[CentOS] Re: Opteron Mobo Suggestions

Wed Jun 22 17:29:13 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@ieee.org> <thebs413 at earthlink.net>

From: Kirk Bocek <t004 at kbocek.com>
> I've been planning to build a dual Opteron server for awhile.
> I'd like to get people's suggestions on a suitable motherboard.

I assume you read 2004 November Sys Admin on the Opteron, including
avoiding cheap mainboard designs?
  http://www.samag.com/documents/sam0411b/  

Specifically figure 6 for a 2-way mainboard:  
  http://www.samag.com/documents/s=9408/sam0411b/0411b_f6.htm  

> I've looked at the Tyan K8SE (S2892) and K8SRE (S2891) but would
> like to find more Linux-specific experiences with these boards.

On 2-way, you want one with an AMD8131 (or AMD8132) HyperTransport
PCI-X 1.0 (2.0) tunnel.

On 4-way, you want one with at least 2 such tunnels.

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.

_But_, unfortunately _both_ mainboards put _all_ I/O on CPU #1.
That's not ideal.

As such, you might be better of going with the S2895 which puts the
nForce Pro 2050 and 1 GbE NIC on CPU #2, at least if you have a
PCIe storage or NIC cards.  It looks more like a workstation board, but
the fact that 1 embedded GbE NIC _and_ 1 PCIe slot is on CPU #2
helps improve processor affinity for I/O (especially under Solaris, but
even Linux to an extent as well).

Tyan continues to disappoint me by putting _all_ I/O on 1 CPU.
The only option where they don't is the nForce Pro 2200+2050
combination on the S2895 where the 2050 goes on CPU #2.
Tyan should put the AMD8131 on CPU #2 on the 2891/2892
so it doesn't contend with the nForce 2200 on CPU #1 and
its slots/peripherals (and there is no 2050).

> Some features I expect are at least 4 SATA (SATA-300?) ports,

???  Why "dumb" SATA channels  ???

Why not a 3Ware Escalade 8506-4+ or a LSI Logic MegaRAID 300-8X?

> serial console support in the BIOS,

Any PhoenixBIOS will typically give you that.

> 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.

> low-end on-board video.

Most low-footprint mainboards have video on-mainboard these days.
Typically just glued to a PCI bus.

> Anyone care to share their experiences?

Just curious why you want "dumb" SATA channels, let alone external
storage over USB or FireWire on a _server_.



--
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org