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Old 08-06-2013, 02:49 PM   #1
lpallard
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Home server upgrade - need some advices and pointers


I am looking at getting some feedback for a home server upgrade.

My home server seems to be having a hard time these days to fullfil its tasks. This machine is equipped with the following hardware:

-11 hard drives (4 being normally offline and used monthly to do a manual backup, and 7 always powered). As 3TB+ hard drives will eventually start to fall down on price, I will phase out smaller HDD's and regroup the data on latrger drives. In any case, I will try to never exceed 9 hard drives because of maintenance and power consumption.

-2 PCI (not PCIe) SATA expansion cards with each 4 SATA ports

-MSI K9N Platinum mobo (supports only up to 8GB DDR2 1066 RAM)

-Athlon64 XP Dual Core CPU @ 2.4GHz

-6.5GB DDR2 1066 RAM

The machine runs MySQL and does a LOT of database work. I currently have 8 DB's but one of them is nearly 150GB and as a result, the entire machine is extremely slow and unresponsive.. I have tried to fine tune MySQL as much as possible (options in my.cnf) and MySQL is allowed to use 4GB RAM for the InnoDB buffer. I have moved the DB's to a faster HDD (7200RPM) but nevertheless, the performance improvements are barely noticeable. Other than the Mysql server, I run about 7 or 8 PHP/Python web applications (Sabnzbd+, Couchpotato, Sickbeard, Horde Webmail, RSSOwl RSS client, and a few other background processes and scripts). Folks familiar with the applications I mentioned will know which app can generate a 150GB database

I was thinking about upgrading the machine's core components (CPU, Mobo, RAM) to the following:

ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 (Supports AM3+ Sockets, up to 32GB 1866 DDR3 RAM, has 6 SATA 3Gbps connectors (sufficient since I have the 2 PCI cards so I will have a total of 14 ports -> 9 HDD's + 5 offline HDD's for backups = 14). Nice thing also is the integrated GPU if I need to use VNC or locally use a Desktop.

AMD FX-8350 Vishera 4.0GHz (8 Core CPU)

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4x8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 SDRAM. I have picked the 1600 instead of 1866 because of the price tag. Obviously 1866 would be a bit better but I dont think it would be like "day & night"...

So I am wondering if this hardware will be overkill for my needs or will it be just OK and perhaps a little bit "future proof"? Does Linux (Kernel 3.2) from Slackware64 14.0 supports up to 8 cores efficiently or will it be money thrown in the water?

Are 32GB RAM excessive?

In other words, you guys think my machine will now perform decently?
 
Old 08-06-2013, 03:11 PM   #2
jefro
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I'd think (without knowing exact swap usage) that ram is the biggest issue you have.

It is not so much the OS that can use cores but also programs. Many still can't support 8 but the left over cores can be useful for other tasks.
 
Old 08-06-2013, 04:27 PM   #3
lpallard
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I agree with the RAM limitation.... The SWAP usage is fairly low (when MySQL was running I'd see perhaps 30% of the SWAP partition being used)

Im just wondering if the multi core would be an advantage. YOu see, and Im sure you will agree with me, with computers its difficult to upgrade a specific core component without upgrading all of them...

The mobo I currently use has a supported max of 8GB of RAM.. Im almost using all of it.


Other than that, could I benefit much from 4+ cores? Perhaps upgrading to a quad core with 16GB RAM would be enough? Financially speaking, my favorite option would be NOT to upgrade (that is what I had in mind when I first built this machine) but I kept adding more and more to it until it could barely display a VNC session..
 
Old 08-07-2013, 03:59 AM   #4
cascade9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post

-11 hard drives (4 being normally offline and used monthly to do a manual backup, and 7 always powered). As 3TB+ hard drives will eventually start to fall down on price, I will phase out smaller HDD's and regroup the data on latrger drives. In any case, I will try to never exceed 9 hard drives because of maintenance and power consumption.

