Re: 1U server recommendation
On 7/27/05, Matthew Bettinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello, Can anyone recommend a decent rack server from HP, Dell, IBM or CDW that will run OpenBSD for webserver use? I would prefer a machine that has SCSI drives with Mirror Raid capabilities. I know I can go piecemeal one from FRY's but I need one that can have a hardware support agreement tied to it. I was glancing at the sunfire v20z , ibm xseries 306 and HP DL360 with Smart Array 6i. The dl360 looks like it fits the bill but I have had problems in the past with the smart array on older DL class boxes. The server(s) will be used for web shell and sftp services under medium loads. Thank you. -mb www.mullet.se offers *BSD tested servers from 1U and up, I placed an order for a 1U box last week, don't know how they ship outside sweden though. -- // Johan
Re: 1U server recommendation
Brandon Mercer wrote: Matthew Bettinger wrote: Hello, Can anyone recommend a decent rack server from HP, Dell, IBM or CDW that will run OpenBSD for webserver use? I would prefer a machine that has SCSI drives with Mirror Raid capabilities. I know I can go piecemeal one from FRY's but I need one that can have a hardware support agreement tied to it. Hmmm - going and searching the sites you mentioned for 1U servers will get you any and all info you want. Why not do it yourself? -- Best regards, Chris Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
Re: 1U server recommendation
Kevin wrote: On 8/23/05, Chris [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Brandon Mercer wrote: Matthew Bettinger wrote: Can anyone recommend a decent rack server from HP, Dell, IBM or CDW that will run OpenBSD for webserver use? I would prefer a machine that has SCSI drives with Mirror Raid capabilities. I know I can go piecemeal one from FRY's but I need one that can have a hardware support agreement tied to it. If you can go beyond the big vendors, you might also look at smaller companies that support OpenBSD. Iron Systems, Sera Systems, etc. Hmmm - going and searching the sites you mentioned for 1U servers will get you any and all info you want. Why not do it yourself? It's difficult at best to determine from their documentation which model from which major vendor is fully supported by OpenBSD. For some Dell desktops, they don't even make it clear if the server comes with EIDE or SATA disks, much less whose chipset is used, and looking at servers from Dell and IBM, they just state embedded RAID and if I ask about which chipset is in which model, the sales rep points me towards their download area for MS-Windows drivers. Dell is getting better about giving details, but there are still caveats. Our 2650s all have Adaptec 'aac' RAID chipsets and won't boot 3.7 GENERIC, while the newer 1850/2850 machines work under 3.7 but the 'ami' RAID controller isn't detected correctly by earlier releases. Rather than buying hardware blindly and hoping for the best, reading the archives and then posting to misc@ is how I hedge my bets when ordering new servers from Dell, Sun, etc. Kevin Kadow Perhaps - but no matter what user feel about HP, they DO have the best site for buying servers and or tailoring them to your needs - IF you have the funds. -- Best regards, Chris The only winner in the war of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.
Re: 1U server recommendation
On Aug 23, 2005, at 8:11 PM, Kevin wrote: If you can go beyond the big vendors, you might also look at smaller companies that support OpenBSD. Iron Systems, Sera Systems, etc. I've been getting quotes from Iron Systems the last few days. I haven't ordered any of their hardware yet, but they seem to offer a good value. -- Jason Dixon DixonGroup Consulting http://www.dixongroup.net
Re: 1U server recommendation
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jason Dixon Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 7:33 PM To: Kevin Cc: misc@openbsd.org Subject: Re: 1U server recommendation On Aug 23, 2005, at 8:11 PM, Kevin wrote: If you can go beyond the big vendors, you might also look at smaller companies that support OpenBSD. Iron Systems, Sera Systems, etc. I've been getting quotes from Iron Systems the last few days. I haven't ordered any of their hardware yet, but they seem to offer a good value. -- Jason Dixon DixonGroup Consulting http://www.dixongroup.net I ended up buying one machine (for starters) from the folks at Iron Systems. They must be running JIT over there because the order was delayed a couple of days due to lack of hardware. They waived the shipping and next dayed the box as soon as possible. It was a pleasurable experience and a company I will be doing business with in the future. LSI card, 4 disk scsi, and bsd.mp 3.8-Beta. Re, -mb
Re: 1U server recommendation
On 8/23/05, Matthew Bettinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jason Dixon wrote: On Aug 23, 2005, at 8:11 PM, Kevin wrote: If you can go beyond the big vendors, you might also look at smaller companies that support OpenBSD. Iron Systems, ... I've been getting quotes from Iron Systems the last few days. I haven't ordered any of their hardware yet, but they seem to offer a good value. I've been getting quotes from Bob Sidhu at Iron Systems for the last few hours, he's been very responsive to my queries regarding serial BIOS redirection and OpenBSD supported cards. I'm working on a serial console server project and have some odd requirements to meet, plus a (relatively) tight budget. I ended up buying one machine (for starters) from the folks at Iron Systems. They must be running JIT over there because the order was delayed a couple of days due to lack of hardware. They waived the shipping and next dayed the box as soon as possible. It was a pleasurable experience and a company I will be doing business with in the future. LSI card, 4 disk scsi, and bsd.mp 3.8-Beta. I don't mind waiting a couple of extra days to get a system that I *know* will work. I'll definitely include Iron on my short list of vendors for my next project, even if it does mean fighting with our purchasing department to buy computers from !(Dell|Sun). Kevin Kadow Disclaimer: I only know of Iron Systems from Steve Halligan's posts, and exchanging a few emails with them this evening.
