Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 13:29:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White <dwhite@gumbysoft.com> To: Clifton Royston <cliftonr@lava.net> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [long] Server motherboard recommendations for 4.X/5.X? Message-ID: <20020830132138.F88354-100000@carver.gumbysoft.com> In-Reply-To: <20020830094554.F16717@lava.net>
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I am bouncing this to -chat since its not really strictly related to -CURRENT. > We are about to spec and buy a new central mail server at LavaNet, > and we want to be sure that the motherboard/CPU combo we buy runs well > both with FreeBSD 4.6/4.7 (at the time we install it) and also down the > road when we upgrade to what's now -CURRENT, probably around 5.1. So lemme concise-ify your requirements: . Dual 100bT onboard, Gig-e okay > The Tyan "Thunder" i7500 *tentatively* looks like a good candidate to > us. It meets all the above criteria, uses the Adaptec 7899 onboard > 2-channel Ultra-160 SCSI controller (equivalent to 39160), has an Intel > 82550 (10/100) and 82544GC (10/100/1000) LAN port, takes up to 6 slots > of ECC PC2100/PC1600 DDR RAM, and has multiple 64-bit/133 MHz PCI-X > slots for expansion. It uses the AMI BIOS and Intel E7500 chipset. > <http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderi7500.html>; We've had decent luck with the Tyans, but we are also buying the older 2518s, but those have been through several revisions, and we work with a big reseller of theirs that feeds back a lot to Tyan. Generally, though, Tyan has some annoying quirks that take a while to work out. > If anyone wants to also recommend us a favorite rackmount server > integrator, that wouldn't hurt. We're aware of FreeBSDSystems, ASA > Computers, IXsystems, Arista IPC, and California Digital (formerly VA > Linux) and have bought from the last few. We're particularly looking > for one who can provide a system with dual power supplies fed from two > separate power cords, similar to what you find on a high-end router or > switch; we're thinking a 4U system for ease of adding any expansion > cards we might need down the road. We'll install the OS, etc. but if > we can take the assembly time off our hands that would be nice. Size needs to be in the requirements section :-) If you don't need lots of PCI cards, I'd suggest a 1U or 2U box to save space. Intel's SE7500WV2 is a great server board with onboard dual copper gig-ethernet, P4-Xeon CPUs, and great hardware management (which I have software which can interface with). And they're pretty cheap too, usually :) You'll have to buy it from a reseller, but they're usually pretty easy to find. If not you can buy them through FreeBSDSystems. (DISCLAIMER: I work with FreeBSDSystems on various tech-support contexts.) The 1U can take 2 PCI cards (one full size, one low-profile) and the 2U can take 6 (3 full size, 3 low-profile). Each set is peered independently. The 2U can take up to 7 internal disks and supports zero-channel Adaptec RAID for those onboard bays. The 1U can take up to 3 SCSI, 2 ATA disks. The WV2 is a really sweet board, and the chassis are well integrated. If you really need the expandibility, you could try for the SE7500CW2 board, doesn't have the hardware management complexity of the WV2 but does have the full complement of PCI slots. -- Doug White | FreeBSD: The Power to Serve dwhite@gumbysoft.com | www.FreeBSD.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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