Rogan Creswick wrote: > I'm putting together a linux compute/shell server for my office (of > windows users -- one step at a time :). > > We've need a box like this for a while, and the key features are: > > * Lots of ram (we often load multi-gb data sets--4-8gb is minimum) > * 64-bit arch, so a jvm can actually address the ram (32-bit jvms > are essentially unable to use more than 3gb) > * Large & fast disks (I'm looking at 2 2TB WD. 7.2k rpm sata drives.) > * more than one core / cpu. > > I think I have a pretty good idea of what we want (list is below) but > I really don't have a clue re: motherboards (and, by extension, > everything else I've selected may need to change.) > > The big questions are: > > * Does the formfactor really matter? Space is not an issue, but it > may be difficult to find a place for a rack mount (Our "rack" only has > a front mounting bracket, and no rear supports -- it just holds > switches and a kvm) > > * Memory: quantity or speed? I know this is very hard to answer > without knowing exactly how we'll be using the machine, but it's also > very hard to know exactly how we'll be using the machine... Roughly > -- When we can fill 8gb of memory, we'll need more than 16 -- so we > won't be able to write sloppy code just because we have loads of ram > (which is really too bad .. that would be a huge time/money savings if > we could). The only difference is probably going to be the number of > distinct disk reads. When doing massive data processing on this > machine, very little will be going on, so swapping out isn't going to > be much of an issue (we can just ensure that the environment we're > running in fits in memory, and manage the disk access on our own--the > stuff we do makes that feasible, and often necessary.) So, that seems > to mean to me, that the only difference is how many times we need to > read/write to/from disk, *not* the amount of data we actually > transfer. Given that the speed difference seems pretty substantial > (ddr800 vs. ddr1066), faster ram seems the way to go, but, I may > simply not know how to configure a system to use 16gb of ddr1066+ ram. > Any feedback would be great! > > Here's the system I'm considering: > > Okay, I'm biased, but get an ASUS Intel mother board, I'm sure I will get flamed by someone, but reliability is a factor, yes? Spend a little extra and get hardware RAID (see below).
Second, get 5 1TB disks and raid them, you will get way better performance and it's cheaper. Faster memory only makes a difference if you are doing some extreme app, generally more is better. So go more cheaper RAM. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
