Rafiu:
if there's some
package that would be applicable to a storage management distro that
is missing in OF, then let me know
man pages for the included binaries would be nice :)
As for running "arbitrary" stuff on a dedicated storage system... I agree
with you Rafiu 100% that as an enterprise package, it would not make sense.
However, in the home or SOHO, the need to slim down on the number of running
appliances for simply power consumption reasons leads many of us who want to
replace our Windows-based storage systems with OF into a quandry because
that single system is often also the AD controller (as well as DHCP server,
DNS server, PPTP server, and Windows Terminal Server) so the ability to run
the same single OF box with the Windows system running on the For-free
licensed VMWare Server product is a boon. Previous to getting it going, I
was using an old laptop for the purpose, which consumed an additional 35W of
power... 24hrs a day... 7 days a week.
Power consumption is a big issue (as it should be for everyone). With that,
I have just finished setting up the final version of my OF home system
(considerably diff than any of the other systems I've put together for
corporate use) and I think I've found what I would consider the sweet-spot
for a SOHO or home system, taking cost, speed, and energy consumption all
into consideration...
Motherboard/Processor:
-PC-Chips M863G (V7.1C) Motherboard with AMD Geode NX 1750 processor
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813185076 - now with a
$10 rebate until the 22nd - drats for me). For high-performance mode, run
in normal 133MHz FSB. For lowest energy consumption at the expense of
filer/vmware guest performance, run underclocked to 100MHz FSB (10-15W less
at typical idle workload)
Powersupply:
-Seasonic S12-430 Powersupply
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817151023) - This
powersupply has active Power Factor following and as such uses CONSIDERABLY
less apparent grid power than the typical cheap power supplies at the same
rated wattage, verified by my Kill-a-Watt P3 with 0.97-.99 PF all the time
vs 0.63-0.85 for the other capable PSs i had at my disposal from Antec,
Evermax, Raidmax, and Ultra
(http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html). I
also tried the 630W S12-630 and got nearly identical power usage numbers so
if you don't need to spin more than 14 disks, or are using a high-current
processor like a P4, then save the money and get the lower-power PS.
Network Card:
-Intel Pro 1000MT NIC
(http://www.intel.com/network/connectivity/products/pro1000mt_server_adapter.htm).
Note that the onboard SiS 10/100 NIC goes unused but could be setup for
non-jumbo traffic, while the Pro1000 remained connected to a 9000-byte frame
size network (and even route between the two for unilateral internet access
for the 9000-byte-frame size network.) I may experiment with this later,
but I think relatively simple NIC management would be a good addition to the
OF appliance.
Disk controller:
-3Ware 7506-12 PATA RAID controller
(http://www.3ware.com/products/parallel_ata.asp)
Misc:
-60mm 1.45W case fan to replace overkill 7.5W stock cpu fan on above
motherboard (http://www.directron.com/ec6015m05ca.html)
-Single stick of 1GB generic DDR266 or higher RAM (using 2 sticks of 512
upped power usage approx 6-8W with relatively small performance increase).
For the disks, I am not using very energy-conserving components only due to
cost. The array consists of 12 x 200GB Seagate 7200.1 drives (5yr
Warranty). The controller has a 2TB array size limit so only 11 drives are
used with 1 hot spare. As my data is most important and backup is acheived
only monthly via a relatively slow internet connection to an identical unit
at a friend's house, a hot spare is worth the extra 8W of power. I am
toying with biliding a serial-interface device that will switch on a
latch-device to power on the hot spare in the event the RAID array
degrades... all it would requrie is running the tw_cli utility to check
for the degraded status and if so, fire off the program that triggers the
power to the hot spare, then automatically begin a graceful reboot... the
controller will begin rebuilding the hot spare upon startup. This would
save 8W... 24hrs/day... 7days/week.
As soon as costs come down and once I outgrow the 2TB, I will likely replace
the drives with high-capacity SATA drives and replace controller, which will
no doubt have spin-down functionality for hot spares, but for now, my system
works for me.
Some power consumption specifications:
-Power consumption in high-performance (133MHz FSB), full-load (cat 1.2GB
gzip file to/from same partition while running "file" command on root of
partiion and running gzip-9 on the root of the partiion - 200W
-Power consumption in high-performance mode (133MHz FSB) at typical idle
(normal usage): 160-180
-Power consumption in high-efficiency mode (100MHz FSB) at typical idle
(normal usage): 150-160W
Time and VA usage to "cat source.dat > dest.dat" on array with source.dat
and dest.dat consisting of pre-existing files that are in fact a 1240MB
gzipped VMWare virtual disk image on several combinations:
-3GHz/1MB P4/wHT- Intel 915-chipset mobo (Apple Intel Dev Board) - 2x512MB -
52s - 260W
-1GHz/256KB P3 - Intel 815EE mobo - 2x256MB - 146s - 165W
-1GHz/128KB PC-Chips M863G w/AMD Geode NX 1750 (underclocked) - 1x1GB -
82s - 160W
-1.4GHz/128KB PC-Chips M863G w/AMD Geode NX 1750 - 1x1GB- 63s - 175W
-=dave
btw - i posted how you can get vmware unofficially installed on OF 2.1 on
the 10th so you may want to search the archves for it. Still working like a
charm.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rafiu Fakunle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "John Haywood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 4:49 AM
Subject: Re: [OF-users] anyone successful getting vmware server
1.0.1.29996installed on OF 2.1?
Hi,
----- John Haywood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Monday 09 October 2006 21:16, Dave Johnson wrote:
> There seems to be ample info on how to issue/query/build conary
> troves/packages/etc, but trying to map out the logic of the conary
> system is f*%$'n ridiculous... i'm gonna have to install a throw
> away (trove-away ?) system just to figure out the logic of these
> updates en sum:
>
> http://wiki.rpath.com/wiki/Conary:QuickReference
>
> They need a friggen flowchart for this thing :-P
No luck with conary here - gone back to beta 2 and rpms - at least
there are
packages available ....
If you need to run specific packages you ought to be able to pull them
out of conary. You simply need to point to the right repository.
Having said that, I'm strongly against folks running abitrary stuff on OF.
It's not meant to be a general purpose distro - so if there's some
package that would be applicable to a storage management distro that
is missing in OF, then let me know and I can add it to the default group
so that everyone can take advantage of it.
--
Rafiu Fakunle
Openfiler Project
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Openfiler powered NAS appliances from Xinit Systems
http://www.xinit.com/main/storagenetworking/NAS.html
2TB - 24TB in 1U - 5U form factor
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