I keep checking this thread out almost every day, excited as hell, never remembering that this thread has absolutely nothing to do with good-looking, barely dressed females. I've never seen such a misleading topic
Many large corporates are running Windows 2003 server on exactly this kind of server and Windows Server 2003 64 bit standard edition supports up to 32Gb of RAM on 1-4 way boxes. Enterprise and Datacenter support even more RAM.AD_Kensan wrote:
Nobody in their right mind would put any flavor of Windows on such a Server. Even Windows 2003 Server has a max of 4GB Ram that it supports (it would not recognize more than 4 Gigs).
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2 … ndard.mspx
Oh, and before I get classed as an MS fanboy, I've been working as a professional Unix admin for the past ten years.
nice, going to have a better time playing LOL
I actually ended up putting FedoraCore4 on it. Stupid RAID controller on this machine wasn't recognized by ANY of the Linux installers. FreeBSD, Ubuntu, FC4, SUSE, nothing. Pissed me off, so I ended up with FC4 in non-raid, which makes me sad.
Oh well. Re-development is going really well. Webserver is up and running on it, PHP5 & Mysql5 are smooth. My linux guy is helping me get everything setup in the backend sense. The new database layout for this site has been put into place, and the new query updating engine has been completed. I can run both query engines side by side and the new one is, at a minimum, 12x faster -- and has no concurrency issues!
(That's the current problem with updating stats -- too much traffic against the stats table during the day causes slow writes, which in turn causes the queue to take forever. I'm fairly certain that I have solved this problem in the next incarnation of the db schema both by normalizing the data better, defining column size better, and using a RowLocking table, InnoDB, instead of MyISAM.)
Wow, gettin techie. I'll probably take this to the colo sometime this week and get 'er hooked up
Oh well. Re-development is going really well. Webserver is up and running on it, PHP5 & Mysql5 are smooth. My linux guy is helping me get everything setup in the backend sense. The new database layout for this site has been put into place, and the new query updating engine has been completed. I can run both query engines side by side and the new one is, at a minimum, 12x faster -- and has no concurrency issues!
(That's the current problem with updating stats -- too much traffic against the stats table during the day causes slow writes, which in turn causes the queue to take forever. I'm fairly certain that I have solved this problem in the next incarnation of the db schema both by normalizing the data better, defining column size better, and using a RowLocking table, InnoDB, instead of MyISAM.)
Wow, gettin techie. I'll probably take this to the colo sometime this week and get 'er hooked up
I stand corrected. I am sorry I didn't get the facts on that straight. On the other hand, I still would not put it on any Server if I had the choice but that's just my personal tasteFathomsDown wrote:
Many large corporates are running Windows 2003 server on exactly this kind of server and Windows Server 2003 64 bit standard edition supports up to 32Gb of RAM on 1-4 way boxes. Enterprise and Datacenter support even more RAM.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2 … ndard.mspx
Well were not on slashdot here, are we? Otherwise I would suspect you have connections to SCO... *evil laughter*Oh, and before I get classed as an MS fanboy, I've been working as a professional Unix admin for the past ten years.
What kind of controller is it? I can not believe there is no driver for that controller...chuyskywalker wrote:
I actually ended up putting FedoraCore4 on it. Stupid RAID controller on this machine wasn't recognized by ANY of the Linux installers. FreeBSD, Ubuntu, FC4, SUSE, nothing. Pissed me off, so I ended up with FC4 in non-raid, which makes me sad.
---EDIT:
I did a quick search and it seems the Raid-Controller in question is "just" a Software-Raid-Controller. You could still do a raid with the md tools but that's not really an Option for a "production" server. If you want a "real" hardware raid without any troubles you should check out 3ware.
Last edited by AD_Kensan (2006-02-21 12:01:08)
Question...
If someone did want to purchase one of these killer machines for personal use, Would there be a way to cool it enough? ie water cooled?
Just curious I can't afford something like that anyway!!!
If someone did want to purchase one of these killer machines for personal use, Would there be a way to cool it enough? ie water cooled?
Just curious I can't afford something like that anyway!!!
Like the above poster said, hard to believe that non of the linux flavors is recognizing the raid controller.
To the person who said the SATA drive is a fast if not faster than a SCSI drive can you show me a SATA drive faster than 15k rpm?? Ive yet to see one. In fact the fastest ones ive seen are the 10k raptors.
Chuy can you tell me how the FedoraCore is treating you?? I got a buddy launching a server soon and were looking to throw a linux distru on it....just trying to decide which flavor.
