[CentOS] CentOS 6 SFF motherboard or complete system

Thu Jun 27 17:53:51 UTC 2013
Dale Dellutri <daledellutri at gmail.com>

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Glenn Eychaner <geychaner at mac.com> wrote:

>         I am trying to assemble or purchase a set of CentOS 6 compatible
> SFF workstations, and am finding it incredibly frustrating to do so.
> hardware.redhat.com is so slow as to be useless and provides almost no
> information about each of the 1,300 or so products listed in their
> database; clicking through them one at a time is incredibly frustrating
> (and about half of them are discontinued or out of stock when I actually go
> looking for them, like the Intel DQ series motherboards I was interested
> in).  Vendor web sites are almost no use; they trumpet their Windows 8
> compatibility all over the site, but finding information about Linux
> compatibility is next to impossible.
>         My requirements aren't overwhelming; an i7 processor, four memeory
> slots preferred, dual 24" (1920x1200) monitor capability, and dual ethernet
> (or an expansion slot for a second Ethernet card).
>         Anyone have any advice on how to attack this these days? I've been
> out of the hardware-purchase game on the Linux side for years, and most of
> my bookmarks no longer point anywhere useful, sadly.
>

I assume SFF is small form factor.  If you're willing to buy from Dell, the
Optiplex 9010 SFF has 4 memory
slots, i7 capable, 2 expansion PCIe-16 (one wired x4) slots.  You could use
one for a dual monitor graphics
card, and the other for extra ethernet ports.

You'd need to get to someone in  Dell enterprise support if you want to buy
one without Windows, or
you could just not use the Windows license.

I'm curious though: why do you need dual ethernet for a workstation?  Does
your office have
two lans?

-- 
Dale Dellutri