[K12OSN] Server grade vs Desktop grade hardware

Robert Arkiletian robark at gmail.com
Mon Nov 19 01:48:39 UTC 2007


On Nov 18, 2007 2:31 PM, Julius Szelagiewicz <julius at turtle.com> wrote:
> > I wonder about reliability though. How would it compare to my current
> > system?
> >
> > dual Xeon 2.8Ghz 512K cache/cpu (533Mhz FSB) slow and hot Netburst arch
> > Top of the line E7505 Intel Server MB (with Adaptec SCSI controller)
> > 4GB Registered ECC PC-2100 (266Mhz)
> > 2 x 36GB 10K rpm SCSI (raid 1)
> >
> Robert,
>  the biggest differences are ECC memory and redundant power supplies. I
> have seen many memory erroors in the logs over the years, but they were
> logged without crashing the servers!

If you have a memory error, maybe something will act funny/crash or
you won't even notice it, say like in a jpeg. In any case, I'm not
running mission critical stuff. Just students on a browser or typing
some code. Worst case, I have to reboot. How likely is a memory error
to cause filesystem corruption? (that would be my main concern)

>  I like to have at least 2 power supplies in every server, each plugged
> into a different UPS. Power fails, UPSes fail, servers stay up. My
> production critical server has 3 power supplies plugged into 3 UPSes.

My current setup: I have a UPS but only one PS. I figure power outages
are more common than PS failing. I got a nice Enermax but it could
fail one day. If it does fail, I replace it. Maybe an hour to install
a new one at lunch or after school. I'm using ext3 raid 1 so I *hope*
I would not have filesystem corruption. Say it did. How would I go
about figuring out which side of the mirror is bad. Run read only fsck
on both sides and see which is borked. Then remove that drive from the
array and add it back in? Does that sound right?

-- 
Robert Arkiletian
Eric Hamber Secondary, Vancouver, Canada
Fl_TeacherTool http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/Fl_TeacherTool/
C++ GUI tutorial http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/




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