Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 20:30:07 -0700 From: Don Wilde <dwilde1@ibm.net> To: Marc Slemko <marcs@znep.com> Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: *** Real Action Item: SPECweb Message-ID: <354158BF.A4F1E284@ibm.net> References: <Pine.BSF.3.95.980424135722.28001P-100000@alive.znep.com>
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First, I've been asked to choose one -list or another, so let's all limit this to -hardware and not -advocacy, since it's really getting too deep for our enthusiastic types over there. I think our answer to the 'stable storage' rule you quoted is that we get a couple of 512M FlashROM disks for the data files. That satisfies both the spirit and the letter of the rules. This is right in line with the 'Philosophy' section. I would definitely recommend Solid State storage over rotating media for a webserver, especially directly wired to the PCI memory map if we can get it. Notice they didn't say cost had to be a consideration! ;) I see that a 512M flash Drive is $12849 each. A battery backed DRAM drive of 256M is $1695+the DRAM cost. It has 12 hours of backup; I'd say that is 'stable' enough for a webserver which will be on 24x7 duty. Max read-rate speed is only 10MB, sustained transfer is less, but still pretty fast and the access time is quoted as "<0.1ms" for either. I'm certain there would be no comparison between these and any disk drive!!! We use disks only for logs, volatile data files and non-essential system files. As I see it, we are allowed to use RAM to hold as many server daemons as we want, and it doesn't say anything about a requirement for CGI. Am I correct in assuming that this is purely HTML and graphics files? Back to disk controllers for a second. I see in my ICS catalog that there is a DPT controller (PM3334/UW3) that supports 3 SCSI bus strings in RAID 0. Comments? On the earlier question of Apache vs. Zeus, I'm still inclined to stick with Apache. Again my reasoning is that we are out to promote freeware, and Apache is a known name even to the Wall Street Journal. I'm going to go back and read some of the earlier SPEC results and see what else is out there for other single-processor machines, but I'll bet using ROM/B-DRAM disks will multiply our throughput up to the point where we're back to net performance as _the_ issue. Speaking of which, the price differential between the normal Intel 10/100 and the SERVER version is $484.00. I'd say there's a 960 in there... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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