-2 PCI (not PCIe) SATA expansion cards with each 4 SATA ports

The machine runs MySQL and does a LOT of database work. I currently have 8 DB's but one of them is nearly 150GB and as a result, the entire machine is extremely slow and unresponsive.. I have tried to fine tune MySQL as much as possible (options in my.cnf) and MySQL is allowed to use 4GB RAM for the InnoDB buffer. I have moved the DB's to a faster HDD (7200RPM) but nevertheless, the performance improvements are barely noticeable. Other than the Mysql server, I run about 7 or 8 PHP/Python web applications (Sabnzbd+, Couchpotato, Sickbeard, Horde Webmail, RSSOwl RSS client, and a few other background processes and scripts). Folks familiar with the applications I mentioned will know which app can generate a 150GB database
The PCI SATA controllers could be part of the problem. PCI is limited to 133MB/sec (theoretical, you wont see the full 133MB/sec).

It wont matter that much if you are using all single drives and only reading or writing to a single drive at oen time. If you have a RAID system, or are trying to read/write from multipule drives at once, it will be limiting you.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post
ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 (Supports AM3+ Sockets, up to 32GB 1866 DDR3 RAM, has 6 SATA 3Gbps connectors (sufficient since I have the 2 PCI cards so I will have a total of 14 ports -> 9 HDD's + 5 offline HDD's for backups = 14). Nice thing also is the integrated GPU if I need to use VNC or locally use a Desktop.
IMO Dont. Just dont.

Its an ancient chipset (760G/SB7XX is from 2009), SB7XXX southbridge with SATAII (newer chipsets have SATAIII), Radeon HD3000 (closed driver support has been droped by AMD) and its a 'budget' board as well.

Get a 970/990X/990FX motherboard and a cheap video card (nVidia G210, G510/GT610, GT520/GT620 or AMD 5450/6450/7450). If you really must have a motherobard with onboard video, get one of the 880 chipset boards. Make sure it has a SB8XX or SB9XX southbridge for SATAIII support.

While SATAIII might be pointless with spinning HDDs, as none of them have got close to the bandwidth limit of 300MB/sec, SSDs have passed SATAII speeds. SSDs might be expensive adn smallish now, but prices keep dropping and capacity increasing, and doing anything to a 150GB database from a 500MB/sec+ SSD is going to be faster than from a 120MB/sec (or slower) HDD.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4x8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1600 SDRAM. I have picked the 1600 instead of 1866 because of the price tag. Obviously 1866 would be a bit better but I dont think it would be like "day & night"...
2 x RAM sticks can run at DDR3-1866 with FX CPUs. Running 4 sticks limits you to DDR3-1600.

I dont know if 32GB is overkill....it might not be. You could always just get 2 x 8GB sticks and see how it runs.

BTW, the FX series and pretty much all the other current AMD CPUs dont quite have the amount of cores you might think.. They arent 'full' cores.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...-8150-review/2

How much CPU load is the old Athlon64 XP under? If its not that high, you migth get away with a FX-6XXX, maybe even a FX-4XXX or AMD 'A' series FM2 '4 core' (2 module).
 
Old 08-07-2013, 02:21 PM   #5
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Well, I could start the AMD/Intel wars now, but I don't.
I totally agree with the points the other posters did that your main bottleneck might be the RAM. If you have enough RAM sitting around and the right DB server config, your DB will get much more responsive when it can hold more data in RAM (but I doubt that you are ready to pay for 150GB+ RAM )

btw: I'd always go for some extra RAM instead of upgrading 1600 to 1866 or even higher. RAM is like engine size in cars: better than size is bigger size

As cascade9 said you might want to check your current processor load. It might increase by erasing the other bottlenecks, but if those are more likely to be insufficient RAM/ or HDD I/O you probably don't need the latest bleeding edge proc but a good and fast multi-core.

My guess would be that a quick and responsive storage system will improve your system's performance quite a bit. Depending on your database profile (many writes, few reads or vise versa) a SSD approach might not be the best solution since especially with many writes the lifetime of a SSD might be limited, but a well-balanced (soft) RAID system (maybe RAID10 for speed and data protection) might boost your overall performance by a noticable factor. For mid-range HDDs SATAII should definitely do the job, for SSDs you would need SATA3. (how about SAS?)

Thinking about it... how about going for a standard server hardware thing like HP-DL380 G8 or the likes? They aren't that expensive as you might think and older generations can be found on second hand market at a reasonable price. The one I mentioned (DL380 series) has only 8 SAS HDD slots, but there are others out there as well. And... usually SAS slots do work woth SATA HDDs as well (if they ae 2,5").
 
