[mdlug] linux hardware

[Dan DeSloover]

Wow Aaron, spot on.

A few of mentions:

A lower end AMD Phenom Processor (64x4) should be more than sufficient: $100.

A good stable motherboard might run you: $75

Starter kit of RAM, 4GB (I'd recommend ECC, but both the RAM and the M/B
are way out of your price range.) $100. Make sure not to fill all of the
slots and you can upgrade later.

Good M/B (integrated video): $75.

Good Power Supply: $75

Adequate case: $50

Two 1T hard drives run in a software RAID 1 mirror: $200

brings the total to $575.

It is possibl,e but don't mistake any of this hardware for server class
hardware. In particular I'd recommend that the first upgrade is a backup
solution with off-site storage capability. This will save your cheese more
often than most admins often realize because of the ubiquity of it in
common business server systems.

Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> 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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----
Dan DeSloover