Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 19:41:45 -0500 From: "William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org> To: Scott Pilz <scottp@tznet.com> Cc: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hardware remedies Message-ID: <a1fd09dc1f4072638533e094a199c4ca@mcgillsociety.org> In-Reply-To: <20050310101330.V64852@mail.tznet.com> References: <20050310101330.V64852@mail.tznet.com>
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On 10 Mar, 2005, at 11:18, Scott Pilz wrote: > I'm looking for advise on hardware, what works good, what doesn't, > what to stay away from, and what has been proven efficient. > > We currently run a load of Dell PowerEdges, which work great, but are > limited in their i386 nature. I would like to get a few HP/Alpha > machines, and start building up on these instead of sticking with > i386. > > HP offers very little information on FreeBSD. They have a working > demo on two older systems (only one is Alpha, and it's slow - very > very slow, and old). HP cannot tell me what will or will not work. > > I'm curious as to what others are running (HP or non-HP) for Alpha. > What has worked good in a server environment? As much as I'm an "Alpha Bigot," having used them since their introduction circa 1990, with OSF/1, Digital Unix, Tru64 Unix, in the Enterprise Server environment, today, I would warn anyone away from any kind of "bet the farm" Enterprise server environment. The issue is simple. Alpha is a dead product line. It doesn't matter that the high-end Alphas, including many "older" EV6 boxes that are still more powerful than any of their Intel competitors, still hold top slots in the Super Computer list. (Although they have now fallen to #6 from #2). http://www.top500.org/lists/plists.php?Y=2004&M=11 Compaq sold the Alpha to Intel (as part of the deal to get bought by HP, according to many of us), the week before Capellas admitted to holding negotiations with HP on the Purchase of Compaq. It is probably true that you can obtain quite a few high-end boxes at pennies on the dollar. But, if I remember correctly (being retired since 2003) HP support for Alphas only continues through 2008 ... and that means hardware support, not software. That said... Any EV6 or EV6/7 Alpha runs FreeBSD like a barn-burner! I have two XP1000s, one an EV6 and the other an EV6/7 both running FreeBSD 5.3. The only thing I have that runs more trouble free is my "antique" PWS433a (EV5/6) running Tru64 "Hobbiest" edition. That box has not crashed or been rebooted now in something like 5 years. [I ignore power failures of more than an hour since I have only minimal battery backup here at home.] All my systems have DEC/Compaq StorageWorks ultra or ultrawide SCSI "towers" (disk drives). I haven't tried to do anything with FreeBSD on the PWS433 because I think it's actually older than FreeBSD, even though it is an EV5/6 machine. Besides, I "trust" the way it is currently running under Tru64. The only problem I have with the two XP1000 systems is that they are both on the same 20 amp basement circuit with a Mac and the garden lights ... and the Ground Fault breaker keeps getting tripped by the garden lights. ... someday I'll ... but that's another project. In short, I don't know which "smaller" systems are still available for purchase "new" from HP. But there are many available from other venues. There are a couple of good and reputable dealers and 3rd-party Alpha folks on the Alpha-Linux list over at Red-Hat. Oh yeah, one last thing... FreeBSD and Tru64 Unix (aka OSF/1) are both descended from BSD Unix, and have far more in common with each other than either has with any Linux variant! T.T.F.N. William H. Magill # Beige G3 [Rev A motherboard - 300 MHz 768 Meg] OS X 10.2.8 # Flat-panel iMac (2.1) [800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg] OS X 10.3.8 # PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg] Tru64 5.1a # XP1000 [Alpha 21264-3 (EV6) - 256 meg] FreeBSD 5.3 # XP1000 [Alpha 21264-A (EV 6.7) - 384 meg] FreeBSD 5.3 magill@mcgillsociety.org magill@acm.org magill@mac.com whmagill@gmail.com
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