Re: 1U server recommendation
On Tue, 23 Aug 2005, Jason Dixon wrote: On Aug 23, 2005, at 8:11 PM, Kevin wrote: If you can go beyond the big vendors, you might also look at smaller companies that support OpenBSD. Iron Systems, Sera Systems, etc. I've been getting quotes from Iron Systems the last few days. I haven't ordered any of their hardware yet, but they seem to offer a good value. I've bought quite a bit from Iron Systems in it's various incarnations of the last 5 years or so. diana
Re: 1U server recommendation
On Tue, 23 Aug 2005, Don Boling wrote: SNIP Are their sales staff very knowledgeable? Dell's are not! The Dell rep asked me what kind of Windows version, BSD was. He was schooled. --don they speak BSD just fine diana
Re: 1U server recommendation
On Tue, 23 Aug 2005, Kevin wrote: I've been getting quotes from Bob Sidhu at Iron Systems for the last few hours, he's been very responsive to my queries regarding serial BIOS redirection and OpenBSD supported cards. Bob Sidhu has always been very helpful to me in the past. Iron Systems even helped me out in one of the hardware fundraisers I did or maybe they actually provided hardware, gee I can't remember. FWIW, they are very supportive of the BSD's. diana
Re: 1U server recommendation
On 2005-07-30 13:01:32 +1000, Ioan Nemes wrote: Martin Schrvder wrote: The only thing from Sun on the v20z is the label (and an os which you won't use). Yes, and Dell is all re-branded Intel. Next time you see a v20z read the label at the back. Best Martin -- http://www.tm.oneiros.de
Re: 1U server recommendation
On 2005-07-30 14:13:25 +0200, Martin Schrvder wrote: On 2005-07-30 13:01:32 +1000, Ioan Nemes wrote: Martin Schrvder wrote: The only thing from Sun on the v20z is the label (and an os which you won't use). Yes, and Dell is all re-branded Intel. Next time you see a v20z read the label at the back. Here's a picture of a v40z: http://www.sun.com/smrc/photohtmls/ppservsunfirev40z-08s.html See also http://www.newisys.com/products/4300.html Best Martin -- http://www.tm.oneiros.de
Re: 1U server recommendation
That is not a valid security reason. Sorry. Hogwash. It is when the machine doesn't run OpenBSD. Not all of mine do. and I don't count on *any* vendor other than OpenBSD doing anything like W^X on i386. (i.e. solaris, windows, etc.) I do expect in the next year or two we will see stuff making use of the nx bit in places where I redeploy some of these where I would not see that if I had bought i386 only hardware - which means it may (if they implemented it right) stop something from being exploited. We're a university, When I buy this stuff it gets used in various capacities untill it falls over from metal fatigue. I have to think 4-5 years down the road, and what happens when people run crap (I.E. not openbsd) on them. -Bob
Re: 1U server recommendation
Kevin wrote: While Sun is offering some very nice AMD64 (and Sparc64) kit, Sun just never seems to understand that customers want embedded hardware RAID controllers on the motherboard. Kevin Kadow No need for such thing, it would make things (much) more expensive, DiskSuite will do. Ioan
Re: 1U server recommendation
Martin Schrvder wrote: On 2005-07-28 13:21:06 -0600, Bob Beck wrote: BTW, my one bitch about the v20z is sun are a bunch of retards and put all the vents on the top and bottom, so I'm reluctant to rack them one on top of the other. The only thing from Sun on the v20z is the label (and an os which you won't use). Best Martin Yes, and Dell is all re-branded Intel. Ioan
