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Re: Advice sought on moving to AMD64



On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 12:30:39AM +0100, Rory Campbell-Lange wrote:
> How hard is it to use Debian AMD64?
> 
> I run about 15 Debian servers for various clients. These are all 32 bit
> machines, mainly dual Xeons or Pentium IVs; we use Debian on our Apple
> ibooks too. All of our machines run stable + a few things from testing +
> occasionally something from unstable.
> 
> We are getting ready to purchase a machine for a web application
> prototype. I won't go into the nitty gritty of what the machine is to be
> used for, but suffice it to say that we want good Postgresql 8.x read
> and write performance and enquiries on the postgres list brought us
> here.

The postgresql-8.0 packages conflict with postgresql < 7.5 probably due
to some new layout they added in 7.5 to support running both 7.x and 8.x
at the same time.  You might have to update to 7.5 to make installing
8.x simple, but then again it might work ok even without doing that with
a bit of fiddling.  I have no idea what is new in 8.0.

> Basically, I'm keen not to make a lot of work for our team by supporting
> unusual hardware. However, we are keen to experience the benefits of
> using 64bit! Does Debian AMD64 have installers, eg netinstallers? Does
> AMD64 have stable, testing and unstable package trees?

Yes for installers, netinstallers, stable, testing and unstable.

> Thanks for any comments,
> Rory
> 
> p.s.
> Our standard environment includes:
> 
>     Apache 1.3x/Apache 2.x
>     PHP4
>     Python 2.3/2.4 including all standard modules
>     Perl including all standard modules
>     Postgresql 7.4/8 (I believe I can compile the latter from the debian
>     source packages myself)
>     Exim4
>     screen
>     netfilter/iptables
>     etc.
> 
> One possible configuration we are looking for is as below:
> 
>     Motherboard        : Dual AMD Opteron,[X2881G2NR],AMD8131, 
>                          Up to 3x PCI-X,S-ATA Raid,2x Gigabit LAN
>     Chipset            : AMD-8131
>     Info               : 5 x PCI (Total); 1x PCI-X for 1U and 3x PCI-X for 2U; 
>                          Graphics Slot = None
>     Ports              : 2xUSB V2.0 [Rear],PS/2 Kb, Mouse,Serial,Parallel
>     Maximum            : RAM     16GB using 8 x 2GB
>     On-board Graphics  : Integrated ATI 8MB Rage XL
>     Std HDD Controller : IDE UDMA 100 (Primary & Secondary
>     On-board SCSI      : None
>     On-board RAID      : S-ATA Raid (Raid 0, 1, 10, 4 drives) Silicon Image 3114

Last I checked the 3114 was not very well supported, although that has
hopefully improved by now.  It is of course software raid only so you
are better of pretending it is just a SATA controller and using MD
software raid if you want raid at all.

>     On-board LAN       : 2 x Broadcom 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet

Are those the tg3 ones?  Is there still an issue with firmware in driver
without source for those or am I confusing them with something else?

>     On-board Audio     : None
>     CPU                : 2 x AMD Opteron 242 1.6GHz (2-way) - 1MB Cache
>     RAM                : 2,048 MB Total using 4 x 512MB PC3200 DDR Registered ECC 
>                          (Use Only In Pairs)
>     Chassis            : 2U C215S, 8x H-Swap SCSI Bays, Slim CD and FD bays, 
>                          660mm, 2x 64bit PCI, 510W (Black)
>     Rail Kit           : Telescopic Rail Kit included with case
>     RAID Controller    : LSI MegaRaid 320-1, 64 Bit PCI, Ultra320, 64mb, 
>                          Single channel, Raid levels 0,1,3,5,10

I think the LSI cards are supported, although I have never worked with
them.

>     SCSI HDD           : 6 x 36GB 15,000 rpm Ultra320

Hmm, expensive stuff.  I am not a scsi person anymore.  The high prices
and lousy performance I got from IBMs 15k rpm scsi drives and raid
controller a few years ago while spending a ton of money just makes me
not interested anymore.  SATA makes much more sense to me.

>     Ethernet           : 1  2 x Broadcom 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet 
>                          on-board motherboard

Repeat of above I assume.

Len Sorensen



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