Multiprocessor system VS one processor system

[Lanny Baron]

I don't speak for all Server Boards. You need a high-end Server board 
with baseboard management controller (BMC) to do these niceties for you.

Only twice has this happened to Servers we built during os installation 
and testing. It is quite uncommon for it to happen.

The fact of the matter still remains that where a Server is of critical 
importance to a person or a business, the small amount of money required 
to have that Server or many Servers uptime maxed out and, downtime at 
the absolute minimum and then, from down to back up, far exceeds the 
costs of prolonged downtime.

At our co-location facility we have cpu's, memory and drives sitting in 
a cabinet 'just in case'. We have an iNET2325 as the web server with 
dual cpu's with a RAID-10 and Hot-Fix as well as tape backup. Our whole 
business is Internet based. So as you can well imagine, this sort of 
insurance 'premium' is cheap comapared to a nightmare.

Again, dual and Quad CPU's really depend on the application(s), if you 
are only considering processing power. Serving up our site and the 
Canadian mirror for Samba, doesn't require dual cpu's. Peace of mind does.

Regards,
Lanny

Simon wrote:

> Sounds like a cool feature. What detects/monitors the CPUs to spot any problems
> and mark them offline at the next reboot? is this a feature of FreeBSD or motherboards
> you use? I have never heard of anything like this on Intel based servers, before.
> 
> PS: then again, I never had a CPU fail after it passed DOA, maybe I haven't gone
> through enough CPUs, yet.
> 
> -Simon
> 
> On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 02:10:41 -0500, Lanny Baron wrote:
> 
> 
>>With our Servers (dual and quad), if a CPU becomes defective and causes 
>>a crash, when the Server reboots, it will mark the CPU off-line and use 
>>the other CPU.  That makes it redundant. And that is, for anyone 
>>considering their Server to be of prime importance, a hell of lot better 
>>than waiting for a replacement of the same cpu with the same stepping.
>>
>>Lanny
>>
>>Simon wrote:
>>
>>
>>>You keep comparing old dual CPUs to a new 2x faster single CPU
>>>server. Why don't you compare the latest dual CPU server to the
>>>latest single CPU server, and then tell us which one you think would
>>>be faster :-) Anyway, dual 500mhz server would be very close to single
>>>1000Mhz CPU server, as long as everything else is the same. The
>>>idea is to take advantage of multiple CPUs using latest components,
>>>not just any 2 CPUs, but you keep missing this important point.
>>>
>>>PS: dual Xeon 3Ghz would be faster than single Xeon 3Ghz CPU
>>>and there is currently no Xeon 6Ghz CPU, so your only option is
>>>to have more than one CPU to make the server faster, thus SMP.
>>>Of course when Xeon (or whatever they name it) 6Ghz comes out,
>>>your dual Xeon 3Ghz server would be quite outdated and by then
>>>you could have dual 6Ghz server.
>>>
>>>-Simon
>>>
>>>On Tue, 16 Mar 2004 09:36:17 +0300, Artem Koutchine wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>>of processes with short run periods you will get overal
>>>>>>perfomance somewhere near 5000Mhz. However, when i 
>>>>>>subsituted two 500Mhz CPUs with 1500Mhz one (even with
>>>>>>less 2nd level cache) on a heavy loaded web server i notice
>>>>>>that sites started to load faster. So, it seems as 
>>>>>>one 3X Mhz  CPU is faster that two X MHz CPUs, at least
>>>>>>for web server with sql base and many perl scripts.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>This is true as long there is no load until the CPU cache comes 
>>>>>into the game. It also depends on how the CPUs are connected to 
>>>>>the main memory.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Hm..
>>>>Let me make up  a case.
>>>>Two boxes:
>>>>1) Dual CPU  X Mhz with Y KB of cache
>>>>2) Sinnge CPU with 2X Mhz and 2Y KB of cache
>>>>
>>>>Which one is faster under FreeBSD? I think the
>>>>second one, because SMP overhead is gone.
>>>>
>>>>Artem
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org mailing list
>>>>http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware
>>>>To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hardware-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org mailing list
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>>
>>-- 
>>=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
>>Lanny Baron
>>Proud to be 100% FreeBSD
>>http://www.FreeBSDsystems.COM
>>Toll Free: 1.877.963.1900
>>=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
Lanny Baron
Proud to be 100% FreeBSD
http://www.FreeBSDsystems.COM
Toll Free: 1.877.963.1900
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