Re: 1U server recommendation
Matthew Bettinger wrote: Hello, Can anyone recommend a decent rack server from HP, Dell, IBM or CDW that will run OpenBSD for webserver use? I would prefer a machine that has SCSI drives with Mirror Raid capabilities. I know I can go piecemeal one from FRY's but I need one that can have a hardware support agreement tied to it. I was glancing at the sunfire v20z , While the V20z is way overkill for a webserver we run them here and they work great! I've also had very good experience running the V100's depending on what kind of load you'll have. Brandon
Re: 1U server recommendation
We are running production web servers on OpenBSD running on IBM 325E's as well as Sun V20Z's, running OpenBSD. We've had decent luck with both the i386 and amd64 distro on those. I have used a demo HP with good success too, but don't have one in production anywhere. I'm not using the internal raid stuff. Most of our web servers are just that, and run off an ide disk using an external data source (nfs or database). They then sit behind a pair of carp/pfsync load balancers that advertise the address used to hit them, and then redirect to a pool of these servers using round-robin sticky-address, so I'm using redundancy at the whole machine level rather than just worrying about the disk. For those machines where I do use raid, I'm using a dell perc4/DC card stuffed into the machine (it's an ami under OpenBSD) hooked up to a Dell 220S u320 scsi jbod. We are using these for Database (mysql/horde), AFS, and NFS services. (FWIW, we purchased 27 IBM 325e's and 9 V20z's about 6 months ago). Only thing to note in this case is that if you run i386 instead of amd64 on them, you should used 3.7-stable or current to get the locore.s and apm.c fixes so that apm doesn't make your I/O go appallingly slow. The other alternative is to use config -e to disable apm in the kernel, at which point you won't be affected. I use serial consoles exclusively on them, hooked through cisco 2511's talking to a private network behind an openbsd box running conserver. The serial bios's are usable in both of them but need to be configured so that serial redirection happens out com port A, and is *disabled* after boot. (the default is for it to remain enabled). You then tell OpenBSD to use a serial console in the usual way. Just my experiences. -Bob * Matthew Bettinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-07-27 18:47]: Hello, Can anyone recommend a decent rack server from HP, Dell, IBM or CDW that will run OpenBSD for webserver use? I would prefer a machine that has SCSI drives with Mirror Raid capabilities. I know I can go piecemeal one from FRY's but I need one that can have a hardware support agreement tied to it. I was glancing at the sunfire v20z , ibm xseries 306 and HP DL360 with Smart Array 6i. The dl360 looks like it fits the bill but I have had problems in the past with the smart array on older DL class boxes. The server(s) will be used for web shell and sftp services under medium loads. Thank you. -mb -- Bob Beck Computing and Network Services [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Alberta True Evil hides its real intentions in its street address.
