On Wed, 18 Nov 1998, Peter Nann wrote:
>
> We are about to make our first foray into linux SMP, and we are looking at
> the Dell PowerEdge 2300 server line (Dual PII, 100MHz bus).
>
> The SMP FAQ is (understandably) not perfectly up to date with new PC
> releases, so although the 2200 is mentioned, I was wondering if I should
> worry about any problems with the newer 2300.
>
> Apparently, SCSI support is integrated with BOTH Adaptec "AIC-7890
> Ultra-2/LVD SCSI" AND "AIC-7860 Ultra/Narrow SCSI-3". Will these be OK for
> Linux? (Or should that question go to the Kernel list???)
>
> Also, there is a choice of 100Mbit NICs between "Intel Pro 100B" and "3Com
> 3C905". Any preferences between them for linux support, SMP behaviour, or
> just general behaviour?
I have a set of 16 PowerEdge 2300's running (at this moment) 2.0.35 with
aic7xxx 5.1.2 and eepro100 NICs. Although four months ago there were
considerable headaches (as the 7890 U2W driver was being added and the
5.0.x aic7xxx driver largely rewritten at the same time) but as of now
they are quite stable. By "quite stable" I mean that I have some that
have been up 52 days under continuous loads (in a beowulf, I >>mean<<
continuous loads) of 2-3. I've had a couple crash due to amd hangs
(probably irrelevant to the 2300 per se). I've had three out of 16
boxes turn up with bad SDRAM DIMMS (one is down right now and I need to
call it into Dell) -- not too good a record, actually, but this should
be handled by warrantee and/or service contracts. I'd also have a lot
more boxes up long times but I've been trying to reboot them slowly when
they're idle to upgrade the kernel, and I actually need to to this again
with 2.0.36 and aic7xxx 5.1.4 already -- Alan's remark that the memory
map and quad system bugs have at long last been quashed fills me with
hope that we may finally have a kernel that will run "forever" under any
possible load.
Of course then we'll all need to switch to 2.2.x and start the whole
process over...;-).
Regarding NICs I have always been partial to tulips, although the tulip
world is in disarray at the moment. Still, I've been able to find real
Digital 21140 PCI 10/100 NICs in generic boxes for $29.95 that appear to
work perfectly with the current tulip driver. Check out www.intrex.com
-- the card manufacturer is so generic that I haven't been able to
connect to their website (although it does exist in nameservice) -- the
name (which I have forgotten as I think of them as the "pile of
cardboard boxes on the left side of the Intrex shelf" rather than by
company name) was in several recent tulip messages -- check the list
archives to get it.
In summary, I think the 2300's are quite nice, especially for small
server packages. For desktops they are bit of overkill. I wouldn't buy
them for an academic (tight budget) beowulf but they're great if
purchased with O.P.M (other people's money). Make sure that Dell will
take care of your new system's memory -- don't know if they are buying
marginal memory to resell that is shoddy and failure prone or if I was
just unlucky, but a six month failure rate of 3 out of 64 (almost 5%)
with one occurring well past the time of typical "burn-in" failures is
not reassuring.
rgb
Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
