building an old-hardware server
Olivier Gautherot
ogautherot at vtr.net
Tue Aug 15 02:17:45 UTC 2006
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...
>
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--
Olivier Gautherot
Email: olivier at gautherot.net
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ogautherot
MSN: ogautherot at hotmail.com
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