Re: 1U server recommendation
* Marco Peereboom [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-07-27 19:52]: I run heaps off Dell PowerEdge 1550, 1650, 1750 and 1850 without issues. FWIW I also run a pile of dell 650, 750, 1650, 1750 machines with good success. I use the ami builtin for raid on the 1650 and 1750 with good success running i386. 650's and 750's are ide only. I don't have an 1850 because by the time they came out, Dell didn't have an amd64 based server, and Sun and IBM did, so we switched. Prior to that I bought lots of dell stuff and had good experiences with them. (still do with their disk and raid). If you don't care about amd64 (which we do, because it has significant performance and security implications in the future) they are a very good choice. It's unfortunate Dell is so far in bed with Intel that they will never ship an amd64 machine. I'd love to buy a bunch from them :) -Bob
Re: 1U server recommendation
Kevin wrote: On 7/28/05, Bob Beck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't have an 1850 because by the time they came out, Dell didn't have an amd64 based server, and Sun and IBM did, so we switched. Prior to that I bought lots of dell stuff and had good experiences with them. (still do with their disk and raid). If you don't care about amd64 (which we do, because it has significant performance and security implications in the future) they are a very good choice. On this subject, I am looking for a good dual-processor AMD64 (1U or 2U) with OpenBSD-supported embedded hardware RAID 1 or RAID 5. SCSI is good, IDE/SATA is acceptable, basically an equivalent to Dell's PE1750 or PE2850. Suggestions? It's unfortunate Dell is so far in bed with Intel that they will never ship an amd64 machine. I'd love to buy a bunch from them :) At work I don't really have a choice -- we can either buy Sun or Dell, or spend weeks justifying not using the approved vendors. While Sun is offering some very nice AMD64 (and Sparc64) kit, Sun just never seems to understand that customers want embedded hardware RAID controllers on the motherboard. the V20z has embedded Raid built nicely on the MB. I think it works well... doesn't this suite your needs? Brandon Kevin Kadow
Re: 1U server recommendation
At work I don't really have a choice -- we can either buy Sun or Dell, or spend weeks justifying not using the approved vendors. Then my reccomendation under your supported hardware agreement is exactly what I use: sun V20Z server Dell Perc4/DC raid card Dell Jbod (i.e. 220s or something) hooked up to the PERC card. While Sun is offering some very nice AMD64 (and Sparc64) kit, Sun just never seems to understand that customers want embedded hardware RAID controllers on the motherboard. While it would occasionally be nice I find the embedded stuff is usually garbage, and you can only have 3 drives in a 1U chassis. at the point I'm going to do this I'd just as soon have two machines with one drive and do the redundancy between machines instead of trying to make an ultra reliable 3 disk setup on crap. When I do want it reliable, I do what I suggested to you above. BTW, my one bitch about the v20z is sun are a bunch of retards and put all the vents on the top and bottom, so I'm reluctant to rack them one on top of the other. -Bob
Re: 1U server recommendation
Sorry for my questions, but: On 7/28/05, Bob Beck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Marco Peereboom [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-07-27 19:52]: I run heaps off Dell PowerEdge 1550, 1650, 1750 and 1850 without issues. FWIW I also run a pile of dell 650, 750, 1650, 1750 machines with good success. I use the ami builtin for raid on the 1650 and 1750 with good success running i386. 650's and 750's are ide only. I don't have an 1850 because by the time they came out, Dell didn't have an amd64 based server, and Sun and IBM did, so we switched. Prior to that I bought lots of dell stuff and had good experiences with them. (still do with their disk and raid). If you don't care about amd64 (which we do, because it has significant performance and security implications in the future) they are a very good choice. Why do you say that? performance and security implications It's unfortunate Dell is so far in bed with Intel that they will never ship an amd64 machine. I'd love to buy a bunch from them :) -Bob
Re: 1U server recommendation
On 2005-07-28 13:21:06 -0600, Bob Beck wrote: BTW, my one bitch about the v20z is sun are a bunch of retards and put all the vents on the top and bottom, so I'm reluctant to rack them one on top of the other. The only thing from Sun on the v20z is the label (and an os which you won't use). Best Martin -- http://www.tm.oneiros.de
Re: 1U server recommendation
On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 11:38:31 -0600 Bob Beck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We are running production web servers on OpenBSD running on IBM 325E's as well as Sun V20Z's, running OpenBSD. We've had decent luck with both the i386 and amd64 distro on those. I have used a demo HP with good success too, but don't have one in production anywhere. I'm not using the internal raid stuff. a word of caution about the IBM X series: while there are a lot of good systems in it, the ServeRaid controllers are problematic. they are sourced from a variety of vendors, and some are supported and some (e.g. Mylex) are not. Caveat Emptor and all that... richard -- Richard Welty [EMAIL PROTECTED] Averill Park Networking Java, PHP, PostgreSQL, Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security Well, if you're not going to expect unexpected flames, what's the point of going anywhere? -- Truckle the Uncivil
Re: 1U server recommendation
* Shawn K. Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-07-28 14:58]: On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 17:36 -0300, Gustavo Rios wrote: Why do you say that? performance and security implications amd64 supports W^X in hardware, i386 doesn't. Bingo. You got it. -Bob
Re: 1U server recommendation
* Shawn K. Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-07-28 14:58]: On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 17:36 -0300, Gustavo Rios wrote: Why do you say that? performance and security implications amd64 supports W^X in hardware, i386 doesn't. Bingo. You got it. This is hogwash. Our W^X support is just as solid on i386 as it is on amd64, because on all our platforms we are very careful with the mapping of X and W objects. The i386 does fine. That is not a valid security reason. Sorry.