To the person who said the SATA drive is a fast if not faster than a SCSI drive can you show me a SATA drive faster than 15k rpm?? Ive yet to see one. In fact the fastest ones ive seen are the 10k raptors.
Chuy can you tell me how the FedoraCore is treating you?? I got a buddy launching a server soon and were looking to throw a linux distru on it....just trying to decide which flavor.
Spacebandit buying one of those machines for a personal gaming purpose would not work. The machine is set up as a server, not a personal PC. Also, a normal PC with a OS like Windows XP would not recognize that much RAM, i believe the current max for XP is 4 GB, all the extra would be overkill. Now, you can build a kick ass gaming rig for pretty cheap, easily under 2k.
ok, I have to be more clear.Nabraham wrote:
Spacebandit buying one of those machines for a personal gaming purpose would not work. The machine is set up as a server, not a personal PC. Also, a normal PC with a OS like Windows XP would not recognize that much RAM, i believe the current max for XP is 4 GB, all the extra would be overkill. Now, you can build a kick ass gaming rig for pretty cheap, easily under 2k.
Since Chuy put his gforce 7800 in it and used it to load bf2 out of curiosity, we know bf2 will work on it. Chuy said it would overheat since it was in a tight place. I was just wondering if there was a way to prevent overheating.
I am not interested in purchasing one... I was just curious.
Thank you for trying to answer though.
FC4 is working out fine. It's been a bumpy ride since we started with a base install (eg, CD1 only) and have been compiling our way into the system. If you're not looking for SUPER cutting edge performance, then you needent really do that -- get a full install and save yourself a bit of that trouble.
As for the machine, it was built by RackMountMicro. The guys who built it were awesome, attentive, and fast. I'd definately recommend them.
As for cooling -- it's just fan cooled. It sounds like a big fucking hair-dryer, and you could never, ever have this near your for extended periods of time. Also, since it is a server it's in a small case, and the server mobo has very few expansion slots -- which would make it a bad choice for a gaming rig.
As for ram -- soooo much misinformation. Any 32bit os will ONLY support 4gb of ram, max. PERIOD. After that, it's all make believe ram support -- it's not really going to be great.
Any 64bit os can fully support up to 64GB of ram. Therefore any of the *nix builds for x86_64 will work, and also WinXP64 works great.
So for all those people reading this thread -- don't get this for gaming Want a good gaming rig? Invest in 2gb of FAST ram, dual raptors, and spend the money you save from not buying a server mobo and (ultimately useless) extra ram on another video card for SLI.
As for the machine, it was built by RackMountMicro. The guys who built it were awesome, attentive, and fast. I'd definately recommend them.
As for cooling -- it's just fan cooled. It sounds like a big fucking hair-dryer, and you could never, ever have this near your for extended periods of time. Also, since it is a server it's in a small case, and the server mobo has very few expansion slots -- which would make it a bad choice for a gaming rig.
As for ram -- soooo much misinformation. Any 32bit os will ONLY support 4gb of ram, max. PERIOD. After that, it's all make believe ram support -- it's not really going to be great.
Any 64bit os can fully support up to 64GB of ram. Therefore any of the *nix builds for x86_64 will work, and also WinXP64 works great.
So for all those people reading this thread -- don't get this for gaming Want a good gaming rig? Invest in 2gb of FAST ram, dual raptors, and spend the money you save from not buying a server mobo and (ultimately useless) extra ram on another video card for SLI.
If I may give my two cents on Fedora: I've set up a "small" Server with FC4 and it's running very smoothly. Getting there was quite and adventure though. FC4 has too much "bloat" for my taste because even the minimal installation is way too big (I think around 1.8 Gig or so). For Servers I would recommend Debian. Very neat and clean. Fedora Core is more of a testbed for Redhat to test new stuff they might want to incorporate into their RH Enterprise Linux later on.Nabraham wrote:
Chuy can you tell me how the FedoraCore is treating you?? I got a buddy launching a server soon and were looking to throw a linux distru on it....just trying to decide which flavor.
Well, this thread appears to have shown that noone here has an abov3e average level of server/PC knowledge except for Chuy.
Guy who says I'm wrong about SATA: I may be wrong, but RPM is only related to the read speed, not to the data transfer rate which is what really matters, and I think that heat may be an issue also.
PS by above average I mean above average for someone educated above the level of techie, noone else exists.
PPS techies are dumb
Guy who says I'm wrong about SATA: I may be wrong, but RPM is only related to the read speed, not to the data transfer rate which is what really matters, and I think that heat may be an issue also.
