Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 12:05:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Dennis Glatting <dg@pki2.com> To: Vincent Schut <schut@sarvision.nl> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: this 48-core box... Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1309191157410.56073@btw.pki2.com> In-Reply-To: <20130919155327.115e7344@sarvision.nl> References: <52388C9B.6030205@foxbatcapital.com> <20130919155327.115e7344@sarvision.nl>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Thu, 19 Sep 2013, Vincent Schut wrote: > On Tue, 17 Sep 2013 12:08:43 -0500 > Michael Chen <michael@foxbatcapital.com> wrote: > >> I'm considering bidding on this 48-core box: >> >> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-A-Server-1042G-TF-1U-H8QG6-4-CPUS-48-cores-2-2Ghz-128GB-RAM-/151119828428?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item232f7195cc >> >> Does anyone have experience with it and can I use all the cores? >> >> Thanks! >> _______________________________________________ >> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list >> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions >> To unsubscribe, send any mail to >> "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >> > > I recently bought one like that (48 cores but 'only' 96 Gb ram). It was > meant to play a double role as both zfs file server and data processing > server (we do lots of satellite image processing), running FreeBSD 9.1. > It connects with a SAN and we'll use it to process about 36TB of > satellite data in the next months. (In a couple of weeks we will > probably have budget to split those roles, and buy a dedicated file > server.) After several weeks of tweaking and testing, I can say that: > - the zfs/file server part runs without problems > - the satellite data processing had problems scaling to all 48 cores, I > got max performance when running about 18 processes in parallel, > scaling up more would lower the overall performance. However, this > (sorry guys) appeared to be a FreeBSD problem, and not a hardware > problem. As a test I switched to linux with ZoL (ZFS on Linux), and, > though zfs performance is less compared to freebsd, data processing > is much much better, like a factor 12 or so. > I've noticed this same scaling problem on 32+ core servers but haven't had a chance to look into the detail. From the performance graphs I am confused whether my problems are processing problems or a data I/O problem. > Conclusion: the hardware is alright, however when needed to do lots of > heavy calculations on terabytes of data, the combination with FreeBSD > appears not ideal. > > Of course it is you get what you pay for. Decent, OK working hardware, > but none of the special handy-dandy features expensive brands will give > you. If you don't need them, in my experience it is decent hardware for > a good price. > > regards, > Vincent. > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?alpine.BSF.2.00.1309191157410.56073>