Re: 1U server recommendation
And about performance reason? Thanks once more. On 7/28/05, Theo de Raadt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Shawn K. Quinn [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2005-07-28 14:58]: On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 17:36 -0300, Gustavo Rios wrote: Why do you say that? performance and security implications amd64 supports W^X in hardware, i386 doesn't. Bingo. You got it. This is hogwash. Our W^X support is just as solid on i386 as it is on amd64, because on all our platforms we are very careful with the mapping of X and W objects. The i386 does fine. That is not a valid security reason. Sorry.
1U server recommendation
Hello, Can anyone recommend a decent rack server from HP, Dell, IBM or CDW that will run OpenBSD for webserver use? I would prefer a machine that has SCSI drives with Mirror Raid capabilities. I know I can go piecemeal one from FRY's but I need one that can have a hardware support agreement tied to it. I was glancing at the sunfire v20z , ibm xseries 306 and HP DL360 with Smart Array 6i. The dl360 looks like it fits the bill but I have had problems in the past with the smart array on older DL class boxes. The server(s) will be used for web shell and sftp services under medium loads. Thank you. -mb
Re: 1U server recommendation
On Jul 26, 2005, at 11:24 PM, Matthew Bettinger wrote: Hello, Can anyone recommend a decent rack server from HP, Dell, IBM or CDW that will run OpenBSD for webserver use? I would prefer a machine that has SCSI drives with Mirror Raid capabilities. I know I can go piecemeal one from FRY's but I need one that can have a hardware support agreement tied to it. I was glancing at the sunfire v20z , ibm xseries 306 and HP DL360 with Smart Array 6i. The dl360 looks like it fits the bill but I have had problems in the past with the smart array on older DL class boxes. The server(s) will be used for web shell and sftp services under medium loads. Thank you. I've been happy with our recent purchase of Dell PowerEdge 750's for the same purposes you mention. We neglected any hardware RAID in favor of OpenBSD RAIDframe. -- Jason Dixon DixonGroup Consulting http://www.dixongroup.net
Re: 1U server recommendation
I run heaps off Dell PowerEdge 1550, 1650, 1750 and 1850 without issues. On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 10:24:18PM -0500, Matthew Bettinger wrote: Hello, Can anyone recommend a decent rack server from HP, Dell, IBM or CDW that will run OpenBSD for webserver use? I would prefer a machine that has SCSI drives with Mirror Raid capabilities. I know I can go piecemeal one from FRY's but I need one that can have a hardware support agreement tied to it. I was glancing at the sunfire v20z , ibm xseries 306 and HP DL360 with Smart Array 6i. The dl360 looks like it fits the bill but I have had problems in the past with the smart array on older DL class boxes. The server(s) will be used for web shell and sftp services under medium loads. Thank you. -mb
Re: 1U server recommendation
On 7/27/05, Marco Peereboom [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 10:24:18PM -0500, Matthew Bettinger wrote: Can anyone recommend a decent rack server from HP, Dell, IBM or CDW that will run OpenBSD for webserver use? I would prefer a machine that has SCSI drives with Mirror Raid capabilities. I know I can go piecemeal one from FRY's but I need one that can have a hardware support agreement tied to it. I run heaps off Dell PowerEdge 1550, 1650, 1750 and 1850 without issues. Similar results here. The PE1850 is a solid machine, with (optional) dual power supplies, hardware mirroring SCSI controller, and if you really want to get crazy, you can even configure it to use half the RAM as a spare bank so even a DIMM failure won't take the server down (haven't tested this personally). Some PE models can be ordered with your choice of embedded 'bge' or 'em' interfaces, go with 'em'. Same goes for the RAID controller -- not all PERCs are the supported 'ami' LSILogic MegaRAID chipset; the PERC4/ei in the 1850 is supported as of 3.7. Lastly, most (all?) current PowerEdge products can be configured for serial console in the BIOS, many have optional (not OpenBSD supported) DRAC network management daughterboards for remote recovery from just about any type of crash. The OpenManage server runs on Linux or MS-Windows. Kevin Kadow
