To dual-cpu or not?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Arifi Koseoglu
  • Start date Start date
A

Arifi Koseoglu

Hello everyone.

I wish to build a high performance PC to run multiple instances of Microsoft
Virtual PC 2004 housing Windows 2000 Server and Windows XP images.

The "virtual" servers will be running MS SQL server and additional
applications, and the "virtual" clients will be accessing them over tcp-ip.

In short, this PC will be the simulation/testing and development environment
for multi-tier software.

One thing I know is that I have to have as much memory as I can afford.

What I do not know is:

1. Which type of Motherboard / Chipset ?
2. Do I need a dual-cpu setup ?
3. Should I go for AMD or Intel ? Which models?
4. Would a SATA MoBo with command-queuing SATA drives be good enough or is
SCSI a must?

Is for dual-cpu stuff, is Asus the way to go, or are there "better"
alternatives (SuperMicro would probably be out of budget, probably...)

Could you please share experiences on similar situations?

Any answers and suggestions will be deeply appreciated
Many thanks in advance,
-arifi
 
Arifi said:
Hello everyone.

I wish to build a high performance PC to run multiple instances of Microsoft
Virtual PC 2004 housing Windows 2000 Server and Windows XP images.
Click to expand...

So you'll have multiple processor hungry threads...
The "virtual" servers will be running MS SQL server and additional
applications, and the "virtual" clients will be accessing them over tcp-ip.

In short, this PC will be the simulation/testing and development environment
for multi-tier software.

One thing I know is that I have to have as much memory as I can afford.

What I do not know is:

1. Which type of Motherboard / Chipset ?
2. Do I need a dual-cpu setup ?
Click to expand...

I would recommend one.
3. Should I go for AMD or Intel ? Which models?
Click to expand...

This leaves Intel's current Xeons and AMD's Opterons, with the
respective boards.
4. Would a SATA MoBo with command-queuing SATA drives be good enough or is
SCSI a must?
Click to expand...

That depends on how disk intensive your tasks are. Something like one of
these inexpensive LSI U160 HAs and a small 15K.3 or MAS may not hurt.
How much I/O (disk, network) do you expect? (This should help you decide
whether you could make do with PCI32/33 only or PCI-X or at least
PCI64/66 would be worth considering.)
Is for dual-cpu stuff, is Asus the way to go, or are there "better"
alternatives (SuperMicro would probably be out of budget, probably...)
Click to expand...

I'm not quite up to date WRT duals, you'd better ask/search in
2cpu.com's forums. I'd check out the "Newcomer's area" first.

Stephan
 
Hello everyone.

I wish to build a high performance PC to run multiple instances of Microsoft
Virtual PC 2004 housing Windows 2000 Server and Windows XP images.

The "virtual" servers will be running MS SQL server and additional
applications, and the "virtual" clients will be accessing them over tcp-ip.

In short, this PC will be the simulation/testing and development environment
for multi-tier software.

One thing I know is that I have to have as much memory as I can afford.

What I do not know is:

1. Which type of Motherboard / Chipset ?
2. Do I need a dual-cpu setup ?
3. Should I go for AMD or Intel ? Which models?
4. Would a SATA MoBo with command-queuing SATA drives be good enough or is
SCSI a must?

Is for dual-cpu stuff, is Asus the way to go, or are there "better"
alternatives (SuperMicro would probably be out of budget, probably...)

Could you please share experiences on similar situations?
Click to expand...

I run a development center and you are going down a bad design path. Do
not mix your servers, you will develop problems that you can't resolve
without extra time.

Our typical server for development and testing (separate servers) is a
ASUS PC-DL Deluxe with Dual Xeon 3 Ghz CPU's, 2GB RAM, Dual 250GB SATA
on the Promise onboard RAID controller. Server cost is about $2000 in
this version.

For database servers (Oracle or MS) we purchase the PC-DL, Dual Xeon's,
3GB RAM, Promise SX-6000 (6 x 250GB IDE) for the database data files,
onboard Intel RAID-1 of 2 x 250 GB for the OS and log files, and with a
chenbro server case and dual 550W PSU, the entire server cost (including
a Windows 2003 Std/5Cal) is only $4300 (USD).

Our development server is setup for development, a install script is
made for a non-team member to install the app/db on the testing server
and provide feedback - if it fails any step it goes back. The testing
server is rebuilt, fresh, between testing cycles so that we can be sure
that they remain pure (Ghost Images help this a lot). From Development,
then testing, then pre-release there are three sets of servers, each one
gets an install plan where if anything fails it goes back to the
previous person to correct it. While you may think that this is overly
complex and time consuming, we have a better than 99% first install/qa
rating at customers site, and it actually saves them/us time in the
process (once you get use to it).

