Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 02:07:36 +1000 From: Michael Vince <mv@thebeastie.org> To: Paul Halliday <paul.halliday@gmail.com> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Server choice. Message-ID: <444BA648.2050606@thebeastie.org> In-Reply-To: <2dab70a30604201049i41e409e1y8924383843c95980@mail.gmail.com> References: <2dab70a30604201049i41e409e1y8924383843c95980@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Paul Halliday wrote: >Hi, > >I am in the process of building a new database server and after >pricing up 2 Dell models I thought I would throw this out just to see >which choice would be better suited for FreeBSD. > >The demands on the system will be mostly network -> disk I/O with a >hope of best performance on quickly servicing numerous reads; for >example when reports are generated using the data in the database. > >The 2 choices (we dont have that much money and they have to be Dell) >are a poweredge 1850 and a poweredge 850. > >850 specs. >---------------- >Procsesor: Pentium(Dual Core) 830 @ 3.0GHz/2X1MB Cache 800MHz FSB >Memory: 2GB DDR2, 533MHz (2x1GB) Dual ranked DIMMs >Disks: SATA > >1850 specs. >------------------ >Processors: 2 @ Xeon @ 3.0GHz/2MB Cache 800MHz FSB >Memory: 2GB DDR2, 400MHz (4x512) Single ranked DIMMs >Disks: Ultra 320 > >The pricing is really close. > >Thanks. > > I have yet to buy a SATA based Dell server where the drives were hotswap or even easy to take out. I have mostly Dell 1850s and 2850s, and all are RAID, they all use the amr driver and are hot swap. I don't recall ever trying the hot swap as I am yet to have a bad drive, but I am pretty sure I have tried just pulling out a SCSI drive while the machine was running and putting it back in and it was fine. For the SATA stuff I have bought 750s with SATA RAID 1 and they are fully hardware based, I never dealt with any drivers, I have them on less important services and also have never had to get a HD replaced, if I did the server would have to be shut down. As for IO performance I have never done any real testing, I have noticed that Raid 5 is slower for writes but thats just the standard rule for Raid 5. Mike
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?444BA648.2050606>