Dual Opteron Server Motherboard

Capm · Post by **Capm** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 8:50 pm

There don't appear to be many around

Gigabyte has one, and MSI has one, but almost every place I see building systems is using Tyan's S2882G3NR like This one

I'm building a server for work, you guys have any input on which board to use?

I'm leaning toward the Tyan

Capm · Post by **Capm** » Fri Oct 01, 2004 10:45 pm

These are the Parts I am outlining for the server:

Antec 550watt PSU
Skyhawk IPC-5101B (5U Rackmount Case)
Tyan S2882G3NR (Dual Opteron MB)
2x AMD Opteron 242 (1.6ghz)
2 GB Ram (512 x4)PC3200 DDR400 CL2.5 ECC Registered, Samsung
Powerware MS-324A SATA Hot-Swap Raid Cage
4x 74GB WD 10,000rpm SATA Hard Drive
DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive (cheap as any)
Iomega 35GB/90GB REV ATAPI Drive
Windows 2000 Pro

This punches out at about $2900

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 7:09 am

You must be planning on upgrading those 242 opterons to a faster model later correct?

Capm · Post by **Capm** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 8:05 am

Actually, those are faster than what was outlined to me, but if need be, yes, I would.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 9:10 am

Makes sense to me then, quite a bit of power now and at a later date you could pop in dual 248 opterons for a instant upgrade. What is the configuration of those hard drives? RAID5? 1? 0+1?

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 6:15 pm

holy shiz!

2 independant banks of DCDDR!!

Instig8 · Post by **Instig8** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 6:38 pm

What's the server's function? Just curious.

Capm · Post by **Capm** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 6:52 pm

Its going to be our main server for all our cable modems and wireless internet subscribers, DHCP and all that

The raid configuration, I've got to do some reading up on it because I've never had the opportunity to actually work on a raid system before - I want to set it up so that the first drive boots, and 2 drives mirror that drive, the 4th hard drive gets rotated weekly and stuck in a safe, which is why I want the hot-swap cage. Any advice on this would be most helpful.

Instig8 · Post by **Instig8** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 8:17 pm

You'll need to read up on RAID. And check out the manual for the MOBO ( http://www.tyan.com/support/html/manuals.html ). Unless you intend to shut down the machine when swapping drives (which isn't bad considering the history of Windows), make sure the MOBO supports it.

Why 3 drives? Two are enough. Or, make the 3rd drive an automatic backup in case one of the main 2 fail.

You'll need RAID 1 (mirroring), minimum. Use RAID 10 (mirroring and striping) for faster reads/writes, but it will require a minimum of 4 live drives and you will have to swap 2 at a time.

As any experienced administrator will tell you: Take frequent backups. Remember, RAID is not a substitute for backups.

Capm · Post by **Capm** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 8:25 pm

Yea, regular backups are what the iomega rev drive is for.

The reason for the 3 drives is because thats the smallest hot-swap raid cage I could find.

Instig8 · Post by **Instig8** » Sat Oct 02, 2004 8:33 pm

Coolness