Old 08-07-2013, 06:29 PM   #6
lpallard
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Quote:
Well, I could start the AMD/Intel wars now, but I don't.
haha

That will be simple! No Intel. Too expensive, period. I dont ever see myself (unless I win the lottery) buying a $700 CPU only to be outclassed within 6 months... Im not making money with this server so I am leaning toward a reasonable upgrade..

With that in mind, here's my reasoning regarding CPU's:

-AMD

Intel CPU's *may* (not to engage flame wars be better or more performing than AMD's but their proce tag is just ridiculous...

-No FX series

I read several sites where the FX series has been overly tested, and I was disappointed. The 8 core FX processor seemed not capable of even matching a 6 core Phenom CPU.. The notion of Modules VS Cores (as in the Phenom II series) scares me. What if this technology never gets really anywhere and is dropped within 2 years time? Unless someone can prove that the FX series are capable of lots of horsepower, Im really not sold on the FX series.

-4 cores.

I kept thinking about how many cores would I need. I did some basic testing with top, and realized that never my current system has both cores maxed out, unless the machine does video processing or other PCU intensive tasks (encryption, decoding, etc). If we keep in mind that this machine is a "server" and wont be doing desktop processing for a "living", I can imagine that even 2 cores would be enough.. But if I upgrade the mobo and RAM, might as well upgrade the CPU..

1 core: is obsolete
2 cores: is that I currently have - doesnt make sense to buy a dual core again..
3 cores: is too close to what I currently have - the benefit wouldnt be justified
4 cores: would be 2X what I currently have, perhaps overkill but wouldnt hurt
6 cores: they are not carrying phenom II X6 anymore on newegg.ca... Not sure why.
8 cores: would be bound to use the FX series, and Im not sure I want to do that. Its tempting for future expandability, having 8 cores seems nice but will I ever use them? Again not sure.

-3.4GHz+

Speed is also a touchy subject. Some people did some benchmarking, and found that for heavily multi threaded applications or other apps using several cores, it seems having more slower cores helps a lot. Otherwise, if performing only a few CPU intensive applications at the same time, fewer cores with a higher clock speed would help a lot. I suppose that why gamers are looking at raw speed instead of cores... On the other hand, real server cpu's are not so fast but are capable of crunching high loads of data with many cores. I dont think my "server" qualifies as a real server from an application point of view. Its more a heavily loaded desktop running background apps. I suppose a higher clock would help more than a large number of cores.

So the CPU would be a phenom II X4 at 3.5GHz. Is it a decent choice? Future proof?

RAM:

I take that my current bottleneck is RAM. I agree with that. more RAM will not hurt. I made the mistake of upgrading RAM on an existing machine only to realize that my upgrade was not sufficient (because I maxed out the mobo's capacity) or because other components also needed to be upgraded. I did that mistake again with this server by buying some additional RAM 2 weeks ago. Barely helped.

I want to be good for at least 5 years with this built. I guess 16GB would do, but if I can manage to get the CPU and Mobo for a decent price, I am willing to add another 16GB for a total of 32.

dt64, you mentioned that adding more RAM instead of increasing its speed would help. I agree with you. I may try to go for 1600 or 1866 but not 2000 or higher due to the price tag.

Storage:

I also came to realize that the storage where the sensitive data was located (mysql databases, swap partition, etc) had to be performing. I dont think transfer speed is more of an issue than latency, but a faster and more responsive media would certainly help with the SQL read & writes, and the swap usage (if needed). With this in mind, I could either buy a 256GB SSD drive (provided my mobo supports SATA3) or a 10k RPM HDD. I understand a lot of swapping and read-write cycles may kill the SSD, so I am leaning toward a mechanical HDD, even if its slower.

Mobo:

All I can tell for now is that it will need at least 2 PCI ports for my SATA expansion cards. BTW, the drives connected to the SATA cards are only used for long term storage such as movies and music... No application data which requires lots of throughput is stored on these drives... Other than that, if the Mobo supports 32 GB DDR3 RAM, and has 6+ SATA3 ports, Im in business I think.

Any thoughts???
 
