From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jan 9 12:28:28 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F306716A41F for ; Mon, 9 Jan 2006 12:28:27 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from crispy.beef@ntlworld.com) Received: from mta08-winn.ispmail.ntl.com (mta08-winn.ispmail.ntl.com [81.103.221.48]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1BBC643D49 for ; Mon, 9 Jan 2006 12:28:26 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from crispy.beef@ntlworld.com) Received: from aamta09-winn.ispmail.ntl.com ([81.103.221.35]) by mta08-winn.ispmail.ntl.com with ESMTP id <20060109122825.LZCY17804.mta08-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@aamta09-winn.ispmail.ntl.com>; Mon, 9 Jan 2006 12:28:25 +0000 Received: from [192.168.0.10] (really [82.12.81.129]) by aamta09-winn.ispmail.ntl.com with ESMTP id <20060109122825.FEZR10196.aamta09-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@[192.168.0.10]>; Mon, 9 Jan 2006 12:28:25 +0000 Message-ID: <43C256E7.2010402@ntlworld.com> Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:28:23 +0000 From: Crispy Beef User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (X11/20051017) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC" References: <4ADE8A8F-858B-4092-958B-88C6DA832729@shire.net> In-Reply-To: <4ADE8A8F-858B-4092-958B-88C6DA832729@shire.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Free BSD Questions list Subject: Re: speccing an NFS server -- smp good or bad? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 12:28:28 -0000 Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC wrote: > For a FBSD (or Solaris 10) based server that is only acting as an NFS > server and nothing else, is there any advantage to using an SMP > machine? Any disadvantage? > > Does CPU speed play any great factor (ie, use a 1.8ghz opteron instead > of a 2.2ghz opteron for example)? > > I am planning for a Spring project to make an nfs server that serves to > multiple web servers / application servers using an Areca 1130 SATA > raid card. I assume lots of RAM for the OS to use to cache would be > desirable and GB ethernet. Have recently built a machine for just this purpose too, although it runs Linux, the hardware requirements will be the same. We needed a huge amount of storage on the network so went for the cheapest Opteron available (still overpowered), we put most of the cash into a decent motherboard with gigabit ethernet ports and fast PCI-X 3Ware raid cards to run the hardrives (the machine has over 3Tb of storage as it's used for video work - 16x 300Gb SATA drives). Also 1Gb of RAM. The bottlenecks on a server like this are always the network and drives, so look at those for performance.