Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 09:45:54 -1000 From: Clifton Royston <cliftonr@lava.net> To: current@freebsd.org Subject: [long] Server motherboard recommendations for 4.X/5.X? Message-ID: <20020830094554.F16717@lava.net>
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[I'm posting this query separately on the freebsd-current and freebsd-stable mailing lists, so as not to cross the streams. If you subscribe to both and see it both places, no need to reply to both.] 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. This server will initially be in a non-redundant configuration (because of the difficulty of virtualizing mailspool access) so our major concerns are stability, stability, disk I/O performance, and stability. We'd like to have console video, IDE (for CD-ROM), SCSI, and at least 2 100BaseT LAN ports integrated on the motherboard because of our experience that this improves reliability. The Intel Ethernet chipsets and the Adaptec SCSI chipset are pluses, because they've given us good performance under both BSD/OS and FreeBSD. Disk storage will be external RAID, probably 10Krpm SCSI drives striped as RAID 1+0, on an Ultra-160 SCSI bus back to the main server. Eventually we might migrate to serving or mounting files via NFS, which would make GigE a plus. CPU performance is not a concern because disk I/O dominates performance on most mail servers; we'll probably put 1.8GHz CPUs into it due to price. We've settled on a dual P4-Xeon board on grounds of wide support and expected stability. (No Intel-AMD holy wars please; we may try out dual Athlon MP boards like the Tyan K7 on a different server.) 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>; If anybody is using these boards and is either unhappy or happy with their FreeBSD compatibility, I'd very much like to hear. Otherwise, if you have a favorite P4-Xeon high-integration server board that meets the above criteria and you know it works with both 4.x and -CURRENT, we'll happily take recommendations. 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. Thanks in advance for any answers, -- Clifton -- Clifton Royston -- LavaNet Systems Architect -- cliftonr@lava.net "What do we need to make our world come alive? What does it take to make us sing? While we're waiting for the next one to arrive..." - Sisters of Mercy To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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