specs for a server

[Mark Greenwood]

On Wednesday 11 March 2009 19:36:20 Jon Shorie wrote:
> We have been running a mix of Fedora Linux and Kubuntu Linux on our servers 
> and some desktops since 6.06.  Before that, we ran a mix of Redhat / Fedora / 
> and Sun Solaris 8.
> 
> It is finally time to replace our last sun server.  The only thing that this 
> machine does is share files via nfs to our network of about 50 users and 18 
> servers.
> 
> I am trying to decide between a Core 2 Quad Q8200 and a Pentium Dual Core 
> E5400.  The Quad is running at 2.33 GHz.  The Dual is running at 2.7 GHz.
> 
> Does anyone have any suggestions as to whether we would notice much difference 
> between the Dual and Quad for performance.
> 
> I am including a list of the specs.
> 
> 4u Rackmount Chassis
> Antec Neo Power 430 430Watt Modular Power Supply
> Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L Motherboard
> 
> Intel Pentium Dual Core E5400 2.7 GHz Processor or 
> Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33 GHz Processor
> 
> Western Digital Caviar WD5000AACS 500GB Hard Drive for the O/S Install and 
> temporary backup files.
> 
> (2) Western Digital Caviar WD7500AACS 750GB Hard Drives using Linux Software 
> Raid for the shared files.
> 
> Intel PWLA839GT 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet Adapter
> 
> Thank you in advance for any suggestions.
> 
> Jon Shorie
> Systems Administrator
> Medina County Sanitary Engineers
> 

My feeling on this is that you want lots of RAM and fast discs, but processor speed is almost irrelevant if all you're doing is sharing files.

I've used Gigabyte boards before with some success.. however the one I have currently has some kind of problem with the IDE controller and keeps falsely detecting inserted CDs. It's a common problem apparently. I didn't need IDE (everything is SATA) so I disabled the IDE in the BIOS and it has proved to be a very good motherboard indeed. It has an option for SATA native mode (AHCI) which is well supported in the Linux kernels since at least 2.6.24 and gives very good performance.

Mark