Old 08-08-2013, 05:45 AM   #7
cascade9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post
That will be simple! No Intel. Too expensive, period. I dont ever see myself (unless I win the lottery) buying a $700 CPU only to be outclassed within 6 months... Im not making money with this server so I am leaning toward a reasonable upgrade..

-AMD

Intel CPU's *may* (not to engage flame wars be better or more performing than AMD's but their proce tag is just ridiculous...

-No FX series

I read several sites where the FX series has been overly tested, and I was disappointed. The 8 core FX processor seemed not capable of even matching a 6 core Phenom CPU.. The notion of Modules VS Cores (as in the Phenom II series) scares me. What if this technology never gets really anywhere and is dropped within 2 years time? Unless someone can prove that the FX series are capable of lots of horsepower, Im really not sold on the FX series.
You dont need to spend $700 on a Intel CPU.

The FX series got some very bad reviews, but they are nowhere near as bad as some of the reviews made out.

FX-8XXX is faster in amlsot all situations than the Phenom II X6 CPUs. There are occasional benchmarks/tasks where the FX-8XXX CPUs are only about as fast, even a touch slower than the Phenom II X6s.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post
-4 cores.

I kept thinking about how many cores would I need. I did some basic testing with top, and realized that never my current system has both cores maxed out, unless the machine does video processing or other PCU intensive tasks (encryption, decoding, etc). If we keep in mind that this machine is a "server" and wont be doing desktop processing for a "living", I can imagine that even 2 cores would be enough.. But if I upgrade the mobo and RAM, might as well upgrade the CPU..

1 core: is obsolete
2 cores: is that I currently have - doesnt make sense to buy a dual core again..
3 cores: is too close to what I currently have - the benefit wouldnt be justified
4 cores: would be 2X what I currently have, perhaps overkill but wouldnt hurt
6 cores: they are not carrying phenom II X6 anymore on newegg.ca... Not sure why.
8 cores: would be bound to use the FX series, and Im not sure I want to do that. Its tempting for future expandability, having 8 cores seems nice but will I ever use them? Again not sure.

-3.4GHz+

Speed is also a touchy subject. Some people did some benchmarking, and found that for heavily multi threaded applications or other apps using several cores, it seems having more slower cores helps a lot. Otherwise, if performing only a few CPU intensive applications at the same time, fewer cores with a higher clock speed would help a lot. I suppose that why gamers are looking at raw speed instead of cores... On the other hand, real server cpu's are not so fast but are capable of crunching high loads of data with many cores. I dont think my "server" qualifies as a real server from an application point of view. Its more a heavily loaded desktop running background apps. I suppose a higher clock would help more than a large number of cores.

So the CPU would be a phenom II X4 at 3.5GHz. Is it a decent choice? Future proof?
Things are more complex than simply cores and MHz, you cant just look at core count and the MHz and think 'ahh, a quad core @ 3.4 GHz, its got to be faster than a quad core @ 3.2GHz'.

CPU Cache, architecture version, etc. make a big difference.

I'm reminded of when I helped, or to be accurate, tried to help someone replace the Pentium D 830 (3.0GHz) they owned. I teied to tell them that a Core 2 Duo E6600 would be faster, and showed them benchamrks, but they insisted that the because it was 'only' 2.4GHz it 'would have to be slower than the Pentium D'.

BTW, for a comparison between early FX-4XXX, 6XXX, 8XXX, Phenom II X4 and X6,a nd a few lower end intel CPUs have a look here-

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...00-4100_5.html

Older models CPUs though...FX 'bulldozer' (eg FX-8150) has ben replaced by 'piledriver' (eg FX-8350) with minor performance increase, most of the imporvements are in power consumption.

In general you get what you pay for...a $220 i5 will be faster than a $200 FX-8350 in a lot, if not all situations.

Phenom II X4/X6, besides being hard/impossible to find new, are not as good as the FX series. The X4/X6s are not good for 'Future proof' at all..they are aleady 4 years old. Also limited to DDR3-1333.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post
RAM:

I take that my current bottleneck is RAM. I agree with that. more RAM will not hurt. I made the mistake of upgrading RAM on an existing machine only to realize that my upgrade was not sufficient (because I maxed out the mobo's capacity) or because other components also needed to be upgraded. I did that mistake again with this server by buying some additional RAM 2 weeks ago. Barely helped.

