New server

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I just got done building a new server. It is by far the fastest machine I have ever used. Here's the specs:

1. Dual core Opteron running 2.8 ghz (an Athlon X2 5600+ is an approximate equal but not quite)
2. Asus M2N-LR Pro 3600
3. 8 gigs DDR2 800 Dual Channel Ram
4. 1 36 gig WDC Raptor 10000 rpm
5 4 150 gig WDC Raptor 10000 rpm
6. 3Ware 9550SXU 4 port PCI-X Raid card 64bit/133 mhz
7. 750 watt Thermaltake PSU
8. Pioneer DVD/CD combo burner
9. Thermaltake Chassis with 25 CM fans blowing air through all hard drive cages for keeping those drives nice and cool.


I installed the main part of the OS on the 36 gig Raptor and create a Raid 10 configuration with 4 150 gig Raptors which has all server content and a good share the executables for the OS. Write speeds average around 700 mB/second, and read speeds speeds are above 1.5 gB/second. Some rewrite and reread speeds are around 4.5 gB/second, with an average of around 2+ gB/s.

The above measurements were taken using Iozone.

I had to put a gui on the system for the boss, and the system will boot from a cold start to the login screen in approximately 20 seconds. Once you hit enter with the password it takes another 2-3 seconds to fully load the gui. That's with a few daemons starting up too such as Apache, SSH, VSFTPD, Exim4, etc.... This thing is an absolute monster of a machine. I know there are faster ones around but I haven't had the pleasure of using one them. This thing just blew me away with how fast it is.

 

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Sounds like a sweet machine Freddy.

I've been dragging my feet about building a new server......maybe now is the time......

 

I was surprised at what I could build for around $1600. That's with true hardware Raid too.

This one was for the boss man. The next one like this I'll build for me. I've been working--very slowly--at putting up a Plone site for my business, but Plone is resource intensive so my site is fairly slow since it runs on several year old hardware. I can't wait to get one of these built for me. It will make my site respond extremely fast.

 

That does sound really nice Freddy, good going and I hope you get your own built soon!

 

Sweet specs! Just throw in a nice graphics card and you've got a gaming monster! If you're into 3d stuff as a hobby, then it'll make rendering as easy as loading a webpage! Just 2 questions:

1] What is a "Plone site"?
2] What's your site's address?

Hope you get your system soon......I sure wish I could. All the best!!!

 

A "Plone" site is a web site built using Zope and Plone. Zope is an open source web application framework and Plone is a CMS built to take advantage of Zope. Plone sits on top of Zope. Both are built using Python. Together they make a very nice CMS.

There are a lot of things available for Plone so that you can build an integrated site with a blog, a forum, a wiki, photo albums, news, events, etc... and have an integrated look to all of them with a single log in or entry point. It also has a wrapper so that you can provide links that will actually wrap another site inside your own. Say you want to provide your users with the ability to use Amazon.com, but don't want them to leave your site. You just use the wrapper and Amazon.com is wrapped inside your site. Just about any type of content you can think of you can manage with Plone. You can post Office or Open Office docs, html pages, .pdf images, etc.... You name it, it's a pretty safe bet Plone can handle it.

Here's a link to the Plone site. http://plone.org/

The Zope site is just zope.org.

As to my site, well, it's not worth putting any links to yet. I have a few pictures posted, dozen or so blog entries in which I have documented a few things I've been running across and learning, but it's still just mainly default content that comes with Plone. Besides, it's a secure site that you have to log into to be able to access any content, and I'm not ready to have people poking around in my site. It's just too raw and I'm not satisfied with how I have it secured yet.

 

Thanks alot for the info. Zope and Plone sounds very interesting as far as the blog, forum and wrapper are concerned. I've been meaning to put up a site for a long time now, but I'm in the middle of creating the content -- which is very time consuming and which I haven't been having much time to do (so I understand how it is with your site).

I wanted to add a forum and blog to it, but I'm not sure where I could acquire reliable scripts from. However, when I'm ready I'll definitely check out Zope and Plone. Furthermore, I'll check them out now and see what they have to offer. Anyways, I wish you luck with your site and thanks once again for the info.

 

hey freddy, ace system, those raptors really do rock
going to upgrade my home system to raid 0 150gb ones to boost the read/write performance

how much did you pick up the 3ware card for? and did you get it retail?
i love those cards but they are a pain in the ass to get over here outside of distribution tier companies
and as a consumer they don't often cater to the likes of me!

 

The 3Ware card was $292 through NewEgg. They actually carry a pretty good selection of RAID cards: 3Ware, LSI, HighPoint, Areca, Promise, and a couple of other brands that I can't recall of the top of my head. There are probably 150 or so cards to choose from.

3Ware is a little more expensive than the rest, but it works right out of the box with Debian and performance is great. The drivers are in the Linux kernel by default.

That Thermaltake chassis I used has great cooling. It has removable cages to hold the hard drives and each cage has a 120mm fan directly in front of the drives so that all airflow is forced over the drives. Those Raptors are running at 81 degrees (that's 8 degrees above ambient). In another box we have that doesn't have those air-cooled cages those same drives run %50 hotter when they're just idling along.

The Thermaltake M9 chassis' are very nice, and fairly inexpensive too. Total cost of the case was right on $100, and that includes the second air-cooled cage for $16. The entire front of the case is like a wire mesh, but each individual section can be pulled out to put in either hot-swap drives or optical drives, and behind the mesh are foam air filters for each one.

For a mid-tower case it's roomy too.

 

I have a similar case (the Cooler Master Stacker) that has the same sort of layout
takes 3x 5.25" bays and a nice 4 hard drive rack with 120mm fan goes in there, I can get 3 + 2 CDroms in the system (11 5.25" bays), keeps my (currently software raided ewwww) drives nice and cool, shame the software raid is a pain on performance (celeron processor in that system, ouch)

I'll grab one next time I'm stateside, I have always had a lot of time for 3ware cards, even the old school PATA ones.. I'd love to get the 12 chan version for my case but wow thats like way pricey

 

Yeah, they are pricey. But, if you want performance you gotta pay. However, the card is always the cheaper part of RAID. We paid ~$300 for the card, but the drives were more than twice as much as the card and NewEgg had them for about $50 less each than anyone else did.

 

True, I dont need the Raptors for data storage though, I have a bucket load of 320 and 500GB disks, might start phasing them all out for 750s.. but I want a decent raid card first!