Re: What server hardware are you buying from the big companies these days?
We have three SuperMicro blade servers. One's worked like a champ, and the other two died. The vendor we used tanked, so no warranty support. I got two IBM X3400 boxes to replace the SuperMicros; the drives were OK, so I got empty enclosures plus some rails, stuffed the drives in, and installed FreeBSD-7.1. My only problem so far has been a BIOS issue, but IBM site-support has been great. -- from posts here about branded hardware including you, i see that i do right things. i just buy parts and make computer from them, not only it's cheap, but it have similar reliability as expensive branded ones. Usually DIY computers fail within a week or not at all, similar to branded ones. My advice for anyone who needs new computer, but don't need super-ultra-high-end new core i7 or whatever. Buy second hand branded hardware from ebay (allegro in poland). It's usually hardware that was used in offices and replaced by more modern ones. It's already tested!!! You could get high-end PIII with 512MB RAM for $30 at most, the only thing you may need to add is larger drives, but 20GB isn't uncommon. P4 with 1GB RAM and 40GB drive is for 60-70$ here. All this branded second-hand hardware have nice and small desktop cases, are usually quite silent and just works out of the box. For good software like FreeBSD, PIII/1000 is already lightning-fast. And from what i read on that list, 90% of your servers run quite simple task that even Pentium 100 will do. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: What server hardware are you buying from the big companies these days?
On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 08:43:08AM +0200, Wojciech Puchar typed: Buy second hand branded hardware from ebay (allegro in poland). It's usually hardware that was used in offices and replaced by more modern ones. It's already tested!!! You could get high-end PIII with 512MB RAM for $30 at most, the only thing you may need to add is larger drives, but 20GB isn't uncommon. P4 with 1GB RAM and 40GB drive is for 60-70$ here. All this branded second-hand hardware have nice and small desktop cases, are usually quite silent and just works out of the box. For good software like FreeBSD, PIII/1000 is already lightning-fast. And from what i read on that list, 90% of your servers run quite simple task that even Pentium 100 will do. I'm hosting websites on 5-10 years old SUN hardware. V100/120 with ultrasparc II 400-650 Mhz. Just put in some new disks and memory, no sweat. They allmost never break down. And I like the openboot and LOM facilities. A simple serial connection is all you need. What do you use for remote management of those desktop cases? Ruben ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: What server hardware are you buying from the big companies these days?
task that even Pentium 100 will do. I'm hosting websites on 5-10 years old SUN hardware. V100/120 with ultrasparc II 400-650 Mhz. Just put in some new disks and memory, no sweat. They allmost normal. 400MHz SUNs are available here for 100$ or less. they usually have quite a lot of RAM even 512MB, but in case i need more - can it be added with standard SDRAM DIMMs, or superexpensive SUN memory only? how about disks? usually one don't need terabyte disk, and 18-36GB SCSI drives are really cheap used. But do SUNs accept normal SCSI drives or SUN-only? ;) What you say about reliability of SUN hardware - fully agree. never break down. And I like the openboot and LOM facilities. A simple serial connection is all you need. which is really important, and all super-excellent-modern PCs don't have. I have to put some display card just to be able to configure things. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
What server hardware are you buying from the big companies these days?
Hi, I need to buy some new servers, and mgmt has decreed that we get them from someplace which will provide service contracts with on-site h/w suppport, which means HP, Dell, Sun, IBM, etc. Has anyone bought servers from one of the big manufacturers lately and had good luck with them? It seems hard to get them to tell you what controllers and chipsets they're using in servers, to compare against the supported hardware list. What I'm looking for isn't all that exotic: rack mountable RAID-5 controller 4-6 or more disks (hot swappable would be nice, but not mandatory) dual power supplies (hot swappable would be nice, but not mandatory) CDROM 2 ethernet ports some RAM a video card an Intel or AMD CPU - single, two CPU, or multicore doesn't really matter. and the all-important onsite service. These things need to be pretty reliable, both of the data centers they're going into are a couple of hours from my house, so I don't want a dead power supply to take out the server. We've used SuperMicro's in the past, and they've been wildly variable. Some of them have run ok for years, some died within weeks, and kept dying no matter what parts we put in. (yes, I checked the power, it was clean. My guess is just a bad run of motherboards). I've got 3 servers that have never been able to stay up for more than a couple of days, we don't even use them. Regardless, any one have suggestions on what current models of servers are out there that run? Thanks! - ericr ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: What server hardware are you buying from the big companies these days?
