i386 with PAE or AMD64 on PowerEdge with 4G RAM
youshi10 at u.washington.edu
youshi10 at u.washington.edu
Tue Jun 19 18:27:31 UTC 2007
On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Martin Turgeon wrote:
> Thank you all for your advices, I will take a try with AMD64.
>
> I'm always impressed by the support on the FreeBSD mailinglist, continue your
> good work.
>
> Martin
>
>
> Stefan Lambrev a écrit :
>> Hi,
>>
>> Martin Turgeon wrote:
>>> Good afternoon,
>>>
>>> I just receive 2 PowerEdge servers (a 1950 and a 860) both with 4G of RAM.
>>> I installed FreeBSD 6.2 Release i386 on both of them. Unfortunately, only
>>> 3,5G is recognized on the 860 and 3,3G on the 1950.
>>> dmesg on 860:
>>> real memory = 3757834240 (3583 MB)
>>> avail memory = 3678318592 (3507 MB)
>>>
>>> I am facing a difficult decision. Should I use i386 with PAE enabled in
>>> the kernel (I read a lot of warnings using it) or should I go with AMD64?
>>> Which branch should I follow?
>>>
>>> These servers will be front-end/back-end MySQL(with replication) and
>>> Apache servers with BIND, Postfix, Dovecot, PF.
>> I have NO problems with FreeBSD AMD64, at least not more then I have with
>> i386 versions.
>>
>> I do not see a problem to run MySQL, apache, BIND,Postfix and PF - as I use
>> them myself for near 2 years under freebsd amd64.
>>
>> I even can say that at some point amd64 becomes more stable (for me) then
>> i386.
>> The major problem (again for me) is that there is no way to connect 64bit
>> apache under freebsd to Oracle DB.
>>
>> Saying that I'm quite happy using FreBSD amd64 (even for desktop/laptop
>> machines) and knowing how broken is PAE .. just go for amd64.
>>
>>>
>>> There is the detailled configuration of the servers:
>>> PowerEdge 1950
>>> Xeon 5110
>>> 4G RAM
>>> PERC 5 Raid controller (mfi)
>>> Dual Broadcom 5708 (bce)
>>>
>>> PowerEdge 860
>>> Xeon 3070
>>> 4G RAM
>>> LSI Logic Raid controller (mpt)
>>> Dual Broadcom 5750 (bge)
>> If you still consider PAE check very carefully that all your drivers work OK
>> with PAE kernel!
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot for your advice,
>>>
>>> Martin
Just don't expect to turn the machines into 3D desktops for at least a year :).
amd64 is much better than i386 though from a functional standpoint, and your databases probably won't mind the extra precision :).
-Garrett
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