Ronan wrote: > What Im currently looking at is either 2 Sun v150s or 2 > dual-opterons probably with a gig each, and the standard 80+gigs. > Which one will be better suited to SA? I know SA is more cpu/ram > than disk IO so im leaning more toward the AMD approach.
I would recommend going with Linux on AMD. That still leaves you with the decision as to whether to run them 32-bit or 64-bit, your choice. I have a mix and both work well. > Will SA benefit from the dual processor option? I definitely recommend the dual processor configuration. It gives significant performance advantage for the price. Most of my work machines are dual processors. It is a proven value. > The reason there are 2 machines of each is because im gonna > implement fail over using heartbeat. If you want to play with that then have fun. But I don't think you really need it for this implementation. Create a DNS name with multiple A records pointing to the different IP addresses. DNS round robin will keep both machine active closely enough. If one machine is down the remote agents will fall-back to the one that is up. This is a very common technique. Most importantly almost any admin can understand it and it is pretty bullet proof. No special knowledge or tools required. This is important so that you can go on vacation. You really do need the two machines though. That provides redundancy. You can turn one off while the other handles the load. Two machines in any critical role is the minimum. > Does it make a difference the Solaris / Linux route? That would be hard to quantify without becoming subjective. Okay, let's be subjective. I feel that GNU/Linux has more potential to continue improving into the future. With the hardware under discussion there are many options available. Your choices are large. Your options flexible. Bob