PS by above average I mean above average for someone educated above the level of techie, noone else exists.
PPS techies are dumb
Last edited by kR4MR (2006-02-21 17:01:24)
I agree. FC is a testing ground for RH enterprise. Not to say that you can't roll with FC4. Set up any distro the way you want it, and you are good to go. Especially with enough hardware to make up for mistakes...AD_Kensan wrote:
If I may give my two cents on Fedora: I've set up a "small" Server with FC4 and it's running very smoothly. Getting there was quite and adventure though. FC4 has too much "bloat" for my taste because even the minimal installation is way too big (I think around 1.8 Gig or so). For Servers I would recommend Debian. Very neat and clean. Fedora Core is more of a testbed for Redhat to test new stuff they might want to incorporate into their RH Enterprise Linux later on.Nabraham wrote:
Chuy can you tell me how the FedoraCore is treating you?? I got a buddy launching a server soon and were looking to throw a linux distru on it....just trying to decide which flavor.
I use CentOS4.2 which is basically the recompiled OpenSource version of RH enterprise. Its just a free version of what ever latest compile Red Hat has made after testing bells and whistles with FC.
As to using windows on this thing that would be akin to getting a real nice paint job on a beater car. 64bit or no MS is not your friend unless you are running massively redundant systems. Even Hotmail runs on SPARC. NOT MS Datacenter. Also Chuy I assume the RAM is ECC -- which is not as fast as the standard DDR that people run in their PCs at home. non-ECC just makes guesses all the time when it doesn't have information in the buffer and a few misses are the norm. ECC RAM for servers does not play that game and 'checks' each bit of information that comes in against a parity bit. Thus it is slower and not good for gaming. Although there is something to be said for 16GB of 'slowe' RAM.
Thanks for the input on the Linux Server flavors guys. Ive been using Redhat and Fedora for my PC for some time, just wanted to know how Fedora held up as a server OS. Appreciate the info.
actually it wont do that lolraz wrote:
Install BF2.. Load maps in -0.01 seconds!? Lol!
nice chuy umm do u mind if i borrow how about hmmmmmmmm.......all of it?
I'm gonna step outta the Tech section for a bit just to say some things here...
Higher RPM = faster seek time = faster overall transfer rate.
Chuy has it correct. 32bit OS's limit is recognizing and utilizing up to 4GB of RAM. Anything higher is useless.
I personally like Gentoo for flexibility. Fedora is bigger (in name?) but I personally do not like having to sort through 4 CDs of RPM packages if I wanted something very minimal and lean. Debian and Gentoo should give you the best in flexibility with minimal disk consumption. But then it's already too late to switch over. Oh well. I hope that server blazes through everything you throw at it.
Inquiry: Are you using the binary RPMs or the SRPMs? I'm thinking that it might be a little better building the Fedora system from SRPMs to possibly better optimize the binaries for the platform it's installed on.
Higher RPM = faster seek time = faster overall transfer rate.
Chuy has it correct. 32bit OS's limit is recognizing and utilizing up to 4GB of RAM. Anything higher is useless.
I personally like Gentoo for flexibility. Fedora is bigger (in name?) but I personally do not like having to sort through 4 CDs of RPM packages if I wanted something very minimal and lean. Debian and Gentoo should give you the best in flexibility with minimal disk consumption. But then it's already too late to switch over. Oh well. I hope that server blazes through everything you throw at it.
Inquiry: Are you using the binary RPMs or the SRPMs? I'm thinking that it might be a little better building the Fedora system from SRPMs to possibly better optimize the binaries for the platform it's installed on.
You are an evil, evil man for even thinking that. I haven't touched any SCO product at at least 6 years.AD_Kensan wrote:
Well were not on slashdot here, are we? Otherwise I would suspect you have connections to SCO... *evil laughter*
Hmm, software RAID, its a bit of a thorny issue on "PC" servers (its used regularly on big Unix systems). The problem is that SATA drives lack a controller processor so they add a CPU hit, plus a hit for the software mirroring so it can really slow things down. Also, mirroring is quite slow for writes so it can be a nightmare for database servers. So the real question is... do you want a fast server or data protection?
The way around it? Get your wallets out and get donating for a SCSI JBOD.
so prettyful... lol
For a fast database system. you're better off splitting the database over 2 drives anyway, index on one, data on another. You'll get more performance when the index gets too big to fit into memory then.
Not sure of the database you use, but things postgres 8.0 supports tablespaces to do this.
Not sure of the database you use, but things postgres 8.0 supports tablespaces to do this.