We've been using the ASUS PC-DL Deluxe boards for some time, I have
several of them in my home even, and we've not had one fail yet.
 
Stephan said:
Arifi Koseoglu schrieb:




So you'll have multiple processor hungry threads...




I would recommend one.




This leaves Intel's current Xeons and AMD's Opterons, with the
respective boards.
Click to expand...

Asus, unfortunately, seems to care not the least
bit for the Opteron dualie market.

I'd go for one of the Tyan S288x boards.
Two Socket 940's, eight DIMM slots, dual Gb NICs.
Gives you the option of starting with a pair of
Opterons now and upgrading to dual-core Opties
later.

Tyan rates them for 2 GB DIMMs, but I know of one
person who has successfully tried upgraded an S2885
from eight 2 GB DIMMS to four 4 GB DIMMs and four
2 GB DIMMs for a total of 24 GB. All DIMMs from
Crucial.

Personally, I've built 4 workstation systems around
the S2885. All owners were fully satisfied except for
the need to use a PCI card to get some USB 2 ports -
the on-board ports are only USB 1.1.

One of those customers uses VMWare 3.0. He has two
Opteron 246's, 8 GB of RAM, and runs about three
dozen different VMWare virtual machines so he can
test his web work with many different OS+browser
combinations. Quite different from the OP's situation
since in his case usually only the foreground VM that
he is either developing in or testing in needs a lot
of CPU time.
That depends on how disk intensive your tasks are. Something like one of
these inexpensive LSI U160 HAs and a small 15K.3 or MAS may not hurt.
How much I/O (disk, network) do you expect? (This should help you decide
whether you could make do with PCI32/33 only or PCI-X or at least
PCI64/66 would be worth considering.)
Click to expand...

Boards in the Tyan S288x series have a 4 port SATA RAID
controller, IDE ports, PCI-X slots, and optional on-board
SCSI. Keeps all of your options open.
 
Many thanks for the replies..

Now I have a clearer image of what I am looking at.

As to Leythos' words:While I tend to agree, I cannot justify setting up >= 1 "real" servers for
each of our customers and their different configurations. It will be just
too expensive.

Rob Stow's suggestion of the TYAN motherboard:looks very good, but the TYAN distributor here in Turkey is not as
well-known and probably not as well-established as the ASUS distributor,
which brings support etc. questions to mind.

Stephan, I will definitely go and look to the newcomers area of the
2cpu.com's forums.

Now, if we come back to my "Clearer Image", I must have underestimated the
cost figures. I do not wish to shell out > 1000 USD for the MoBo + CPU +
Single Disk. This, I believe, takes me out of the Xeon family, and puts me
into the lower-end Opterons, if I want a Dual CPU system, and no ASUS. Are
there P4 (Not Xeon) dual-cpu motherboards? Or do I want a strong single-CPU
system. Did I say a clearer picture? Ehm.. I meant I am gettin more and more
confused !!

Cheers
-arifi
 
Now, if we come back to my "Clearer Image", I must have underestimated the
cost figures. I do not wish to shell out > 1000 USD for the MoBo + CPU +
Single Disk. This, I believe, takes me out of the Xeon family, and puts me
into the lower-end Opterons, if I want a Dual CPU system, and no ASUS. Are
there P4 (Not Xeon) dual-cpu motherboards? Or do I want a strong single-CPU
system. Did I say a clearer picture? Ehm.. I meant I am gettin more and more
confused !!
Click to expand...

The non-Xeon P4 systems do not support SMP (Dual CPU's). In the early
days of the P3 you could get Duals that were of any type, but Intel did
away with the ability to use the cheaper CPU's in dual boards.

A typical ASUS PC-DL Dual Xeon system costs as follows:

PC-DL Deluxe Motherboard: $245
Dual 2.4Ghz Xeon CPU's - each $240 or $480 for both
2GB RAM - 4 x 512MB ($90 each - Crucial Memory) $360 for all 4
SATA 250GB Drives 2 x $150 - $300 for both

Case + 550W PSU = $200

Total Cost = $1585 (without OS)

For a server, there is no such thing as a strong CPU in a single CPU
environment - the system will be CPU bound at some point. Even a slow
Xeon Dual CPU system will outperform a fast P4 CPU under server loads -
meaning that 2 CPU's are always better than one CPU for heavy duty work,
even in workstations.
 
