Linux drooler box....

Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own wayNaples, FL Icrontian
edited August 2004 in Science & Tech
I'll add more later, but Linux Journal has released its first specs and benches article for its annual Ultimate Linux Box for 2004.

Take a Celestica 8440, get some Pogo Linux hardware specialist folks to build it, and you get:

4 way Opteron, 36 GB U320 SCSI drives times four, 32GB of PC2700 ECC REGISTERED RAM (16x2GB (yes, 2048MB each) sticks), a four-way PCI video card that can output 4 simultaneous DVI'd desktops at once (Its an Appian Rushmore Quad DVI PCI card). Add DVD drive, USB, and a floppy drive. PSUs?? how about hotswappable 500W X 3. Yeah, Audio, natch, a Creative Labs SB Audigy.

Let's take a glimpse of a 2.6.4 kernel full default compile time on this (compiled on a built tmpfs partition in the running box while current kernel is active, done to bench)--- 1 min 41 seconds. It is running Fedora Core 2 Test 3 right now. Bonnie++ gives it a score of 65366.

If Tyan had released its S4880 board earlier, that mag might have used it in a BIG tower case, it is a new SSI form factor board, 13" X 16", and is a 4-way Opteron board. The Celestica 8440 is actually housed in a 4U or bigger blade case.

Comments

  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited July 2004
    thats an ok high end box...

    I mean why 32g memory and only 4x36SCSIu320's. What are you gonna do with this box.. host a mail server or webserver digital media server. Not alot of disk space if you ask me... Id have gone with atleast 4x146scsi. I mean hell I build machines with more drive space than that on a daily basis. I roll out 250gig mirrored in every box I build. Some times we get NAS request and they go with atleast 700+gig of drive space raid 5 with 2 mirrored os drives. We tossed out a few terabyte machines as well.

    It seems to me if you are gonna call something ultimate then hell lets go balls out and give it some real drive space.

    They need to break that up in to catagories. Ultimate server, ultimate workstation, and ultimate gaming rig.. each can be built to a different ultimate spec. in my opinion...

    Gobbles
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    Sounds like a system I would like to do some video editing on in Real Time with a nice AViD setup. But I don't know if AViD would work with Linux off hand. Nitrus or Adrenaline....
    /me drools.....
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited August 2004
    Gobbles wrote:
    thats an ok high end box...

    I mean why 32g memory and only 4x36SCSIu320's. What are you gonna do with this box.. host a mail server or webserver digital media server. Not alot of disk space if you ask me... Id have gone with atleast 4x146scsi. I mean hell I build machines with more drive space than that on a daily basis. I roll out 250gig mirrored in every box I build. Some times we get NAS request and they go with atleast 700+gig of drive space raid 5 with 2 mirrored os drives. We tossed out a few terabyte machines as well.

    It seems to me if you are gonna call something ultimate then hell lets go balls out and give it some real drive space.

    They need to break that up in to catagories. Ultimate server, ultimate workstation, and ultimate gaming rig.. each can be built to a different ultimate spec. in my opinion...

    Gobbles

    Linux is intended to be an all-around WORKSTATION box as the ULB was conceived. As it is, Monarch Computer's retail for that hardware-identical box is over 6 grand. In fact they did set it up as a devbox\workstaion, not a server, and the ULB was never intended to be a server. You are correct, classes are nice, but LJ's ULB is a very high end workstation by concept.

    Why 32 GB RAM Total???? That is 8 GB per each of the 4 (4-way EACH, AFAIK) Opterons in it. EACH CPU has 8 GB to itself. In fact, budget constaints limited the HD array size. But keep in mind this is not a high-end server.

    Folding has Opteron servers with 2 Terrabyte Arrays running-- Q 4 now (IIRC) working with the field clients in at least part, AFAIK. They are servers .150, .151, .152 and .154. I think there is a new P4 server or almost- server-grade-Workstation up now also, internal to folding's admin core.

    There are Linux servers in use with 4 Terrabyte attached arrays each that are active, as we speak-- some are in the US running as parts of clusters. So you are right, this ULB is indeed not a server box. It was intended as a high-end workstation, hooked to a LAN, with server support for longer term storage and backup storage.

    Figured I would let the thread develop some before replying.
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