Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 22:17:15 -0400 From: Olivier Gautherot <ogautherot@vtr.net> To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: building an old-hardware server Message-ID: <200608142217.16569.ogautherot@vtr.net> In-Reply-To: <049d01c6c005$dfee6570$857ba8c0@Rage> References: <200607201318.k6KDIOKH092991@lurza.secnetix.de> <049d01c6c005$dfee6570$857ba8c0@Rage>
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Hi Andrei, > am building a webserver, which will also do some basic file serving in the > LAN and have a MySQL database running... nothing too fancy, but the budget > is 0$, so only recycled HW can be used... of course I want it to run as > fast as possible, but more important: reliable. Will put 6.1-Release on it. In general, old hardware can be used without too many problems, except for the hard drives: if you still want to do it, select items with little mileage. > [...] > I cannot decide on the HDD: the board supports UDMA33 for IDE and > Fast/Wide/Ultra for SCSI (but I have only fast/SCSI-2 HDD anyway). > My options are: > -one 15GB Maxtor IDE (or some 20GB Fujitsu IDE, but I had some of them > fail, so I'd avoid them) with UDMA if I can get it for free (not 100%) > -one or two 4.3GB Fujitsu IDE with UDMA > -alot of small (around 1GB) IDE hard drives > -a few identical SCSI-2 (10Mbps) 5400rpm hard drives, each 2GB > -2 non-identical SCSI-2 7200rpm hard drives (1GB and 2GB) In general, SCSI is faster so it should be a better option (although I have no first hand experience) but for a small server, IDE should still be sufficient. The size of the disk may be your criterion at the end of the day. > I think 4-6 disks fit in my case. 4 to 6 disks means space, power consumption and possibly heat. Make sure you don't get to a situation where you need extra ventilation just for the disks - I suppose the chassis too will be second hand... You might have a higher failure rate just because of this. > As my processors are not so fast, I'd > like to have fastest disk access with minimum CPU load (ideal case, right? > :). What would get me best results: SCSI or IDE (will the IDE be faster > than my 7200rpm or 5400rpm SCSI?). Should I consider doing software RAID, > will I see any speed improvement? I expect around 10-20 users doing random > things on this server, not too heavy though, no GUI for them. For 10 to 20 users, I don't know if RAID will make a significant difference (I would not think so). If you still want to go this way, RAID1 would be an easy route and ensure a simple backup mechanism in case of failure. > I was thinking about the 7200rpm SCSI drives for the system and root, a > RAID for the home/database (minimum 2GB should be enough for this, SCSI or > IDE?) and 4GB (or more) IDE for space/builds/ports/logs etc... > Any suggestions are welcome, I have never tried to build such a "recycled" > system from so many smaller harddrives, so this is my main dilemma. > > > About the hardware I already have: would one 600MHz PIII be faster, on this > board or another (choices are Gigabyte GA-BX2000 with Intel 440BX chipset, > supports PC-133 RAM - or Fujitsu-Siemens D1107 - Intel 443BX 100Mhz bus)? > I considered the 2x350MHz to be faster in SMP for the variety of tasks this > system will do, and I can upgrade at some moment... And I also have SCSI > support on this board. One 600MHz processor may be faster, depending on the CPU load balance - multiple processors means some overhead in management and does not ensure full balance. Also, if you upgrade, you will have to replace 2 processors instead of one, what might not be an economical advantage - procurement may also be complex for such old parts. > Is the RAM too much on the minimum side? Have little experience with SMP > systems, but more SDRAMs are hard to find... If you plan on using a database in SMP, you may reach your limit quickly. I would recommend a dry run on another machine with the same services and measure the RAM usage. Note that FreeBSD does a good job at caching disk accesses - what requires free RAM. > Any issues with the S3 Savage4 AGP cards? They tend to be slow, but I think > for this system this won't be the bottleneck, as the Mobo supports AGP2x > and the card is 4x already... Will you be playing flight simulators while your colleagues access the database? :-) If you use it as server only, it should not impact your system. > I have considered the NIC to be important here. I've read through hundreds > of articles, and the 3C905B seems to be quite fast and low on CPU load. > Other alternatives were Kingston KNE110TX (seems to have some bugs > according to the dc man page), D-Link DFE-530TX (rhine based, also buggy > according to man page AND D-Link="let it be" according to users), some > Davicom DM9102AF based cards (seem ok, but more on the low quality end) and > the "loved" RTL8139C/D ones (buggy, right?). I don't expect sustained heavy > traffic, but peaks... I've been using the RTL8139B, Rhine-II and Rhine-III (on a C3-based Epia board) without any problem for quite some time now. I can recommend them. The fact that the drivers are buggy does not necessarily mean that you will face big issues: in most cases, the bugs just apply to some particular features. > Any feedback is welcome, on the list or on my email, as I am in a hurry > with putting the machine to work and cannot take my time and test all > possible configurations... Hope it helps Olivier > > ANdrei > http://students.oamk.fi/~t6ruan00/ > ------ > Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down > to their level then beat you with experience... > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hardware-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- Olivier Gautherot Email: olivier@gautherot.net LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ogautherot MSN: ogautherot@hotmail.com
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