- Joined
- Mar 7, 2008
The server has arrived. After looking at it, it seems to be called Purus and I can't find anything about it online. Probably very specialised in original distribution.
The back area has 4 3.5" HD cages, with SATA and power connectors running to them. Arguably you could fit another two smaller drives there but the cooling fans protrude into the area.
PSU label. I've not checked yet but it looks like it could be standard ATX.
With the airflow cover off, here's the lower part of the mobo. There's unfitted PCIe connectors there... would be nice if they were present but not on this model it seems. The ram is DDR3 1333 reg ECC 4GB 2R and all are HP branded. Most sticks are Micron, some Nanya.
The other end of the mobo has the SATA ports (6 total, 4 connected to drive bays), what looks like ATX power connector, and 5 fan headers. It is interesting they support 5 wire. 5???
Front left has the serial/console port, VGA out, two USB ports and RJ45. Middle (not pictured) has the 10gig SFP+ port, and a blanking plate for an expansion card I can't fit.
To the right, are the power/reset switches, HD and power LEDs. And the power connector. It has a wire latch to hold the connector in place and prevent accidental removal, but doesn't fit the random cable I pulled out to test it.
First time I powered it up, my ears started bleeding. Imagine standing next to a jet taking off. I expected this, but still the sound level took me by surprise. It seems to ramp to maximum on initial boot, before dropping down to temperature controlled running speed. Down is relative. It is still very loud.
Absent any clue as to what I'm doing I powered down, and checked the battery voltage. Seems normal. I juggled the ram a bit and powered up again. Now I had life on the monitor. A quick look in bios allowed me to change a couple of settings to disable raid and network boot since I never use those. I will need to revisit some ram settings later. For example, NUMA was off, and I wonder if it should be on. I have no idea how Windows handles this scenario as obviously for maximum performance I'd like data for tasks on each CPU to be on the ram attached to that CPU, not the other. Is Windows smart enough to do that?
I've got an old image of Win7 booted for testing. Right now I'm missing mobo level drivers and network connection, so it's going to be interesting getting that going. Especially as there's no manufacturer download site I can go to for these! I hope generic Intel chipset drivers would get me through the first step, then I have to work out what network chipset it actually uses...