Fedora on servers

[Ow Mun Heng]

On Fri, 2004-12-24 at 22:10, Bill Gradwohl wrote:
> Ow Mun Heng wrote:

> 
> > 1 Gig of RAM for web surfing!! wow.. Ram ain't that cheap.
> 
> What else am I going to use that RAM for? Its special RAM for a 
> particular mainboard, so it goes along with the board. We learned long 
> ago that RAM for one board isn't necessarily suitable in another board.
Hmm.. I didn't know that, then again, all I've been playing with are
only "normal" boards and not server boards. I do note hoewever a
tendency for "branded" boards from ppl like gateway/DEll has a Memory
preference.



> >Which One? Need to look them up. Does any have more than 2? Prefer to
> >have 3. 
> >  
> >
> We used the 4 in 1 boards from Adaptec and SMC a long time 
> ago. I see no need for them today as switches and routing solved the 
> problem the multiport boards were brought in for in the old days.

Okay.. I'm confused. are those 4 in 1 boards really NICs or are they
juts built in switches for routing? The shop did say that they had one
of those and since it was basically a switch, I didn't want it.

> I would caution you on using boards with too much "stuff" built in. 
> Their BIOS's will typically force you to use interrupts that are shared 
> simply because there's no other way to get all that stuff organized 
> given the measely interrupt structure on todays boards. Same holds true 
> for adding boards to slots to some extent, but usually you have more 
> leeway when the mainboard itself isn't choked with extraneous gear. 
> Shared interrupts are what we avoid at all cost.

This is what i look for.
1. NIC
2. Sound card (don't really care for a server but most of it's built in
anyway)
3. Graphics (usually runs headless anyway)
4. USB (they're built in anyway, but I'm sure there's a way to turn it
off via the BIOS)
5. SATA. Now, this is a MUST.

Most of the above will have a high chance to run via shared interrupts.
So.. what choices am I left with??

> >Thanks. (Now if you can tell me which Asus board that is.)
> >  
> >
> Check out their latest comparison sheet on their US web site - 
> http://usa.asus.com/index.htm . I can't recall the model numbers of the 
> mainboards with 2 NICs. They were socketed for AMD chips and were real 
> cheap for firewall use. 
I've never used a AMD before but am willing to try since it's a _big_
difference in price. And for a normal Desktop/Server usage, I don't
think it's such a big deal.


> Anything can handle the traffic for a T1 or 
> less, so a board with 2 NICs of any kind, even 10mbps is sufficient. If 
> I were firewalling internally, say between departments on a high 
> bandwidth lan, then I'd use high end NICs to handle the load, 
That's the thing, at the shops I can find NICs going for USD5 for a
Dlink or some other brand and I see 3com selling theirs for like USD25!

I usually think, what's the deal.. a NIC's A NIC! Maybe my requirements
aren't that excessive.

> and they 
> wouldn't be built in as the built in kind are most often not the best in 
> thruput performance. You get what you pay for.
Now, that I understand, from a previously unrelated to computer
experience.

> 
> The monster box we put together with all those drives used the ASUS 
> *NRL-LS533*. We've also used their *PR-DLS533*. All with Crucial RAM, 
> all bought at the same time - "matched".
Will look at those boards specs.

> 
> If you send me a few dozen of those 320Gig drives to keep, I'll test 
> them for you. :-)
Heh.. I've not even had the chance to test them out yet! You'll just
have to wait.


-- 
Ow Mun Heng
Gentoo/Linux on DELL D600 1.4Ghz 
98% Microsoft(tm) Free!! 
Neuromancer 06:56:55 up 40 min, 3 
users, load average: 0.29, 0.28,