Re: General-Purpose Server for Debian Stable
On 2020-10-02 04:18, Linux-Fan wrote:
David Christensen writes:
On 2020-10-01 14:37, Linux-Fan wrote:
> 2x4T SSD for fast storage (VMs, OS)
I suggest identifying your workloads, how much CPU, memory, disk I/O,
etc., each requires, and then dividing them across your several
computers.
Division across multiple machines... I am already doing this for data
that exceeds my current 4T storage (2x2T HDD, 2x2T "slow" SSD local and
4x1T outsourced to the other machine).
Are the SSD's 2 TB or 4 TB?
I currently do this for data I
need rather rarely such that I can run the common tasks on a single
machine. Doing this for all (or large amounts of data) will require
running at least two machines at the same time which may increase the
idle power draw and possibilities for failure?
More devices are going to use more power and have a higher probability
of failure than a single device of the same size and type, but it's hard
to predict for devices of different sizes and/or types. I use HDD's for
file server data and backups, and I use SSD's for system disks, caches,
and/or fast local working storage. I expect drives will break, so I
have invested in redundancy and disaster planning/ preparedness.
Understand that a 4 core 5 GHz CPU and a 16 core 2.5 GHz CPU have
similar prices and power consumption, but the former will run
sequential tasks twice as fast and the latter will run concurrent
tasks twice as fast.
Is this still true today? AFAIK all modern CPUs "boost" their frequency
if they are lightly loaded. Also, the larger CPUs tend to come with more
cache which may speed up single-core applications, too.
Yes, frequency scaling blurs the line. But, the principle remains.
I am not familiar with AMD products, but Intel does offer Xeon
processors with fewer cores and higher frequencies specifically for
workstations:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/processors/xeon/ultimate-workstation-performance.html
I would think that you should convert one of your existing machines
into a file server. Splitting 4 TB across 2 @ 2 TB HDD's and 2 @ 4 TB
SSD's can work, but 4 @ 4 TB SSD's with a 10 Gbps Ethernet connection
should be impressive. If you choose ZFS, it will need memory. The
rule of thumb is 5 GB of memory per 1 TB of storage. So, pick a
machine that has at least 20 GB of memory.
4x4T is surely nice and future-proof but currently above budget :)
Yes, $2,000+ for 4 @ 4 TB SATA III SSD's is a lot of money. But, U.2
PCIe/NVMe 4X drives are even more money.
That's why I use obsolete, but new, Seagate Constellation ES.2 SATA III
3 TB HDD's -- ~$50 each on eBay. Buy four drives for $200, buy small
SATA III SSD cache and log devices for $100, and you will have 75% the
capacity and excellent performance for typical file server workloads for
$300.
I saw
that the Supermicro AS-2113S-WTRT can do 6xU.2 drives. In case I chose
Supermicro this would allow upgrading to such a 4x4T configuration.
As for the workstation, it is difficult to find a vendor that supports
Debian. But, there are vendors that support Ubuntu; which is based
upon Debian. So, you can run Ubuntu and you might be able to run Debian:
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=ubuntu%20workstation
My experience with HP and Fujitsu Workstations is that they run well
with Debian. I am still thinking that buying two systems will be more
expensive and more power draw. Using one of the existent systems will
slow some things down to their speed -- the current "fastest" system
here has a Xeon E3-1231 v3 and while it has 3.4GHz it is surely slower
(even singlethreaded) than current 16-core server CPUs...
That would make a good file server; even better with 10 Gbps networking.
Thinking of it, a possible distribution accross multiple machines may be
* (Existent) Storage server (1U, existent Fujitsu RX 1330 M1)
[It does not do NVMe SSDs, though -- alternatively put the disks
in the VM server?]
* (New) VM server (2U, lots of RAM)
* (New) Workstation (4U, GPU)
For interactive use and experimentation with VMs I would need to
power-on all three systems. For non-VM use, it would have to be two...
it is an interesting solution that stays within what the systems were
designed to do but I think it is currently too much for my uses.
The Fujitsu might do PCIe/NVMe 4X M.2 or U.2 SSD's with the right
adapter card.
Depending upon what your VM's are doing, a SATA III SSD might be enough
or you might want something faster. Similar comment for the workstation.
Rather than a new VM server and a new workstation, perhaps a new
workstation with enough memory and fast local working storage would be
adequate for both purposes.
Still, thanks for the suggestion.
YW. :-)
David
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