[gentoo-user] AMD 64 bit system selections

[gentoo-user] AMD 64 bit system selections

[James]

Hello,

We'll I'm finally taking the plunge and building a  high performance
64 bit AMD system. Oh, but the company paying for it insist upon 
windozXP 64bit, just in case Gentoo does not work. I'm really surprise
some vendor is not listed on gentoo.org, as it'd make this purchase
more straightforward, and It'd be a great opportunity to support Gentoo.
Any 'off the shelf' system recommendations, or  should I just purchase
pieces? (Reasonable vendors that build systems and perform Gentoo 
installation here in the US?)

What's the best 64 bit processor choice for performance for Gentoo? 
Dual-core?
Complimentary ram specs?

Mobo recommendations (lm_sensors and acpi support) in a 19 inch rack?

N+1 redundant power supply recommendations?

10/100/1000 Ethernet support?

What's the friendliest  high end video card for displaying video
(fast motion) that has open source drivers? Multiple displays?

Which Sata-2 drives give good performance and size (400 G or more)?

What's the best Raid level to run for storing, searching and manipulating
tons of video, and should I get a Gentoo friendly controller or use 
software raid?

Finally which file system would one recommed for this video server
with the best, stable performance.



ideas?

James

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Re: [gentoo-user] AMD 64 bit system selections

[John Jolet]

On Jan 31, 2006, at 11:58 AM, James wrote:

> Hello,
>
> We'll I'm finally taking the plunge and building a  high performance
> 64 bit AMD system. Oh, but the company paying for it insist upon
> windozXP 64bit, just in case Gentoo does not work. I'm really surprise
> some vendor is not listed on gentoo.org, as it'd make this purchase
> more straightforward, and It'd be a great opportunity to support  
> Gentoo.
> Any 'off the shelf' system recommendations, or  should I just purchase
> pieces? (Reasonable vendors that build systems and perform Gentoo
> installation here in the US?)
>
> What's the best 64 bit processor choice for performance for Gentoo?
> Dual-core?
> Complimentary ram specs?
>
we're building our own with tyan motherboards, dual-core opterons and  
4 gigs of ram (for the web servers, single core and 2 gigs).  They  
have dual gig ethernet ports (one nvidia, one broadcom, drivers in  
the kernel).  Haven't found any 400gig sata drives, at least not for  
a reasonable price, we're using i think some 250s with 3ware raid  
cards (the tyan motherboards only have fakeraid).  Man these things  
SCREAM....  One word of caution...the amd64 boot image that's latest  
won't complete a boot, and the older 2005.0 has broken 3ware  
drivers.  had to install 65-bit ubuntu on a small partition and boot  
to that to install gentoo.  and that ubuntu is NOT smp enabled, so  
the build went slow until I could reboot into gentoo.

we're building "blade" servers...not true blad servers, as each has  
it's own nics and power, but you can get 10 in a 7-u rack (I think  
it's 7 u)
> Mobo recommendations (lm_sensors and acpi support) in a 19 inch rack?
>
> N+1 redundant power supply recommendations?
>
> 10/100/1000 Ethernet support?
>
> What's the friendliest  high end video card for displaying video
> (fast motion) that has open source drivers? Multiple displays?
>
> Which Sata-2 drives give good performance and size (400 G or more)?
>
> What's the best Raid level to run for storing, searching and  
> manipulating
> tons of video, and should I get a Gentoo friendly controller or use
> software raid?
>
> Finally which file system would one recommed for this video server
> with the best, stable performance.
>
>
>
> ideas?
>
> James
>
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> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>

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[gentoo-user] Re: AMD 64 bit system selections

[James]

John Jolet <john <at> jolet.net> writes:

> > We'll I'm finally taking the plunge and building a  high performance
> > 64 bit AMD system. Oh, but the company paying for it insist upon
> > windozXP 64bit, just in case Gentoo does not work. I'm really surprise
> > some vendor is not listed on gentoo.org, as it'd make this purchase
> > more straightforward, and It'd be a great opportunity to support  
> > Gentoo.
> > Any 'off the shelf' system recommendations, or  should I just purchase
> > pieces? (Reasonable vendors that build systems and perform Gentoo
> > installation here in the US?)


Well you pretty much just mentioned what I was leaning to. On the HD front,
check out this bad boy:  Hitachi T7K500, 500 GB SATA-2. Almost as fast
as the WD 10,000 rpm raptor drives, from what I've read....

Thanks for the info.


James



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Re: [gentoo-user] AMD 64 bit system selections

[Bob Sanders]

On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 17:58:53 +0000 (UTC)
James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:

>
> What's the best 64 bit processor choice for performance for Gentoo? 
> Dual-core?

Perhaps you should ask what the best price performance/watt in the cpu
range?  Generally it's best to figure out your needs and then calculate the
cost for each step up in cpu power to meet those needs.

> Complimentary ram specs?
> 

Personally, I prefer 2-2-2 or 2-3-2.5 ram, but it's expensive and not all
applications benefit.

> Mobo recommendations (lm_sensors and acpi support) in a 19 inch rack?
> 

Tyan or Super Micro tend to be better choices.

> N+1 redundant power supply recommendations?
>

Vendors change every year.  If you've got big bucks and can find someone that will
sell single units - Delta.  Otherwise, whomever can meet the current demands.
 
> 10/100/1000 Ethernet support?
>

On the motherboard - best is typically Broadcom or Intel.  The rest are pretty good.
 
> What's the friendliest  high end video card for displaying video
> (fast motion) that has open source drivers? Multiple displays?
>

Doesn't exist.  But Nvidia is the better bet as their drivers tend to work more often.
 