Hello again,

Once I saw your calculation, I jumped back to the dual vagoon! :))

Apparently the PC-DL Deluxe houses the PDC20378 SATA Raid controller. I have
digged out from a Linux newsgroup that this chip supports Native Command
Queueing (do you know whether this is true? Promise's site search does not
look like working...) Is there a more popular marketing name for this chip?

If the PDC20378 really supports NCQ, I may actually wait till the Barracuda
7200.8 series hits the market (has it?), which supports NCQ. Or should I
not?

I would probably start with a non-RAID two-drive system, one disk housing
the OS and applications, the other dedicated to virtual machines and their
virtual disks. But then, maybe I should separate the "virtual servers" to a
disk, ans "virtual clients" to another??

Questions.. questions..

Answers ? :))

Cheers + thanks
-arifi
 
Hello again,

Once I saw your calculation, I jumped back to the dual vagoon! :))

Apparently the PC-DL Deluxe houses the PDC20378 SATA Raid controller. I have
digged out from a Linux newsgroup that this chip supports Native Command
Queueing (do you know whether this is true? Promise's site search does not
look like working...) Is there a more popular marketing name for this chip?

If the PDC20378 really supports NCQ, I may actually wait till the Barracuda
7200.8 series hits the market (has it?), which supports NCQ. Or should I
not?

I would probably start with a non-RAID two-drive system, one disk housing
the OS and applications, the other dedicated to virtual machines and their
virtual disks. But then, maybe I should separate the "virtual servers" to a
disk, ans "virtual clients" to another??

Questions.. questions..
Click to expand...

First, if we're going to continue discussing this, you must learn to
BOTTOM POST - it's the proper method when making a reply.

Since I'm not running Linux (any variant) on the PC-DL I can't speak to
drivers.

What I can suggest is that you use the onboard Promise RAID controller
and setup a MIRROR, then setup partitions for what you need. Let the
RAID controller take the entire drive (0/1) and present it as a single
disk. I have my dual 250's setup as RAID-1 and partitioned as follows:

Part 1 = 12GB, C drive
Part 2 = 4GB, H drive
Part 2 = 4GB, I drive
Part 2 = 4GB, J drive
Part 2 = 4GB, K drive
Part 2 = 4GB, L drive
Part 2 = 4GB, M drive
Part 2 = 4GB, N drive
Part 2 = 4GB, O drive
Part 2 = 4GB, p drive

Each partition is a clients project (web project) and permits them
FTP/IIS space on it - I use FileZilla FTP Server so that I don't have to
mess with the half-baked MS FTP service - this lets me manage users and
bandwidth to the partitions and not have to use OS level
users/passwords.

Since I don't run the VS, I can't tell you the best solution, I buy
servers for what you are doing with VS.
 
Leythos said:
First, if we're going to continue discussing this, you must learn to
BOTTOM POST - it's the proper method when making a reply.

Since I'm not running Linux (any variant) on the PC-DL I can't speak to
drivers.
Click to expand...

Ah no, I am not going to run Linux either, I only came across the mentioning
of the NCQ support in such a newsgroup. Do you say this is only a driver
issue? Meaning it's the drivers and not the chip hw that determines the NCQ
support (specifically for the PDC20378, I mean)
What I can suggest is that you use the onboard Promise RAID controller
and setup a MIRROR, then setup partitions for what you need. Let the
RAID controller take the entire drive (0/1) and present it as a single
disk. I have my dual 250's setup as RAID-1 and partitioned as follows:

Part 1 = 12GB, C drive
Part 2 = 4GB, H drive
Part 2 = 4GB, I drive
Part 2 = 4GB, J drive
Part 2 = 4GB, K drive
Part 2 = 4GB, L drive
Part 2 = 4GB, M drive
Part 2 = 4GB, N drive
Part 2 = 4GB, O drive
Part 2 = 4GB, p drive
Click to expand...

Thank you for all your input, Leythos - very much appreciated.

-arifi
 
Ah no, I am not going to run Linux either, I only came across the mentioning
of the NCQ support in such a newsgroup. Do you say this is only a driver
issue? Meaning it's the drivers and not the chip hw that determines the NCQ
support (specifically for the PDC20378, I mean)
Click to expand...

I have not clue on this, I just install Windows 2003 Advanced Server and
then Dual 250GB drives (sometimes just Standard Server) or I use a Dual
250GB setup on the Intel RAID Controller and purchase the Promise SX-
6000 6 channel RAID controller for ATA drives (for database servers).

Don't forget to make backups of the systems - tape is still a good
thing.
 
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