I want to be good for at least 5 years with this built. I guess 16GB would do, but if I can manage to get the CPU and Mobo for a decent price, I am willing to add another 16GB for a total of 32.

dt64, you mentioned that adding more RAM instead of increasing its speed would help. I agree with you. I may try to go for 1600 or 1866 but not 2000 or higher due to the price tag.
Your bottleneck is more than just RAM. You arent going to get enough RAM to cache 150GB database....

The difference between 1600, 1866 and 2000 is so little in most cases its not worth worring about. BTW, just like you cant just compared the MHz on 2 CPUs and say 'this one is faster cause its got more core speed', you cant look at RAM MHz and say '1600, so it is slower than 1866'. Its normally true, but not always..latency makes a difference.

If you really want the max RAM you can get, AMD A85X chipset (64GB max). They are limited to '4 core' (2 module really) CPUs.

There is also Intel LGA 2011 with 64GB. You'll pay a fair bit more for the CPU (about $300 minimum for a i7, some quad core xeons are about $225 or so).

Everything else is limited to 32GB (z77/z87 etc intel for LGA 1155/LGA1150, AMD 9XX and 8XX chipsets for AM3/AM3+) or less (H61 for LGA 1155)

Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post
Storage:

I also came to realize that the storage where the sensitive data was located (mysql databases, swap partition, etc) had to be performing. I dont think transfer speed is more of an issue than latency, but a faster and more responsive media would certainly help with the SQL read & writes, and the swap usage (if needed). With this in mind, I could either buy a 256GB SSD drive (provided my mobo supports SATA3) or a 10k RPM HDD. I understand a lot of swapping and read-write cycles may kill the SSD, so I am leaning toward a mechanical HDD, even if its slower.
Easrly SSDs had a limited number of writes. They are are now rated for much larger number of writes, and there is all sorts of technical trickery being used to increasr the lifespan in other ways.

Even if you do think that SSDs are not going to be reliable long term, it still makes sense to use one over a 10K HDD, and just verifiy the data (and backup to a HDD) Even 15K HDDs are a lot slower than a good SSD.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post
Mobo:

All I can tell for now is that it will need at least 2 PCI ports for my SATA expansion cards. BTW, the drives connected to the SATA cards are only used for long term storage such as movies and music... No application data which requires lots of throughput is stored on these drives... Other than that, if the Mobo supports 32 GB DDR3 RAM, and has 6+ SATA3 ports, Im in business I think.

Any thoughts???
You will only get 6 SATAIII ports on Intel Z87 (LGA 1150, and IMO to new to get), AMD 8XX and 9XX chipsets or AMD A75 (socket FM2). A85X (another FM2 chipset) can have up to 8 SATAIII ports.

All other chipsets will have some SATAIII and SATAII ports, or just SATAII.
 
Old 08-08-2013, 06:02 AM   #8
dt64
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Comparing cores/GHz on a CPU to justify which one is faster is not so easy. For example if you have an up to date 4core but only 2 cores are being used at a time, these 2 cores can run even a bit faster than the max GHz number but have to slow down if the remaining cores have to start working in parallel. if only one core out of 4 is working on its own it may speed up even more.
Usually ( as long as there are no needs to have exessive CPU power available) an i5 4core will do the job for about 200 bucks. Just what I learned from my tests. I'm not good at justifying AMD's models since all my machines are running on Intel.

You might want to have a look in Intel's Smart Response Technology. This is using a SSD to cache reads/writes to a old-school HDD to speed things up. Data that are being used more often get copied to the SSD and are accessed there and backed up to the HDD when time allows.

RAM: I'd go for 1600 with low latency but most capacity.
 
Old 08-08-2013, 12:28 PM   #9
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This is very interesting and eye opening...

cascade9, reading your post, I get the impression that you are recommending an Intel CPU over an AMD? I mean marginally recommending... is that right?

So if going toward AMD's products, the only decent solution right now is the FX piledriver CPU.. And its not a perfect solution, far from that I get.

If I go for Intel, I will have to look at their products. I have not purchased an intel CPU in ages.... Im not up to date at all.

Would it be a stupid idea to think about a Xeon? even a low end one? I understand these are servers CPU and they are capable of substantial performance , even the low end ones. This would also allow me to use a LGA 2011 chipset which supports 64GB RAM.

