[mdlug] linux hardware

[gib at juno.com]

I suspect that if you want to look at performance than you'd really need to define what you wanted to do.  I was surprised when I saw that the AMD Phenom II X2 550 did so much better (image rendering) than some other CPUs that look like they should be faster (based on price and the CPU name) such as the AMD Phenom II X3 720.  But then you look at the on-die memory and speed and it can make sense.  

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts/3DS-Max-2009,1380.html 

---------- Original Message ----------
From: Aaron Kulkis <akulkis00 at gmail.com>
To: MDLUG's Main discussion list <mdlug at mdlug.org>
Subject: Re: [mdlug] linux hardware
Date: Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:26:12 -0500

epic wamz wrote:
> I've been asked by a friend who is running a small business to help him purchase and setup a linux server. I'm kind of known as a linux evangelist, so it makes sense why he asked me, but I don't know much about purchasing server hardware, and frankly I haven't built a computer from the ground up in a good 6-7 years.
> 
> So, I thought I would drop a quick message to see if someone could give me any advice. I'm not asking for you to do the research for me, but a gentle nudge in a good direction would be appreciated.
> 
> My friend wasn't specific about the server capabilities he needs. He has a growing technology business and wants to be as agile as possible. Sounds like it could be used as a web server, subversion repo, and used for virtualization among other things. I'm not really looking to build from scratch, so any advice on where to go, or tips when buying a system would be most welcome.
> 
> The budget is $500 +/- $100.

#1: Buy AMD... you'll always get better performance/$.

#2. For fast (wall-clock time) execution, you want to put your
    money in memory.

Given equal budgets where you can NOT have both the highest speed
CPU and 8GB of memory, and running a busy computer that's doing
lots of things, if you spend most of your money on the fastest
CPU available and whatever is leftover on memory, and I spend
money first on memory, and then buy the cheapest 64-bit CPU
available, and all else is equal, my machine will beat your
machine every day.

Why?  Because it doesn't matter how fast your CPU goes when your
system is swapping memory.  Page faults are expensive -- with
modern CPUs, you're talking about 500,000,000+ clock cycles lost
whenver a page fault has to be serviced from a hard drive (Due
to the CPU not being able to do ANYTHING towards completing the
program during this time).  And this happens EVERY time a
page fault occurs.  More memory => fewer page faults =>
faster system responsiveness.





#3: Virtualization on < $600?

Not happening.  Unless you're talking about EXTREMELY small
footprints for the virtualized hosts. And slower than molasses
in February. Because now you have to keep MULTIPLE operating
systems in memory, or suffer HUGE performance problems.
(See memory (#2), and then make the cost of page faults
more expensive than linear (thing  k * N log N, or possibly
even k*N*N, where N is your page faults/minute).

4GB of memory is going to cost you about $80.
For virtualization, you're going to want 8GB...but if you do it
on an economical motherboard that doesn't have 8 memory slots,
you're going to have to buy 2 GB sticks, and that will run
you over $200 for the memory.

Not to mention a quad-core for decent virtualization performance.
That's another $200.  Now you only have $200 left for your
motherboard, and other assorted things. You'll have to
spend AT LEAST $100 for a motherboard that will take
8 GB of memory.



In most cases, the inherent multi-programming of Linux
beats virtualization. (that is, run the fileserver, and
webserver under the same OS, WITHOUT virtualization,
rather than running two virtualized servers).
Without virtualization, you can easily do that within
your budget.

> 
> Again, I would appreciate any insight you might have. Thank you in advance.
> 

Your best bet is to find out EXACTLY what he wants the system
to do, and then proceed from there.

Note: Unlike Windows, it is not, and never has been, unusual
for a Unix or Linux machine to be set up to perform MULTIPLE
services (printing, mail, file serving, etc.) with ZERO
increase in instability (whereas I understand that in the
land of Microsoft, it's typically the other way around --
two or three computers devoted to nothing more than printing,
another group for file serving, and still another group
for mail serving.  This is a wasteful underutilization of
hardware.  I think MS has avoided solving stability problems,
because if the "solution" is to throw multiple hosts at
even trivial problems, they can sell TEN copies of Windows
to do the same amount of work as one Linux machine -- I
have never seen any other company (except for those in the
recording industry) which is so blatantly hostile to their
own customers.


> Ryan
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