first quad server

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/3183/server1rq.gif

I just ordered it a few days ago. Its going to be the Terminal Services host for the small business I work for. Don't worry about the price shown there, we didn't pay anywhere near that, thank God.

But basically, most of the apps we'll be running aren't designed for multi-threaded processing, though they will all be going through Terminal Services, which is multi-threaded-

I wanted to see what people thought of the setup. Its not too late to change it a bit, but I think this should work well.

Comments? Flames? Suggestions?

I want one.

Well, if you need it, you need it I guess. That is one sweet machine, quad 3.66. Looks like your scsi backplane is full with 5 drives, you might want to add an additional scsi backplane now if its not too much, adding them later is a minor pain and they look expensive at that point.

Sure you're going to need quad xeons? The MP xeons really do up the cost a bunch, dual proc similar spec machines are often MUCH cheaper. Just a thought.

Good luck!

thats alot of 15k RPM hard drives

You could have gone with two duals and then had the added benefit of two seperate systems. We've been planning a TS conversion for a while and have settled on two machines of roughly the same power as half of that one. The selling point is that while we add in some expense for administration and a few hundred for another 2003 license, what we get is a second machine that can act as a failover. Sure, it will be pretty taxed during a failover, but strained operation is better than no operations. As much as I like our 6000 series machines, we've been very happy with the 2850s we've gotten recently. On the side, you'll like that PERC4ei, it's the first controller I've seen in a few years that does multiple concurrent read I/Os in RAID1.

Lol man is this rig going to run Boinc? I mean just:

Speechless is an understatement.

Sweet. Can win handle 4 cpu's w/ht? 15k rpm hardrives is sweet, memory is ok only 8gb for a server of that specs? It looks quite overpriced i'd say 4k for those proccesors, 1.5k for the board, 3.5k for the hardrives, and .6k for the mem. Quite overpriced since this is using new components from newegg and the board was froogled and dell get's cheaper prices and knowing them use the cheapest stuff they can get their hands on. 20k, though you get a discount probably 15k for you, still ripoff.

ended up paying $9700 for the system. 10500 after taxes and whatnot.

long story short: originally had a budget for a 2000 series dell server, but then I figured we could get a 6000 series refurb for the same price as a 2000 series new. so i had our purchaser look into it, and Dell ended up saying "What if we could get you into a 6850 new for $1500 more than the refurb..." hard to turn down that offer so we jumped on it.

Thanks for the tip on the additional scsi backplane. I think i'll call up Dell tomorrow and see how much it would be to add it to the build.

if you are/were running two seperate TS servers, each about 50% of this system, how would you control the load balance? assign 50% of your users to one server and 50% to the other? or is there a software based way of making a TS array?

Well, the courier just delivered the server. Dell shipped it on a pallet. The whole thing weighed over 150lbs... Can you say, overpackaged?
Anyway, after deciphering the cryptic rack instructions, we got three guys together to lift it up and onto its rails - I hope I never have to move this thing again.

I'm incredably impressed with the quality and workmanship. I already have a PowerEdge 700 series tower server, and its well built, but this 6850 is a masterpeice. I'll get some pictures for the board.

Every component on it is swapable/plugable. The cdrom/floppy combo, the power supplies, the harddrives (obviously), Ram, and coolest of all, the fans (no pun intended).

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/platforms/sr4850HW4/index.htm

Now just waiting on the electrician to show up and install a three-phase 208volt circuit for the badboy. Dell apparently doesn't have any 120v rackmount powersupplies for their quads. Though the 120v is an option with the tower version, the 6800.

Anyway- The thing is... unique. The motherboard battery is external, it looks like around 1200mah li-ion battery pack. All of the memory is on memory risers with built in mirroring and raid configurability.

In short, I'm giddy like a kid on christmas eve. Now where's that damn electrician... I need to run a 1m SuperPi on this so bad...

Wow... that is just... sweet...

*cough* FOLD! *cough*

Very nice for the price! Even if it is a bit overkill now it gives you plenty of room for the future.

JDXNC said:

*cough* FOLD! *cough*

Very nice for the price! Even if it is a bit overkill now it gives you plenty of room for the future.

Click to expand...

Expandability is key. Its always cheaper to buy a bit more now, than to buy an entirely new server later.

*Edit* Ya, I'm going to be folding on it when no one's logged into TS

pics or shens!

you wanna run a CS:S 64 person server for the CS:S players on here? LOL j/k.

thats a very nice system........ but personally to me, the way computer hardware is advancing right now, they way out power any software right now. i mean.... a dual core dual video card computer will basically own any game thrown at it, knowning that the CPU and video card selections are wise choices.

honhon said:

you wanna run a CS:S 64 person server for the CS:S players on here? LOL j/k.

thats a very nice system........ but personally to me, the way computer hardware is advancing right now, they way out power any software right now. i mean.... a dual core dual video card computer will basically own any game thrown at it, knowning that the CPU and video card selections are wise choices.

Click to expand...

Get into statistical modelling applications. Once you start looking at billions of records in a data warehouse and running those through a variety of models using neural nets, you'll start seeing the limits. If that doesn't float your boat, try physics applications with very small time slices and high-fidelity environments.

At present we're waiting on the dual-core Xeons before getting another one of the analysts a new workstation - because of some pricing issues with the stats packages we use, it's actually cheaper to purchase a $5-10k workstation for the guy than set him up with a server. That purchase will save us about $40k in licensing costs and his runtimes should start being on the order of a few hours instead of a few days. And perhaps the most absurd thing of all is that certain decision-makers are balking at getting him anything more than a single 19" LCD...

honhon, judging by the bandwidth specs in your profile, i'm assuming you are on verizon's fios. no?
I'm anxious to try it out-

btw, that woman in your avatar is pretty damn hot

adamwinn said:

btw, that woman in your avatar is pretty damn hot

Click to expand...

Word

First bootup- omfg, this thing is louder than anything I have EVER heard. The four 120mm intake fans are unbelievably loud at 100%. Thank God after it got past POST it throttled them down to a moderate roar.

4 Xeons + HT = 8 Logical Thread Controllers. Its very, very fun to play with so far. I havn't had much time to do anything though, I've been busy with our new Cisco firewall.

With the raid-5 15k scsi array, I wanted to see what the IO was like:
270MB/Sec - Sustained...
I'll post a screenshot later. I was amazed. Though the average seek time is only about 7.2ms

I ran a multithread SuperPi 1m via SysTool. 3.18seconds with 8 seperate threads.

Its like Christmas

3.18 seconds... hot living sh*t

i wanna see 32m


you should get a verified CPUz screenie of this monster