[Pc_Support] Re: Awesome deal on Tyan mobo... -- Tyan mainboard guide, why PCI-X, DL145

Tue Aug 30 00:39:48 EDT 2005

On Mon, 2005-08-29 at 21:45 -0400, Carter Manucy wrote:
> I don't need a whole lot of storage on this box - it just OCR's 
> documents all day long.

But you don't want your storage tying up a legacy, shared PCI bus, let
alone strangled by it.

> The case that it's going into is a 1U Supermicro chassis

If you're going to purchase a Tyan board, you might as well go with a
Tyan barebones solution in 1U.  Here are the B2881 (S2881) and B2891
(S2891), respectively:  
  http://www.tyan.com/products/html/gx28b2881.html  
  http://www.tyan.com/products/html/gt24b2891.html  

> with a SCSI backplane (2 3.5" bays) -

Both of these Tyan solutions have (4) 3.5" hot swap bays -- your choice,
U320 or SATA -- a slim CD-ROM and optional slim floppy.  They have (2)
riser cards, plus whatever the mainboard on its ATX area.

BTW, Any reason you're not considering SATA instead?

If you're scanning and serving large files, then you need data transfer
rate (DTR) more than latency.  Commodity 300, 320, 400GB drives are
going to give you much, much higher DTR.  Vendors now have commodity
disks rated for 24x7, 1Mh MTBF -- e.g., Western Digital Caviar RE series
are available in 120, 160, 200, 250, 300 and 320GB (WD1200SD through
WD3200SD) -- all under $200.

But even if you want enterprise 10Krpm drives, you can get those in SATA
too.  The sub-$200 73GB Western Digital Raptor WD740GD is the same exact
hard drive as the Hitachi Ultrastar 53GB U320 SCSI, only with SATA
logic.

Then you can drive them with a 2-channel 3Ware Escalade 8006-2 (~$125)
or a 4-channel 3Ware Escalade 8506-2 (~$275) in RAID-1 or RAID-10,
respectively.

> so I planned on getting a Tyan w/SCSI on-board

But what does that SCSI connect to?  The legacy PCI bus?  You're going
to overload your system with disk load.

Why build a monster dual-Opteron when your disk is going to be the
bottleneck?

> to handle the single SCSI drive it's going to use.

Then why build a monster dual-Opteron system when disk is going to be so
limited?

You'd be better off going with a $225 mainboard like this:  
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/products_motherboard_2.cfm?pName=NFPIK8AA-8EKRS  

And a single (or up to 4) SATA drives using a single Socket-940 Opteron
1xx  -- either the 73GB Raptor 10Krpm if you need latency or a 320GB
Caviar RE if you need DTR.

And there are forthcoming Socket-939 Opteron 1xx mainboards using the
ServerWorks HT1000 chipset with a single PCI-X channel.

> But now that I think about it, I have to make sure that 
> the power supply can handle one of these boards!!!

That's why you should go with the Tyan 1U barebones solutions.

> My needs for the machine are mostly just something that can pass info 
> off of the wire, push it thru memory quickly, then dump it back out the 
> wire (to the other server that holds all of the files once they've been 
> OCR'd).  In reality, a dual-proc box is really overkill, as the 
> application isn't even multi-threaded.

Then just go for the Foxconn Socket-940 Opteron 1xx mainboard and use
the on-board SATA channels.

> Sooo that's why I was thinking about the S2895.  But the 2895 doesn't 
> have video out the back, which is a real problem.

Why?  If you're going to use it as a workstation, you're going to find
the on-board 8MB Rage XL PCI is going to be a major PITA in capability.

In the Tyan 1U barebone configurations, they have 2 slots for risers.
One the S2891/S2892, you can use one for a PCIe x16 slot so you can put
in a better video card (like a GeForce 6200TC or 6600).

> Which takes me back to the S2882.

But there are _also_ the S2891/2892 _too_!

I don't think you realized what I posted before ...

  Tyan Product Configurations -- 2-way:  
     S2895:  nFPro2200 + AMD8131 (CPU#0) + nFPro2050 (CPU#1)
   S2891/2:  nFPro2200 + AMD8131 (CPU#0)
     S2885:  AMD8151 + AMD8131 + AMD8111 (CPU#0)
   S2881/2:  AMD8131 + AMD8111 (CPU#0)

The S28x1/S28x2 are 1U capable mainboards, the S28x5 are for more
workstation configurations.

The S288x series is the older AMD8000 series, the S289x is the newer
nForce Pro series (with an AMD8131 for PCI-X).

> I've also got to build another server (or buy) ... this other one is 
> going to be more of a storage facility, tho... so I'm looking for a nice 
> case with a SATA backplane on it - anything on top of your list that you 
> like?  I prefer to keep units down to 2U if I can help it due to space 
> issues.  I like Chembro cases, but they're a real pain in the ass to 
> track down thru the major suppliers that I normally use.

Again, see the Tyan barebone solutions:  
  http://www.tyan.com/products/html/barebone.html  

I'd normally recommend Monarch Computer for 1-3U rackmount solutions
using Tyan products, but they seem to be getting bad service reviews as
of late.

> And oh, I wanted to let you know - a while back I'd asked if you had any 
> suggestions for good places to buy systems from - you suggested 
> Monarch... well, I ended up buying two units from them.  And recently 
> one of the Tyan boards crapped out in one of them, so we sent it off for 
> an RMA... over TWO MONTHS later we finally got the unit back.

Did you have a service level agreement (SLA) with them?
If you did, I'd get your procurement/legal involved.

I'd also let AMD know regardless.
You're not the only one I've heard having issues as of late.

Many people on various Red Hat Enterprise / CentOS lists are too.

> They were highly disorganized, couldn't tell us what was going on with the
> unit, claimed that the chassis was damaged and had to be replaced - on and on 
> and on.  So I don't think I'll be buying from them again anytime soon - 
> just wanted to let you know FYI.

Yeah, I've heard similar from people lately.

I'd recommend the HP DL145, DL385 or DL585 if you're looking for Opteron
solutions from now on.  And if you're looking at the DL585, you might as
well take the Sun Sunfire V40z for a spin.

> Thanks (as always) for the help/suggestions/info!

No problem.

-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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