SSDs are a great way to quickly discover bottlenecks you never knew you had – like your PCIe interface for example. As the prices get more reasonable I'm finding excuses to deploy them more often; a couple of new workstations that I've deployed have been equipped with SSDs and my Mac Pro has had a 240GB one for about a year now, with boot times running about 30 seconds from hitting the power button to Outlook opening up. Stepping back to anything else feels like the stone age. I've found that with enough network storage I don't mind having a smaller SSD for my boot media – my backups go over the network, most of my work files are on the network, and my applications are insanely responsive thanks to the fast internal "disk".
---- Jack Kramer Computer Systems Specialist University Relations, Michigan State University w: 517-884-1231 / c: 248-635-4955 From: Ken Schaefer <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Reply-To: NT System Admin Issues <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 12:41:31 -0500 To: NT System Admin Issues <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: RE: CAD Workstation Spec Whatever… http://www.ramsan.com/products/73 - 14m IOPs :-) Even still – I replaced all my disks at home in my home server with SSDs (Patriot TorqX). I suspect the cheap LSI RAID controllers would be a bottleneck. Even with a higher end 3WARE controller, the bottleneck becomes the controller – not the SSDs. That said – good SSDs are awesome. A full Exchange 2010 setup was less than 6 minutes. Cheers Ken From: Raper, Jonathan - Eagle [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, 8 December 2010 10:50 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: CAD Workstation Spec Jaw --> floor. Eyes --> popped out of head… “A sustained rate of 155,000 IOPS/s is generated by using forty 256GB TorqX SSDs connected to five LSI SAS PCI-E controllers.” Of course, the /s is redundant, but that’s just insane… “The system is capable of making a duplicate copy of a "Blu-ray rip" on the 40-drive SSD array in a blistering fast 0.9 seconds. That's at least an 8GB file copy in under a second.” Jonathan L. Raper, A+, MCSA, MCSE Technology Coordinator Eagle Physicians & Associates, PA [email protected]<BLOCKED::mailto:%[email protected]> www.eaglemds.com<BLOCKED::http://www.eaglemds.com/> ________________________________ From: Mike Gill [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 8:47 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: CAD Workstation Spec Not to be outdone: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Patriot-SSD-Intel-Xeon-LSI,9791.html -- Mike Gill From: Mike Gill [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 5:44 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: CAD Workstation Spec Fast hard drives only help. A pair of Velociraptors or better yet, SAS drives would be great. The SSD is just more modern tech. Bet hey, why not stipe a pair of those right? But even that would be lame. This is where you need to be: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs -- Mike Gill From: David Lum [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 11:43 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: CAD Workstation Spec Nice timing on the thread, I just today was asked to spec our a CAD system. Surprised I haven't seen RAID 0 as part of the equation mentioned.. Dave From: Raper, Jonathan - Eagle [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 11:22 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: CAD Workstation Spec That 3D mouse looks pretty cool – and for the $ it’s not bad at all. I used to do a ton of CAD work in previous positions, and I would have given my left pinky for something like that… Jonathan L. Raper, A+, MCSA, MCSE Technology Coordinator Eagle Physicians & Associates, PA [email protected]<BLOCKED::mailto:%[email protected]> www.eaglemds.com<BLOCKED::http://www.eaglemds.com/> ________________________________ From: Mike Gill [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 2:00 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: CAD Workstation Spec You need to look at some of the more complex models your users are working with and see where the bottle necks are. Read through the link Joseph sent to get better acquainted with what you need to look for in terms of specific brands and models of the different graphics cards. Depending on budget, my preference would be Xeon. You can get a dual socket motherboard and have a flexible base for starting with one CPU and adding a second in the near future. If CPU power isn’t likely to be an issue before the next hardware refresh then an i7/i5 system may be fine. If you want the 6 core i7, you will want to get a board that has a LGA 1366 socket. You should be able to judge RAM by what the users are currently doing, then add an appropriate amount for growth. I would also use a fast SSD drive for the OS. And any CAD guy wall want a nice new pair of 24” or larger displays looking back at them. ;) And they do all have one of these<http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/what-is-a-3d-mouse.html> right? Right? -- Mike Gill From: Stefan Jafs [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 8:08 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: CAD Workstation Spec I need to upgrade a few PC's running AutoDesk Inventor to Workstations, question is how much horsepower is economically / practically needed? How do I compare i5, i7 or Xenon processors in CAD situations? RAM is pretty simple, Windows 7 64 bit probably 8 Gb should be ok. A video card with 1 Gb of DDR3 ram should be ok I Think. Any recommendations? -- SJ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ________________________________ Any medical information contained in this electronic message is CONFIDENTIAL and privileged. It is unlawful for unauthorized persons to view, copy, disclose, or disseminate CONFIDENTIAL information. 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