...when accessing random data. Continuous single, unfragmented data transfers probably would run about the same between 10 and 15k drives. However, DB manipulation is generally very seek intensive, and thus SCSI would be a good choice -- except that the HD's will play little into the equation when I simply give 4-8gb of ram to mysql to user for buffer/key pools.sixshot wrote:
Higher RPM = faster seek time = faster overall transfer rate.
Well, you can install fedora core with a minimal install and build it up, which is the path we went. One cd.sixshot wrote:
I personally like Gentoo for flexibility. Fedora is bigger (in name?) but I personally do not like having to sort through 4 CDs of RPM packages if I wanted something very minimal and lean.
Neither. We've compiled (most) everything from source -- big names, anyway, like the php, lighttpd, and mysql.sixshot wrote:
Inquiry: Are you using the binary RPMs or the SRPMs? I'm thinking that it might be a little better building the Fedora system from SRPMs to possibly better optimize the binaries for the platform it's installed on.
MySQL does this for certain kinds of database engines (namely, MyISAM tables.) However, I am mostly using InnoDB tables wherein the index and data reside in a singular large access file. Regardless, the amount of ram I am throwing at mysql will make disk access speeds pointless -- and I hhighly doubt the index will outgrow the capacity it's allocated anytime soon.The Dark One wrote:
For a fast database system. you're better off splitting the database over 2 drives anyway, index on one, data on another. You'll get more performance when the index gets too big to fit into memory then.
I love Gentoo. I've been running Gentoo on my notebook for the last couple years and it's great! The best thing is the community around it (besides portage and all the other very handy things...)sixshot wrote:
I personally like Gentoo for flexibility.
You don't need to sort through CDs of RPMs. You can configure YUM to get the rpms automatically from a rpm repository or you can take things into your own hands and do it all by source. The infamous *nix threesome: configure make make install.Fedora is bigger (in name?) but I personally do not like having to sort through 4 CDs of RPM packages if I wanted something very minimal and lean.
I don't know about using Gentoo as a server os because I've just never tried it. I just can't quite imagine my server doing a "emerge -u world" and compiling along. Have you used Gentoo as a server system? I am really curious.Debian and Gentoo should give you the best in flexibility with minimal disk consumption.
Ok but you work for the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute by any chance?FathomsDown wrote:
You are an evil, evil man for even thinking that. I haven't touched any SCO product at at least 6 years.
Well software raid seems a little bit "suspicious" to me because the recovery time or the work it takes to get your system up and running again is much higher as with a hardware raid solution. Would you count that as a valid point against software raid or is that not really an issue because a self-respecting admin should have failure procedures etc planned out to the last detail before anything happens?The problem is that SATA drives lack a controller processor so they add a CPU hit, plus a hit for the software mirroring so it can really slow things down.
Since I should make a statement that is on topic I say: I dig the pool table
Any chance of getting pictures of the rack with the server in it once it's isntalled?
Man I thought I knew something about computers, not really a specialist, considering I am an biochemist engineer and not an informatics wiz.
But still...
You guys are either talking Japanese, the “I know a few words but have no clue what you’re talking about” language or I just encountered a 404: error syntax page not found, please contact the system admin...
R
But still...
You guys are either talking Japanese, the “I know a few words but have no clue what you’re talking about” language or I just encountered a 404: error syntax page not found, please contact the system admin...
R
If they let me take pictures, not sure if that'll be allowed though. You know, secure facility and all.AD_Kensan wrote:
Any chance of getting pictures of the rack with the server in it once it's isntalled?
Not on a large scale. I use it on my home network where a lowly P200MMX PC runs Gentoo on it. I had it set up for httpd+php, mysqld, samba, and sshd. It chugs along but it's been rock solid for a long time. It also used to run as my router/firewall 'till I got a Linksys WRT54G for the laptop.AD_Kensan wrote:
I don't know about using Gentoo as a server os because I've just never tried it. I just can't quite imagine my server doing a "emerge -u world" and compiling along. Have you used Gentoo as a server system? I am really curious.Debian and Gentoo should give you the best in flexibility with minimal disk consumption.
I stand corrected on the Fedora stuff, since I've been out of touch on the Fedora front for a while. It just hasn't been the distro of my choosing since abandoning RedHat in favor of Gentoo. And Debian has too high of a learning curve for me with the apt/deb system. I do not mind reading man pages and documentations to get along. But there was something about Debian that didn't quickly catch on to me.
Interesting to hear that the minimal Fedora install is used, and then building the rest from tarballs. I'd probably do the same if I know that the machine is going to serve a specific purpose.