ericr wrote: I need to buy some new servers, and mgmt has decreed that we get them from someplace which will provide service contracts with on-site h/w suppport, which means HP, Dell, Sun, IBM, etc. We use Dell almost exclusively. Although Dell doesn't officially support FreeBSD, Dell hardware is tier-1 for FreeBSD. I think their hardware is quite OK. The machines are built well. Haven't had too much to deal with their onsite service (which is a good sign), but the times that I did I think they handled it quite well, the parts were in house within 4 hours and in a case where a motherboard had to be replaced, a Dell technician was sent in as well and did his job fine. Dell's RAID controllers (Perc/5i and Perc/6i) work fine in BSD, and some tools are available although with Linux emulation which kind of sucks. Here's a sample dmesg of a 1950: Copyright (c) 1992-2009 The FreeBSD Project. Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation. FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE-p4 #0: Fri Apr 3 10:28:13 CEST 2009 r...@hostname:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC Timecounter i8254 frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0 CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU5148 @ 2.33GHz (2327.52-MHz K8-class CPU) Origin = GenuineIntel Id = 0x6fb Stepping = 11 Features=0xbfebfbffFPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE Features2=0x4e3bdSSE3,RSVD2,MON,DS_CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,DCA AMD Features=0x20100800SYSCALL,NX,LM AMD Features2=0x1LAHF Cores per package: 2 usable memory = 4276400128 (4078 MB) avail memory = 4114935808 (3924 MB) ACPI APIC Table: DELL PE_SC3 FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID: 0 cpu1 (AP): APIC ID: 1 ioapic0: Changing APIC ID to 2 ioapic0 Version 2.0 irqs 0-23 on motherboard kbd1 at kbdmux0 ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413) acpi0: DELL PE_SC3 on motherboard acpi0: [ITHREAD] acpi0: Power Button (fixed) Timecounter ACPI-fast frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000 acpi_timer0: 24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz port 0x808-0x80b on acpi0 acpi_hpet0: High Precision Event Timer iomem 0xfed0-0xfed003ff on acpi0 Timecounter HPET frequency 14318180 Hz quality 900 pcib0: ACPI Host-PCI bridge port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0 pci0: ACPI PCI bus on pcib0 pcib1: ACPI PCI-PCI bridge at device 2.0 on pci0 pci4: ACPI PCI bus on pcib1 pcib2: ACPI PCI-PCI bridge at device 0.0 on pci4 pci5: ACPI PCI bus on pcib2 pcib3: ACPI PCI-PCI bridge at device 0.0 on pci5 pci6: ACPI PCI bus on pcib3 pcib4: PCI-PCI bridge at device 0.0 on pci6 pci7: PCI bus on pcib4 bce0: Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T (B2) mem 0xf400-0xf5ff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci7 miibus0: MII bus on bce0 brgphy0: BCM5708C 10/100/1000baseTX PHY PHY 1 on miibus0 brgphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseT, 1000baseT-FDX, auto bce0: Ethernet address: 00:22:19:82:e8:45 bce0: [ITHREAD] bce0: ASIC (0x57081020); Rev (B2); Bus (PCI-X, 64-bit, 133MHz); F/W (0x04000305); Flags( MFW MSI ) pcib5: ACPI PCI-PCI bridge at device 1.0 on pci5 pci8: ACPI PCI bus on pcib5 pcib6: PCI-PCI bridge at device 0.3 on pci4 pci9: PCI bus on pcib6 pcib7: ACPI PCI-PCI bridge at device 3.0 on pci0 pci1: ACPI PCI bus on pcib7 mfi0: Dell PERC 6 port 0xec00-0xecff mem 0xfc48-0xfc4b,0xfc44-0xfc47 irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1 mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 3.00 mfi0: 2031 (292323270s/0x0020/info) - Shutdown command received from host mfi0: 2032 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0060/1000/1f0c/1028) mfi0: 2033 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 1.11.82-0473 mfi0: 2034 (boot + 3s/0x0008/info) - Battery Present mfi0: 2035 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Package version 6.0.3-0002 mfi0: 2036 (boot + 21s/0x0004/info) - Enclosure (SES) discovered on PD 20(c None/p0) mfi0: 2037 (boot + 21s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: Encl PD 20 mfi0: 2038 (boot + 21s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 20(c None/p0) Info: enclPd=20, scsiType=d, portMap=09, sasAddr=5001e090e8810900, mfi0: 2039 (boot + 21s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 00(e0x20/s0) mfi0: 2040 (boot + 21s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 00(e0x20/s0) Info: enclPd=20, scsiType=0, portMap=00, sasAddr=5000c5000d253121, mfi0: 2041 (boot + 21s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 01(e0x20/s1) mfi0: 2042 (boot + 21s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 01(e0x20/s1) Info: enclPd=20, scsiType=0, portMap=01, sasAddr=5000c5000d25eb55, mfi0: 2043 (boot + 21s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 02(e0x20/s2) mfi0: 2044 (boot + 21s/0x0002/info) - Inserted: PD 02(e0x20/s2) Info: enclPd=20, scsiType=0, portMap=02, sasAddr=5000c5000d2420ed, mfi0: 2045
Re: What server hardware are you buying from the big companies these days?