This maybe however a costly solution:

256GB SSD SATA3 + Xeon CPU + LGA2011 Mobo with 8X SATA3/64GB RAM + 32 or 64GB DDR3 RAM = $$$$$$$ ??
 
Old 08-08-2013, 03:54 PM   #10
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Server boards and sever cpu's and memory have many extra features that you might be able to use. Even a cheap HP soho server might be a consideration. They (everyone) make servers and select parts for this type of use. An FX process or may be the worse choice for a server in my opinion.

Xeon's may be in many many millions of hard working servers but you also may wish to look at your real needs and that may include power and the air conditioning.
 
Old 08-10-2013, 06:06 AM   #11
cascade9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dt64 View Post
You might want to have a look in Intel's Smart Response Technology. This is using a SSD to cache reads/writes to a old-school HDD to speed things up. Data that are being used more often get copied to the SSD and are accessed there and backed up to the HDD when time allows.
LaSt I checked SRT (Smart Response Technology) was windows only.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post
cascade9, reading your post, I get the impression that you are recommending an Intel CPU over an AMD? I mean marginally recommending... is that right?

So if going toward AMD's products, the only decent solution right now is the FX piledriver CPU.. And its not a perfect solution, far from that I get.
Nah.....almost, but no. FX isnt anywhere near as 'bad' as many people have made out, and piledriver is better than bulldozer was.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...rabdver2&num=1

If you know which program is puttingthe most load on your system, you migth do best to check out some benchmarks on that program. As you can see, sometimes the FX series is as fast or even faster than intel, sometimes its a lot slower.

By the way, if you've decided for whatever reason that piledriver isnt what you want, dont even bother looking at AMD CPUs. They are all now made on the piledriver architecture.

That goes for the FX series, trinty APUs and Opterons.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post
If I go for Intel, I will have to look at their products. I have not purchased an intel CPU in ages.... Im not up to date at all.

Would it be a stupid idea to think about a Xeon? even a low end one? I understand these are servers CPU and they are capable of substantial performance , even the low end ones. This would also allow me to use a LGA 2011 chipset which supports 64GB RAM.
Just as almost all current AMD CPUs use the piledriver architecture, intel builds everything (apart from atom) from 'ivy bridge' or 'haswell' architecture.

The main difference between an iX and a xeon is that the xeon CPUs have more virtualisation support and often have no video chip on the CPU. Well, to be honest they do have the video chip, its just disabled (just like the iX CPU have the hardware for full virtualisation but it is diabled as well).

Xeon in most cases is pretty much the same as an iX CPU of teh same core count, MHz, and cache.

Quote:
Originally Posted by lpallard View Post
This maybe however a costly solution:

256GB SSD SATA3 + Xeon CPU + LGA2011 Mobo with 8X SATA3/64GB RAM + 32 or 64GB DDR3 RAM = $$$$$$$ ??
Depends on which xeon you wanted to get, and if you wanted 64GB.

64GB is hard to get with normal SD RAM, there are only 8GB sticks around. So you need 8 RAM slots to get to 64GB, and most motherboards dont have 8 RAM slots. There area few though, eg-

ASRock X79 Extreme6
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X79%2...Specifications

You could get a server motherbaord and use registered/ECC etc. RAM, they are avaible in 16GB and 32GB sticks and get the abiblity to use a _lot_ more RAM. Boards arent that hard to find, but are 25-75% more expensive. Eg SUPERMICRO X9SRA.

Quote:
8x 240-pin DDR3 DIMM sockets
Supports up to 256 GB DDR3 ECC Registered memory (RDIMM)
Supports up to 64 GB DDR3 ECC and non-ECC UDIMM
http://www.supermicro.com/products/m...c600/x9sra.cfm

Then you'll have to get slower RAM though, and its not cheap.

16GB DDR3 1333 ECC/registered is $150+ (single stick)
32GB DDR3 1333 ECC is $600+. (single stick)

32GB (4 x 8GB) 'normal' DDR3 1600 is $250+.

