From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Apr 23 16:07:44 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: hackers@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1609D16A400 for ; Sun, 23 Apr 2006 16:07:44 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mv@thebeastie.org) Received: from p4.roq.com (ns1.ecoms.com [207.44.130.137]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A9C3E43D45 for ; Sun, 23 Apr 2006 16:07:43 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from mv@thebeastie.org) Received: from p4.roq.com (localhost.roq.com [127.0.0.1]) by p4.roq.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0AED04D30E; Sun, 23 Apr 2006 16:08:53 +0000 (GMT) Received: from [192.168.0.6] (ppp157-158.static.internode.on.net [150.101.157.158]) by p4.roq.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A7FA4D2F3; Sun, 23 Apr 2006 16:08:50 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <444BA648.2050606@thebeastie.org> Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 02:07:36 +1000 From: Michael Vince User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20060213 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Paul Halliday References: <2dab70a30604201049i41e409e1y8924383843c95980@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <2dab70a30604201049i41e409e1y8924383843c95980@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV using ClamSMTP Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Server choice. X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 16:07:44 -0000 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