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Date:      Sun, 31 Dec 2006 10:58:52 +1100
From:      jonathan michaels <jlm@caamora.com.au>
To:        freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
Subject:   some advice please --- amd semperon v opteron for dns/mail/nfs freebsd server
Message-ID:  <20061231105852.59380@caamora.com.au>

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greetings all and best wishes for the coming new year.

i'm about to setup a webserver on the freebsd system here, currently we
are running several intel 386dx33 with co-processors 8-16 mb dram and
an intel 486dx33 and a i486dx50 (16-32 mb dram) all are running scsi ontop of adaptec
aha-1542b hostadapters, supporting between several 2-3x250 mb, 4x350 mb
and several 3x1 gb. all have a scsi2 1x500 mb operating system dedicated
spindle for the basic system software and for /, /etc, /var, /var/tmp, fs)
media.

christmas saw a compaq proliant 5500 (2xPIII 550/100 L2 1mb Xeon cpu, 5x9g1 gb
scsi3 ultra drives and a SMART-2/P raid controller and 1g25 ecc/edo
dimms i think) i also have several dec alpha server 2000 model 500's (
a pedestal with 2 cpu and 512 mb dram wuth a scsi raid cage (16 slots
but only 6x3g5 scsi2 ultra drives) the other 2000.500 is a rack case
sans its case, the 6 foot case was too much to lug and did't fit, wasnt
wirth the effort for one 2 unit host, in hindsight (wonderfull this
hindsight thing, isn't it???) it would have given me a tidy place for
the proliant to live as well and make for easy transport around teh
floor here, grrr, silly me o'h ell thats life.

anyway, i'm looking to replace both/one of teh dec alphas with a more
curently supported architecture thats likely to offer simialr
performance and clean architecture, sorry that my world view. i've
decided that the amd mob would be teh best of all possible worlds as
candide would opine .. and give me a suitable 64 bit platform into teh
future.

my only difficulty is that i do not understand what are the differences
between the two amd offerings, that is between teh opteron and teh
semperon .. currently i don't need 'bleeding edge, blazingly fast i.e.
inflated go fast because it s bigger numbers .. just reliable
relatively cool (stable operating tempreatures) and long term
reliability.

what sort of motherboards would work best with freebsd, what if any
gotchas are thier with the semperon and or teh opteron and which would
be the best to use in a medium workload, relatively slow local network
with a 50 percent of lits loading coming from internet network over teh
(choke/throttle point) dialup via a permanent pppd connection running
at 56/33k6 kilo bits its a reliable analogue modem thats been connected
to the service providor's network for some 10 years now.

stories, recomendations, suggestions would be much appreciated. as i
said i do not understand what teh real difference is between the
semperon/opteron and its for networking environment that its going to
be going into, perhaps at some latter point in time another machine
will be added to act as a cad/graphic arts/multimedia/graphical
workstation ergo its floating point operations will be critical and
need to be at least up in teh dec alpha processor class.

i saw a dec alpha kitted out as a cad station a long time ago and
compared to a motorola mc68060 something like that the axp chip put up
a good showing and i was smitten .. the intel jobs were left in teh
dust, didn't have a chance. oh well that was then and this is now.

much appreciation for al the support we have goten from the freebsd
support team over the years (we started back in v2.0.5-release, and are
still going) thank you for all your tireless support.

much gracious regards

jonathan

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