So for about cost of 64GB registered/ECC you could get 32GB DDR3, a motherbaord + quad core CPU (intel) or 4 module/8core CPU (AMD). You'd be looking at another $200+ on the motherboard, a Xeon E5-2603 (1.8GHz, quite slow for the current series) quad core is $220+, Xeon E5-2609 (2.4GHz) quad core is $300+, or i7-3820 (3.4GHz) is $300+ as well.

Even wihtout the SSD, and using the slowest Xeon and normal SD RAM, you would be looking at minimum $920.

I'm not sure if chucking that much RAM at the system makes sense.....and while your athlon X2 isnt maxing out CPU use, that is when its getting data from your HDDs at (best guess) 50-100MB/sec.

If you had a SSD capable of 500MB/sec or higher, your CPU use could be pushed a lot higher as well.

Last edited by cascade9; 08-10-2013 at 06:08 AM.
 
Old 08-10-2013, 02:48 PM   #12
lpallard
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Mmm its very interesting, and Im very confused..

The current CPU usage pattern is difficult to determine... Once upon a time, I could have told you exactly, even plotted the usage and RAM usage... But this server has been so erratic and randomly braking down that I cannot have it run smooth and steady for more than a couple of days before something breaks.

Right now, I just got a notification from smartd that one of the hard drives went berserk and stopped working. The server is down again.

I think the machine is "tired".. Its component after component breaking down so I need hardware that will last, perhaps not the greatest performance but something designed to run 24/7,.. Not those Green caviar crap HDD's from WD..

Almost 5 years running 24/7 and lots of heat. Ventilation in the current case isn't great at all.. I will retrofit the case sooner than later with more (or larger) fans.

I realize that before this post, I never mentioned the fact that the machine was physically "tired"... Yes performance is a huge issue right now, but reliability is also a serious issue. Its because of these 2 factors that I want to upgrade. Im tired of replacing component after component and have to rework the system to make it work.

Coming back to the CPU usage and RAM usage, from what I could find, CPU usage peaks periodically at 95%+ while it maintains itself around 25% the remainder of the time. RAM usage (according to free -m) is around 85 to 90%.

I however "hear" and see a lot of HDD activity. Swap isn't overly used but Id say around 20% in average.

I mostly run background scripts that are working with SQL databases and I also have about 10-12 python processes that are performing intensive work perhaps 10-15X per day for about 10 minutes or so each time.

Generally speaking, load on that server is not steady.. Its fluctuating with spikes mostly.

Going back to the hardware topic, I started this thread with the AMD CPU in mind, but looking at the numerous forums and sites you guys pointed out to me, I am unsure if AMD is the right way to go for such application. Except the Opteron CPU that I cannot find anywhere right now (on the Canadian online market anyways), the FX 8 core would seems to be the next choice.

There's only three contenders in my mind: Intel Xeon, i7 and AMD's FX 8 core. The real question is:

would you get a Xeon over a i7, and then would you get a FX over that ???

I dont know if "chucking" 64GB RAM in a single machine would be beneficial... Ive never seen that in any machine before so I cannot comment. I would think the way Linux uses and manages RAM, it would use as much as possible (probably all the way up to the max) so read/write on HDD's would be much lower??

Chucking 64GB RAM in a single machine may not be much of a benefit, but would it actually hurt? In other words, is there a significant chance the CPU doesnt keep up with so much memory storage?

Virtualization is something I have been interested for a while now but never had time to implement it and study it. I use Virtualbox with VM's to achieve virtualization as of now. Its done on my local client machine. Its working well but there are issues wiuth the setup. Eventually I'd like to virtualize my pfsense router into my server so I can eliminate a physical machine. Please keep in mind that my current pfsense box entirely uses its 8GB ram!

Now to the RAM topic, I am pretty new to the whole concept of Buffered, unbuffered, ECC, non ECC, etc..... I understand what the terms stand for (thanks wikipedia) but I am clueless about their practical applications. All I know for now is that I want at least 32GB RAM, and the mobo should have ideally 8 slots. Sticks of 16GB are super expensive, often much more expensive than 2 sticks of 8GB. Most mobo's supporting 64GB RAM have 8 DIMM slots.

Looking at newegg.ca, seems 64GB Buffered /Registered EDD Server grade RAM would be about 100$ more expensive than high performance gaming RAM. I am more than willing to pay the extra 100$ if its justified.

