Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 14:55:13 +0000 (GMT) From: Scot Elliott <scot@poptart.org> To: Lukas Wunner <lukas@design.de> Cc: =?iso-8859-1?Q?=22Luis_E=2E_Mu=F1oz=22?= <lem@cantv.net>, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [fbsd-isp] Designing for a very large ISP Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980104144410.20577B-100000@homer.duff-beer.com> In-Reply-To: <19980104141146.32430@reactor>
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On Sun, 4 Jan 1998, Lukas Wunner wrote: > My suggestion would be to look at an SGI Origin 200/2000 or Sun U2 box > instead of a PC box running FreeBSD. We have experienced severe problems > with PCs wrt expandability/scalability. E.g., we currently have 256MB of > RAM in our news box but would love to go to 512MB, but the motherboard > is not capable of doing that although the documentation and the webpages > state the contrary (it's a Tyan Tomcat III or IV). If you want to go to > something like 1GB or 2GB of RAM, you're stuck with a PC. The only I've had problems with lack of PCI slots in motherboards too. But in terms of memory, SuperMicro claim to support 512MB in some boards - their boards seem to have more SIMM slots then most other boards. You can also get hold of boards which have SIMM slots and one DIM slot, which lets you put a big 64MB DIM in along side the rest of the your memory. ftp.cdrom.com claims to have 1G or RAM - so ask them how they managed it ;-) The problem I have with the lack of PCI slots is usually when I want lots of network cards in a machine.. With two SCSI controllers you can only have two other cards. People on this list keep going on about multi-port DEC cards, but I jut can't get hold of them - DEC claim they don't do them - and if they did then they'd apparently only work in a DEC PC. God knows why. So if anyone in the UK has any info on that then I'd much appreciate it ;-) In terms of CPU performance, I guess it depends on what the application of the machine is.. if it's a web server then you could propable run two PCs with a shared load - and get a similar performace to a bigger machine, but with pretty major redundancy. But of course not all tasks can be as easily shared as that. Scot ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scot Elliott (scot@poptart.org) | Work: +44 (0)1344 899401 PGP fingerprint: FCAE9ED3A234FEB59F8C7F9DDD112D | Home: +44 (0)181 8961019 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Public key available by finger at: finger scot@poptart.org or at: http://www.poptart.org/pgpkey.html
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