" of your mainboard has
standoffs/screws.  If it's "overhanging" without them, then you only
have an ATX case.

> Booting the first time, I was happy to see that everything was
> recognized by the system, all three network ports, the Nvidia SATA
> controller and even the 3Ware controller.
> However, the boot messages showed:
> 	warning: many lost ticks.
> 	Your time source seems to be instable or some driver is hogging 	
> interrupts
> and several repeating messages:
> 
> 	powernow-k8: error - out of sync...
> Also, /proc/cpuinfo showed each cpu as running at about 1004Mhz with
> about 900 bogomips. Not what I expected.

Turn off PowerNOW in the BIOS.  It's what's slowing down your CPUs.
Everything I've read says do _not_ use it on a server.

> So I downloaded, compiled and installed kernel 2.6.12.3. On rebooting,
> the error messages went away and the 3Ware worked without complaint. Now
> /proc/cpuinfo showed each cpu running at 2009.267 Mhz with 4014.08
> bogomips. Ah, much better! In addition, the system came up in with NUMA
> enabled. Looks like the Red Hat kernel had it turned off by default.
> I benchmarked disk array performance using Bonnie++ version 1.03a. I ran
> six benchmarks using 50GB of data, three using 16k blocks and three
> using 64k blocks. During the raid 0 testing I had two instances of
> Setiathome running. During the raid 5 testing I had three instances of
> Setiathome running. Here are the results:
> 
> Raid 0, 64k Stripes:
> 
> bonnie++ 1.03a      ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
>                     -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
> Machine        Size K/sec %CP K/sec  %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec  %CP  /sec %CP
> Tyan        50G:16k 49317  99 138307  62 +++++ +++ 46765  80 183180  22  88.9   0
> Tyan        50G:16k 48911  98 148421  67 77099  21 46018  79 182136  21  89.8   0
> Tyan        50G:16k 49188  98 143615  65 77381  21 46158  78 181181  21  90.5   0
> Tyan        50G:64k 49372  99 146417  67 77185  21 45828  78 179758  21  76.7   0
> Tyan        50G:64k 48585  98 145376  66 76580  21 45609  78 171888  21  76.3   0
> Tyan        50G:64k 46093  92 134903  58 67851  18 45200  77 172103  21  75.6   0
>                     ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
>                     -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
> files:max:min        /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP
> Tyan             16  2524  97 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  2542  97 +++++ +++  8670  99
> Tyan             16  2385  98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  2579  97 +++++ +++  8408  98
> Tyan             16  2627  97 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  2437  92 +++++ +++  8671 100
> Tyan             16  1582  98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  1647  98 +++++ +++  8488 100
> Tyan             16  1399  85 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  1632  98 +++++ +++  8476  99
> Tyan             16  1654  95 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  1636  98 +++++ +++  8405  99
> 
> Writes at about 140MB/Sec, reads at about 180MB/Sec. Very nice.
> 
> Raid 5, 64k Stripes:
> 
> bonnie++ 1.03a      ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
>                     -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
> Machine        Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP  /sec %CP
> Tyan        50G:16k 33394  68 35889  16 26513   7 44096  75 157248  19  84.1   0
> Tyan        50G:16k 32601  67 36058  16 26623   7 43964  75 156970  19  83.3   0
> Tyan        50G:16k 37892  77 35702  16 26960   7 44390  75 157084  19  83.5   0
> Tyan        50G:64k 36168  74 35560  17 27003   8 43463  75 155179  20  69.1   0
> Tyan        50G:64k 32713  68 36187  16 26580   7 43922  76 156752  20  69.2   0
>                     ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
>                     -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
> files:max:min        /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP
> Tyan             16  1561  98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  1694  97 +++++ +++  8428  97
> Tyan             16  1672  98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  1712  97 +++++ +++  8751  99
> Tyan             16  1542  98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  1355  81 +++++ +++  8986 100
> Tyan             16  2534  96 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  2408  96 +++++ +++  7945  98
> Tyan             16  2382  97 +++++ +++ +++++ +++  2380  97 +++++ +++  7989  99
> 
> Whoa! Writes drop to about 35MB/Sec under raid 5, about 25% of the raid 0
> performance. In fact, it was taking so long that I aborted the last test. Just to be
> sure that setiathome wasn't interfering, I killed seti and reran a smaller test.
> Writes increased to about 50MB/Sec without seti running. I was expecting some hit for
> raid 5 but not this much. Guess I'll stick with the hot rsync backups to other hosts
> scheme that I'm using now.

Or consider RAID-10.  Send some benchmarks of that.  ;->

> The 3Ware controller is pretty cool. As I said, the driver (3w-9xxx) is
> included in the 2.6 kernel. 3Ware provides a simple CLI utility for
> management. They also have a GUI tool but I didn't bother running it.
> You can create, remove and verify 'units' on a running system. The
> associated /dev entries are dynamically added and removed as you make
> changes. Very nice.

Make sure you have the latest 3Ware driver and firmware for the 9500S
series.  Also consider the "tweaks" on 3Ware's site.

> In summary, the Tyan S2892 plus the 3Ware controller runs well under CentOS 4.1
> although you will have to update to a more current kernel than the one provided by
> Red Hat. Watch your clearance at the front of the motherboard when selecting a case.

Or just get an SSI EEB case in the first place for an SSI EEB
mainboard.  ;->


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 
It is mathematically impossible for someone who makes more than you
to be anything but richer than you.  Any tax rate that penalizes them
will also penalize you similarly (to those below you, and then below
them).  Linear algebra, let alone differential calculus or even ele-
mentary concepts of limits, is mutually exclusive with US journalism.
So forget even attempting to explain how tax cuts work.  ;->





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