• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Setting up a poweredge 2850

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

dark bishop

Member
Joined
Jan 19, 2008
Location
Folding the PWN, Salem Oregon
Been debating on making this thread but Adak convinced me to come back so lets get this rolling

specs:
Dell PowerEdge 2850 2u server
Dual Xeon 3.0ghz Nocona
4gb ECC DDR2 ram

and thats about all the good stuff lol.

for right now it has a windows server 08 trial but id like to move on to something a little more... beginner friendly?

goal for it are to host a couple game servers and crunch numbers.
 
You've got hyper-threading, so 16 cores total, I believe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors#.22Nocona.22_.2890_nm.29

but you want to fold regular SMP projects, using maybe 4, or 6 cores, so after V7 client sets it up for you, change that slot from -smp to -smp 4 or -smp 6.

For the upcoming race in May, if your server needs to be stress tested, you can bump it up to smp 8 or 12, and we won't complain, I promise! :D

The 4GB of RAM seems low to me, but I'm not sure what the needs are for your hosting work. That would be the first thing I'd look into. On the server I just built, Supermicro (the mobo maker) warns against using 4GB on each socket, because the server board requires a lot of it for it's own internals - and show why it leaves you with a mere 500 MB of usable RAM, per socket. (It is an AMD based server, so it might be completely different than yours).

I thought Windows server was beginner friendly. Linux (Ubuntu server versions, 64 bit), is a popular server OS, and it's FREE!, but is it more beginner friendly? (I like 10.04 LTS)
I'd avoid the latest releases from Ubuntu. They're too buggy, imo.

My experience with servers is quite limited, but we have some folders that work with servers, so they should be able to help you more.


Getting a good start folding with the new V7 folding client, is easy:

1). Our download site with step by step instructions for the new V7 folding client:
https://fah-web.stanford.edu/projects/FAHClient/

And click on the "download" logo. Then choose the client for your operating system.

For Windows users, V7 uses a set up wizard.

2). Get a passkey from Stanford, and a name that is unique on our team. Having two folders using the same handle, on the same team, is confusing.
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/getpasskey.py

If you don't get a passkey, you WILL be missing out on a lot of points.

3). Our team number is 32, and our team stats are here:
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.c...ry.php?s=&t=32

Search for your folding name, using the search tool, on the left hand side of that page. Your results will show only AFTER you have begun returning results. Bookmark your page!

The stats site is updated every three hours. Stanford F@Home needs about 1 hour to process your returned work unit (wu). More up-to-date data, is here:
http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/...type=userstats

4) Keep an eye on your temps. Use a monitoring program that your motherboard recommends (many supply a monitoring program with your mobo), or one of the monitoring freeware programs: Coretemp, Realtemp, etc., available from any of several download depots.

A clean and cool folding rig, is a happy folding rig.

5) Our sticky thread has a LOT of info:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/s...d.php?t=664162
 
Last edited:
If there are 16 cores then server 08 doesn't show them in task manager.

I'm more worried about getting a better OS for folding on it right now, hosting stuff can come later.

And yes I've already read the V7 client stuff, nice to have an all in one client compared to back when it needed deino or mpich and a separate gpu client, ill miss that gtx285's points.
 
Nocona is single core only, some with hyper threading. So, the max that system will have is 4.
 
I was gonna figure either dual core or single with HT. I'm looking towards Ubuntu as the main OS for now to fold with.

When I saw the "hyperthreading" feature listed, I jumped to the conclusion it was a quad. :bang head
 
1100 ppd is the most you can count on running SMP in windows. 600 ppd on uniprocessor work. I couldn't justify keeping my Nocona duallie folding, even though it's a 24/7 machine. It just sucks down the electricity when the cpus are running 100%.
 
Back