I did a quick exercise. I built 3 machines from newegg.ca, one using AMD CPU, another using an intel CPU and what I call Gamer's components, and another using server grade components.

In a nutshell (of course no PSU, case or HDD's since I am conserving the existing):

Intel based machine (gamer's components):
Intel Core i7-3820 Sandy Bridge-E 3.6GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 2011 130W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80619i73820
ASRock X79 Extreme6 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s ATX Intel Motherboard
2X G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Model F3-12800CL10Q-32GBZL
SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Seagate Barracuda STBD3000100 3TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (for storage upgrade)

$1,584.23

AMD based machine:
AMD FX-8350 Vishera 4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8350FRHKBOX
ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
2X G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Model F3-12800CL10Q-32GBZL
SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Seagate Barracuda STBD3000100 3TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (for storage upgrade)

$1,128.60

Intel based server machine:
Intel Xeon E5-2620 Sandy Bridge-EP 2.0GHz (2.5GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 2011 95W Six-Core Server Processor BX80621E52620
SUPERMICRO X9SRI-F ATX Server Motherboard LGA 2011 DDR3 1600
Kingston 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 ECC Unbuffered Server Memory w/TS Model KVR16E11K4/32
SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Seagate Barracuda STBD3000100 3TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (for storage upgrade)

$2,081.22

Now I recognize that these builts may not be the best or even have incompatible (I hope not!) parts... I just took 15- 20 minutes of my time to see what I could come up with.. Looking at the prices, its varying from simple to double. Not surprised at all, I knew the AMD based machine would be cheaper, but I didnt' know that the AMD chipset (the 990FX) supported "only" 32GB RAM. Again, maybe this is all I need & 64GB is stupidly overkill..

The prices are also from newegg.ca (in CAD) and don't have any promo codes or shell shockers or other rebates other than what newegg gives at the shopping cart. I expect to pay significantly less because of the offers and sales they throw once in a while..

Last edited by lpallard; 08-10-2013 at 02:54 PM.
 
Old 08-10-2013, 03:37 PM   #13
EDDY1
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Whats the warranty period for intel processor & mobo
Asus mobo has 3yr warranty & Amd processor I believe is 3yrs
 
Old 08-10-2013, 04:15 PM   #14
lpallard
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EDDY1 View Post
Whats the warranty period for intel processor & mobo
Asus mobo has 3yr warranty & Amd processor I believe is 3yrs
Well you are not specifying if you are talking about the Xeon or the i7 CPU but in both case its 3 years (http://www.intel.com/support/process.../CS-009862.htm)

Supermicro offers only 1 year on parts, and 3 on labor... Disappointing for a server/enterprise grade component.
 
Old 08-11-2013, 11:27 AM   #15
dt64
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To help you on deciding on which CPU to go for have a look here. This comparison page is usually up to date.

You said you haven't seen 64GB in a signle machine before. I did and sometimes even 128GB or more isn't enough on database servers.

If your applications wouldn't need all of it, Linux would use quite a bit of the left over memory to accellerate HDD access.
Personally I never found it necessary to have more than 32GB in a PC/server for personal/private use, but my own machine runs on 32GB as well.
Most of the memory on my personal machine is used for VMs.

The spikes on CPu load you see on your system, do they come from single-threated processes or multi-threated one? In the first case I doubt it will justify a Xeon over a i7 since i7 can run a single core faster than normal if the othersare idle, like a Xeon. Saying so the performance difference between a i7 and a Xeon will be even smaller.

Looking at your 3 setups, I'd go for something like your first setup, but I'd add another bunch of HDDs to it to run your OS from a SSD partition, have the data on a RAID10 cluster (talking about 4+ HDDs, noticed that?) and maybe use another SSD partition for Intel SRT (haven't checked if that works or if you'd need a full SSD for that. In that case I'd use the SSD for SRT only).
I've found some HowTo Linux+SRT on http://tobestool.net/using-intels-rst-with-linux/ and in the related comments, but haven't tried myself.

If your are looking for something made up for 24/7 long time running systems you may really want to have a look into something "server-grade" like I highlighted before.
In terms of heat and power consumtion mini/micro servers or even full size 19" rack servers aren't that bad anymore and can be purchased for a reasonable price nowadays.
 
  


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