And I say you get what you pay for. My organization uses Dell exclusively and it's been a thorn in my side from day one. The AC power requirements (it seems) for Dells are about 3x as much as Gateways (I know, Gateway doesn't provide servers). The power draw for the Dells don't seem to be any better for them, in fact, they seem to run hotter. iXsystems, the PC-BSD guys, build components and provide hardware warranty like the big companies. I would pick IBM or iXsystems. IBM's warranty policy is written out, the IBMs have had more overall success than any other big company brand, and we're talking the pioneers of the PCs.. IBM or IBM compatible. IBMs are the highest priced units, but I've had zero problems with them. I dream big, only because I can. Good luck. On 6/8/09, Frederique Rijsdijk frederi...@isafeelin.org wrote: ericr wrote: I need to buy some new servers, and mgmt has decreed that we get them from someplace which will provide service contracts with on-site h/w suppport, which means HP, Dell, Sun, IBM, etc. We use Dell almost exclusively. Although Dell doesn't officially support FreeBSD, Dell hardware is tier-1 for FreeBSD. I think their hardware is quite OK. The machines are built well. Haven't had too much to deal with their onsite service (which is a good sign), but the times that I did I think they handled it quite well, the parts were in house within 4 hours and in a case where a motherboard had to be replaced, a Dell technician was sent in as well and did his job fine. Dell's RAID controllers (Perc/5i and Perc/6i) work fine in BSD, and some tools are available although with Linux emulation which kind of sucks. Here's a sample dmesg of a 1950: Copyright (c) 1992-2009 The FreeBSD Project. Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation. FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE-p4 #0: Fri Apr 3 10:28:13 CEST 2009 r...@hostname:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC Timecounter i8254 frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0 CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU5148 @ 2.33GHz (2327.52-MHz K8-class CPU) Origin = GenuineIntel Id = 0x6fb Stepping = 11 Features=0xbfebfbffFPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE Features2=0x4e3bdSSE3,RSVD2,MON,DS_CPL,VMX,EST,TM2,SSSE3,CX16,xTPR,PDCM,DCA AMD Features=0x20100800SYSCALL,NX,LM AMD Features2=0x1LAHF Cores per package: 2 usable memory = 4276400128 (4078 MB) avail memory = 4114935808 (3924 MB) ACPI APIC Table: DELL PE_SC3 FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 2 CPUs cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID: 0 cpu1 (AP): APIC ID: 1 ioapic0: Changing APIC ID to 2 ioapic0 Version 2.0 irqs 0-23 on motherboard kbd1 at kbdmux0 ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413) acpi0: DELL PE_SC3 on motherboard acpi0: [ITHREAD] acpi0: Power Button (fixed) Timecounter ACPI-fast frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000 acpi_timer0: 24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz port 0x808-0x80b on acpi0 acpi_hpet0: High Precision Event Timer iomem 0xfed0-0xfed003ff on acpi0 Timecounter HPET frequency 14318180 Hz quality 900 pcib0: ACPI Host-PCI bridge port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0 pci0: ACPI PCI bus on pcib0 pcib1: ACPI PCI-PCI bridge at device 2.0 on pci0 pci4: ACPI PCI bus on pcib1 pcib2: ACPI PCI-PCI bridge at device 0.0 on pci4 pci5: ACPI PCI bus on pcib2 pcib3: ACPI PCI-PCI bridge at device 0.0 on pci5 pci6: ACPI PCI bus on pcib3 pcib4: PCI-PCI bridge at device 0.0 on pci6 pci7: PCI bus on pcib4 bce0: Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM5708 1000Base-T (B2) mem 0xf400-0xf5ff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci7 miibus0: MII bus on bce0 brgphy0: BCM5708C 10/100/1000baseTX PHY PHY 1 on miibus0 brgphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseT, 1000baseT-FDX, auto bce0: Ethernet address: 00:22:19:82:e8:45 bce0: [ITHREAD] bce0: ASIC (0x57081020); Rev (B2); Bus (PCI-X, 64-bit, 133MHz); F/W (0x04000305); Flags( MFW MSI ) pcib5: ACPI PCI-PCI bridge at device 1.0 on pci5 pci8: ACPI PCI bus on pcib5 pcib6: PCI-PCI bridge at device 0.3 on pci4 pci9: PCI bus on pcib6 pcib7: ACPI PCI-PCI bridge at device 3.0 on pci0 pci1: ACPI PCI bus on pcib7 mfi0: Dell PERC 6 port 0xec00-0xecff mem 