> Which Sata-2 drives give good performance and size (400 G or more)?
> 
> What's the best Raid level to run for storing, searching and manipulating
> tons of video, and should I get a Gentoo friendly controller or use 
> software raid?
> 

For video data, use a linear stripe across two controllers.  And at least three controllers
for HD video.  But HD video requires SCSI or SAS, stripped across multiple controllers and
15Krpm drives in the arrays.

> Finally which file system would one recommed for this video server
> with the best, stable performance.
>

XFS.

Bob 
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[gentoo-user] Re: AMD 64 bit system selections

[James]

> Bob Sanders <rmsand <at> concentric.net> writes:


Personally, I prefer 2-2-2 or 2-3-2.5 ram, but it's expensive and not all
applications benefit.

Tyan or Super Micro tend to be better choices.

Doesn't exist.  But Nvidia is the better bet as their drivers tend to work
more often.

For video data, use a linear stripe across two controllers.  And at least
three controllers
for HD video.  But HD video requires SCSI or SAS, stripped across multiple
controllers and
15Krpm drives in the arrays.

> Finally which file system would one recommed for this video server
> with the best, stable performance.

> XFS.


Thanks Bob...

James

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Re: [gentoo-user] AMD 64 bit system selections

[Bob Sanders]

> For video data, use a linear stripe across two controllers.  And at least three controllers
> for HD video.  But HD video requires SCSI or SAS, stripped across multiple controllers and
> 15Krpm drives in the arrays.


I should be a bit more detailed.  For -

	Uncompressed SD video - 60 MB/s sustained. 3 to 4 IDE drives striped will do.
	Uncompressed HD video, up to 1080i - 270 MB/s sustained - 3 disk controllers,
		3 disk arrays, 15 Krpm drives.
	Uncompressed HD video 1080p or 4:4:4:4 or dual-link - 360 MB/s sustained - 4
		disk controllers, 4 disk arrays, 15 Krpm drives.

	Compressed SD video - mpeg2, 480P, DVpro - 20 MB/s sustained - 1 disk controller,
		7200 rpm drives, single array.  2 streams requires Uncompressed SD bandwidth.

Bob
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Re: [gentoo-user] AMD 64 bit system selections

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

On Tuesday 31 January 2006 11:58, James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote 
about '[gentoo-user]  AMD 64 bit system selections':

> We'll I'm finally taking the plunge and building a  high performance
> 64 bit AMD system. Oh, but the company paying for it insist upon
> windozXP 64bit, just in case Gentoo does not work. I'm really surprise
> some vendor is not listed on gentoo.org, as it'd make this purchase
> more straightforward, and It'd be a great opportunity to support Gentoo.
> Any 'off the shelf' system recommendations, or  should I just purchase
> pieces? (Reasonable vendors that build systems and perform Gentoo
> installation here in the US?)

I've been running a pure 64-bit gentoo system since July/August of last 
year as my desktop.  It had been 6 (or more) years since my last MB 
upgrade, and I was going for something near the top of the line so I 
wouldn't have to upgrade in the future.

> What's the best 64 bit processor choice for performance for Gentoo?
> Dual-core?
> Complimentary ram specs?

I went with 2 Opteron 275s and I'm quite happy with it.  I'd suggest 
staying away from Itanium architectures for linux as it doesn't have as 
much developer support, from what I can tell.  Also, while I am not an 
expert in system board design, the NUMA architecture available from AMD 
does appear to have fewer bottlenecks.

> Mobo recommendations (lm_sensors and acpi support) in a 19 inch rack?

My system is an EATX desktop, not a rack, but I'm using a Tyan board.  I'll 
recommend Tyan with the caveat that I have limited experience.

> N+1 redundant power supply recommendations?

Can't say anything here, I run a single power supply. :)

> 10/100/1000 Ethernet support?

While I don't get to use it that much, I really appreciate Gigabit ethernet 
being available on my motherboard.  When I'm making a backup image of a 
system or transferring CD/DVD images over the LAN it really pays off.

> What's the friendliest  high end video card for displaying video
> (fast motion) that has open source drivers? Multiple displays?

Do you mean pure open-source, or just drivers that will work?  I think it's 
gonna be hard to find pure open-source drivers for a card that handles 
this (*please* correct me if I'm mistaken).  I love my NVidia 7800GTXs.

> Which Sata-2 drives give good performance and size (400 G or more)?

I'll swear by my 6 Hitachi 7k500s.  They have blazing performance, and 
they've yet to perform a single bad block relocation, despite bringing 
them on a road trip, and keeping them in my filthy apartment.

> What's the best Raid level to run for storing, searching and
> manipulating tons of video, and should I get a Gentoo friendly
> controller or use software raid?

Software raid in linux is fine, and you can even use some of the limpware 
raid (like the nv_raid on my Tyan board) with the dmraid utilities.  That 
said, I went with hardware raid because I wanted to keep /boot on a raid 
array.  I definitely think my areca 1160 is worth what I paid for it, and 
while the tools are not in portage and the module is not in mainline the 
support for linux is good.  They provide 32 and 64 bit binaries for the 
command-line interface and http control interface and the kernel module is 
GPL'd and in the mm tree.

> Finally which file system would one recommed for this video server
> with the best, stable performance.

If you are going to have a UPS and cleanly shutdown in the case of power 
failures, go with XFS.  I'm a big reiser (3 and 4) fan, but I'm starting 
to see some of it's ragged edges, and I think XFS will probably serve you 
better.

-- 
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
bss03@volumehost.com
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy
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