[ubuntu-uk] Micro-ATX server advice

[Steve]

On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:28:30 -0000, Tony Travis <a.travis at abdn.ac.uk>  
wrote:

> Steve wrote:

>>>
>> Depends what you mean by a server and what you intend it to do.  Any old
>> PC can be a server.
>
> Not quite - Any old PC can indeed run server software, but 'commodity'
> motherboards are not designed to be run continuously and most of the
> motherboards designed for 'desktop' PC use don't have ECC memory.
>
> I built a Beowulf cluster with 88 'commodity' desktop systems and it has
> been a difficult task to get them to run reliably 24/7/365. We got there
> in the end, but only by replacing about 25% of the 'cheap' RAM using
> brand-name RAM and testing it a lot using "memtest86+" and "memtester":
>
>    http://www.memtest.org/
>    http://pyropus.ca/software/memtester/
>
> You should at the very least stress test your RAM for server use, but
> it's better to use ECC memory instead on a motherboard that supports it.
>
> This site has quite a lot of info about SFF systems:
>
>    http://www.sfftech.com/
>
> HTH,
>
>    Tony.
Couldn’t agree more about memory if you’re running 24/7/365 and this  
recent report from google backs that up
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139161/Google_DRAM_error_rates_vastly_higher_than_previously_thought


-- 
Steve