[K12OSN] server hardware advice needed

[R. Scott Belford]

Lee Myrick wrote:
> Is the dual Opteron sufficiently supported by Linux to make it goo 
> choice for DIY over a dual Xeon?

Yes, I believe so.  I have followed the threads of SMP with great 
interest.  There seem to be concerns but successes with using one of the 
Fedora-based distros of the K12LTSP.  We had concerns, but have had 
success so far.

We entertained 3.1.2 because of this concern, but found that the scsi
controller on the mobo was not supported by the kernel.  Had we not
intended to use software scsi raid, we would have gone with this more 
conservative version.

This mobo has kernel support, as of the current stable release of 
k12ltsp, for everything but the on-board sata controller.  Tyan provides 
a driver, but the 3ware controller negates the need.

> I looked at your list on NewEgg and had a question: could you explain
> your drive setup in a little more detail? Like what kind of raid
> you're running on each set of drives.

Our build objective is for a baseline ltsp server with redundant system 
drives and removable archiving media.  Our choice for system drives are 
15k rpm scsi drives.  The 5-year warranty is a big reason for this.  We 
software raid array the drives, raid1 (mirrored).  We mount the drives 
in the chassis.  The current build list lacks the needed brackets to 
mount the drives because we have so many on hand.  It also lacks a 
second scsi cable.

With removable hard drives being as cost effective as they are, we used 
7200rpm sata drives.  We hardware raid array them with a 2 channel 
64-bit 3ware sata raid controller.  We place the drives in removable 
trays.  The controller has a web interface that a teacher can easily 
operate in order to remove or replace a drive.

Mounting home to and archiving to the removable drives makes it a little 
easier, we believe, to shelve the archives after an appropriate number 
of school years and easily add new drives.  In case of catastrophe or 
even for daily, off-site removal, we find this to be rather user friendly.

The cons of software raid arrays, as many pointed out to me in our 
k12ltsp classes last weekend, include the lack of an easy "button" to 
click that rebuilds the array.  While many of us know how easily sfdisk 
and raidhotadd, tools of the CLI, can accomplish this, building such a 
skillset in self-sustaining labs is challenging.  We are trying.

While a proponent of software raid, our future build lists may just go 
with all sata drives and controllers.  Observe the results of some 
bonnie tests on different arrays:

http://lists.hosef.org/pipermail/hosef-managers/2004q2/001841.html

--scott

-- 
R. Scott Belford
Founder/PR Director
The Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation
PO Box 392
Kailua, HI 96734
808.689.6518 phone/fax
scott at hosef.org