On Saturday 29 December 2007 02:13:09 skommar21 wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Does any body know where to get good Assembled serverin hyderbad?
> Which mother board ,processor are the most widely used in servers?.
> The server will be acting as fileserver and Storage server.
>
> Any information will be helpful
>
> Thanks and regards
>
> Sridhar
Hi Sridhar:
Some of the key attributes required for server grade boards are:
. support for system management software
. support for error correction
. support for registered memory
. support for multiple processors
. support for 64-bit and 66 MHz PCI expansion slots
. support for PCI-X (4x, 16x) expansion slots
. support for PCI-Express (2x) expansion slots
In Feb 2007, i was working on server board jumper pin troubleshooting
and some firmware related issues. Here is some info based on the data
collated in my notebook.
Typical processors are:
. Intel Pentium III Xeon
. Intel Pentium 4 Xeon
you may want to pay special attention to processor version with large L2
cache.
In the intel world, the bus chips are organized at two nodes:
. North bridge
- memory controller hub (MCH; Intel)
- PAC (PCI, AGP controller)
. South bridge
- I/O controller Hub (ICH; Hub)
You also need to have a connector that connects that South bridge and
the North bridge. On server boards, there is a *dedicated* bus that
speeds up data stransfer. For Intel, you have 'Intel Accelerated Hub
architecture'.
ServerWorks (now Broadcom) is one very good server motherboard vendor.
For Pentium III Xeon, Server Set III is available.
Board Name Processor/FSB NorthBridge SouthBridge
Champion LE 2 Proc / 133 MHz NB6635 3.0 OSB4,CSB5
Champ HE-SL 2 Proc / 133 MHz NB6576 OSB4,CSB5
Champ HE 4 Proc / 100 MHz NB6536 2.0 OSB4, CSB5
For Pentium 4 Xeon, Server Set IV is available.
GC : Grand Champion
Board Name Processor/FSB NorthBridge SouthBridge
GC SL Entry 2 Proc / 533 MHz CMIC-LE CSB5,CSB6
GC LE Volume 2 Proc / 533 MHz CMIC-SL CSB5,CSB6
GC HE Enterprise 4 Proc / 400 MHz CMIC-HE CSB5,CSB6
CSB6 is the most advanced South bridge (SB) chip used by any Server
Works chipset to date.
Flash ROM, USB 1.1 ports, ATA-100 IDE host adapter, ATA, RAID-0,1,5 are
connected to South bridge (SB) chips like CSB5, CSB6.
>From storage perspective, choice of hard disk would be important.
- SCSI disk
- SATA II disk
SCSI is a good idea if you are going to have very large number of
reads/writes or setting up a box for OLTP.
SATA II with 32MB cache and NCQ enabled is a technically sound and
affordable option.
It may be prudent to avoid 1 TB HDD that have hit the market in the last
6 month or so. They are priced quite high, given the novelty as of now.
Hitachi and Seagate are two options that i've evaluated very closely and
i tend to lean towards Seagate mostly.
Armed with the information above, you may want to scan the technical
specification sheet of:
- Dell Poweredge servers
- HP Proliant Server
- IBM e-series entry level servers
That will help see what additional value add (beyond their brand name)
do these vendors provide.
A assembled server vendor will be a bit of hunt at Chenoy Trade Centre
(CTC) and there will be some good guys who work on this. In one of the
meets, i remember Chaitanya and perhaps Namita talking about enclosure
vendor and FC cables.
Till date all my boxes are self assembled including servers. Buy HDD
from one vendor, processor from another, board from yet another one,
memory from elsewhere etc.
The point of view, i have is:
"Bundling is a technique for clubbing the weak with the strong".
it's applicable for price and for quality as well.
Certainly, this is more work. At the sametime, it helps me learn up all
thats available on each of the components and then have complete
ownership, control and responsibility for the stuff that i build up.
However, i have made mistakes and bought cards that don't work with
Linux or BSD, chassis that is flaky, drives that needed to be replaced
It's part of the learning process and my digital meter is always handy.
Please do share your thoughts and experience about the vendors you deal
with.
--
thanks
Saifi.