0xfc48-0xfc4b,0xfc44-0xfc47 irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1 mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 3.00 mfi0: 2031 (292323270s/0x0020/info) - Shutdown command received from host mfi0: 2032 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started (PCI ID 0060/1000/1f0c/1028) mfi0: 2033 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 1.11.82-0473 mfi0: 2034 (boot + 3s/0x0008/info) - Battery Present mfi0: 2035 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Package version 6.0.3-0002 mfi0: 2036 (boot + 21s/0x0004/info) - Enclosure (SES) discovered on PD 20(c None/p0) mfi0: 2037 (boot + 21s/0x0002/info) -
Re: What server hardware are you buying from the big companies these days?
On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 11:56:35AM -0600, ericr wrote: Hi, I need to buy some new servers, and mgmt has decreed that we get them from someplace which will provide service contracts with on-site h/w suppport, which means HP, Dell, Sun, IBM, etc. Our group has a lot of Dells from Poweredge 650-s to 2950-s and some other groups in our department also run 46xx and some other things. They have been successful and reliable. We have also run a few HP servers with FreeBSD with no major problems, though one came with a DOA motherboard. But they came out and replaced it right away. jerry Has anyone bought servers from one of the big manufacturers lately and had good luck with them? It seems hard to get them to tell you what controllers and chipsets they're using in servers, to compare against the supported hardware list. What I'm looking for isn't all that exotic: rack mountable RAID-5 controller 4-6 or more disks (hot swappable would be nice, but not mandatory) dual power supplies (hot swappable would be nice, but not mandatory) CDROM 2 ethernet ports some RAM a video card an Intel or AMD CPU - single, two CPU, or multicore doesn't really matter. and the all-important onsite service. These things need to be pretty reliable, both of the data centers they're going into are a couple of hours from my house, so I don't want a dead power supply to take out the server. We've used SuperMicro's in the past, and they've been wildly variable. Some of them have run ok for years, some died within weeks, and kept dying no matter what parts we put in. (yes, I checked the power, it was clean. My guess is just a bad run of motherboards). I've got 3 servers that have never been able to stay up for more than a couple of days, we don't even use them. Regardless, any one have suggestions on what current models of servers are out there that run? Thanks! - ericr ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: What server hardware are you buying from the big companies these days?
Hi, I need to buy some new servers, and mgmt has decreed that we get them from someplace which will provide service contracts with on-site h/w suppport, which means HP, Dell, Sun, IBM, etc. I have two Intel servers that I like a lot. I don't have on-site support, but it might be available from one of Intel's official distributors. -- John ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: What server hardware are you buying from the big companies these days?
On Mon, 8 Jun 2009 11:56:35 -0600, ericr erobi...@gmail.com said: E Has anyone bought servers from one of the big manufacturers lately and had E good luck with them? I've always had good luck with Dell, especially the GX-260s. I've used them for file-servers handling over 100 Samba connections at a time, and (considering they're just workstations) they work fine. E We've used SuperMicro's in the past, and they've been wildly variable. E Some of them have run ok for years, some died within weeks, and kept dying E no matter what parts we put in. We have three SuperMicro blade servers. One's worked like a champ, and the other two died. The vendor we used tanked, so no warranty support. I got two IBM X3400 boxes to replace the SuperMicros; the drives were OK, so I got empty enclosures plus some rails, stuffed the drives in, and installed FreeBSD-7.1. My only problem so far has been a BIOS issue, but IBM site-support has been great. -- Karl Vogel I don't speak for the USAF or my company Golfer: Do you think I can get there with a 5-iron? Caddy: Eventually. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
