Re: Dual Core processor ?

[Andrew Reid <reidac@bellatlantic.net>]

On Friday 25 July 2008 11:07, Account for Debian group mail wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm in the process of replacing one of our mail servers with a new
> machine. Is Debian stable enough on the Intel or AMD dual core 64 bit
> processors for a mail server?
>
> This machine will get heavy use and runs hard for 24 hrs a day.
>
> Any suggestion for something fast but very stable?

  I run a few multi-terrabyte file servers and a couple of
application servers with two dual-core 64-bit chips per box,
and it's been rock-solid running "etch", with a few minor
caveats:

  - Watch the hardware -- "etch" is getting kind of old.
      I've had smooth sailing with Tyan motherboards, but of course
      my experience is anecdotal.  "Server class" motherboards tend
      to be pretty conservative and have better standards compliance
      than "consumer class" motherboards, but you should still be careful.

  - For certain nVidia chipsets in combination with large XFS
      file systems, you need to boot with "iommu=soft" in order
      to avoid (infrequent) random filesystem errors.  See the
      Debian "etch" release notes for details.

  The server world seems to me to be Linux in general and Debian
in particular's strong suit.  
					-- A.
-- 
Andrew Reid / reidac@bellatlantic.net