Hello, Can somebody recommend CentOS-OK, dual socket motherboards for compute elements? A quick look up at Intel pages suggests they are thinking of them as "server boards", but then they recommend them as "for SMB", I'm somewhat puzzled about it. It would be nice to know what MBs you are using, pros and cons. Thank you in advance -- Eduardo Grosclaude Universidad Nacional del Comahue Neuquen, Argentina
On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Eduardo Grosclaude <eduardo.grosclaude at gmail.com> wrote:> Hello, > Can somebody recommend CentOS-OK, dual socket motherboards for compute > elements? A quick look up at Intel pages suggests they are thinking of > them as "server boards", but then they recommend them as "for SMB", > I'm somewhat puzzled about it. > It would be nice to know what MBs you are using, pros and cons. > Thank you in advanceHello! We need more details... what's your budget, what processor are you looking at? SMB just means Small / Medium Business ... as opposed to a huge enterprise server that might have four or eight sockets... Name a vendor, I've probably had some sort of trouble with them... of the "Big Names", Intel is probably the least troublesome. I just returned a bad Tyan board, and late last year returned two Supermicro servers that were shipped with out of date hardware (not supporting 5400 series CPU). I have an Asus board that runs Linux and Opensolaris just fine, but will not allow any version of Windows to install. I hope this is some help to you. Gordon
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Eduardo Grosclaude wrote:> Hello, > Can somebody recommend CentOS-OK, dual socket motherboards for compute > elements? A quick look up at Intel pages suggests they are thinking of > them as "server boards", but then they recommend them as "for SMB", > I'm somewhat puzzled about it. > It would be nice to know what MBs you are using, pros and cons. > Thank you in advance >I'm running a really old mainboard, an MSI 694D Pro (MS-6321). It is a dual socket, running two Intel PIII Cpppermine CPU's with an upper limit of 933MHz. It is classified as a server board. The board was new in 2000. The board was installed new, in 2004 (it laid around new in box for a long time), and ran RHEL3 from 2004 until I upgraded to CentOS 5.4 a couple months ago. With 2 gig RAM, it runs well for a Desktop machine. I figure I can squeeze another five years out of it, if I'm lucky. :) - -- - -wittig http://www.robertwittig.com/ http://robertwittig.net/ http://robertwittig.org/ . -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with CentOS - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEVAwUBS5Usxf9qkhAVPSgqAQJxXwf/UCwodEQHSW8yR9CrNtZvvGQK4NaeKMxk sbd907l88UGDrjKbx92lpCXzsUbPr7cJrPGwVhqJKFS1LMsYYKJWMIOvBx27ZmIF kRPNJXBXOVTEQ5e/yVWsyXGqytxlD05XcrwzcGBhwpeaO7wQl4Eykwb2NMM3UYNw C0K6crqo+TOg3wb34uJucpb6zmz/0S/efgVhTmjqOScUS2CK9skAaAxq78L3lViQ bJJ7Npq3rbrg0vLqeQ6T5BoXfKOYT56j6Q35tOhGYzTZoFEMdoXLV62hgZ0HQMxk LK8jQCOspU5olboxbRmsiJ1IECF6CDL993nWRahqOktQe0dXfdOFYQ==2RrV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Monday 08 March 2010, Eduardo Grosclaude wrote:> Hello, > Can somebody recommend CentOS-OK, dual socket motherboards for compute > elements? A quick look up at Intel pages suggests they are thinking of > them as "server boards", but then they recommend them as "for SMB",There are no perticular HPC considerations. You typically want bang for the buck. Depending on how many servers you're aiming for you'll have to consider different factors. You may want to look into buying complete servers from say Dell/HP (depending on your situation...). Things you may be interested in: * Suitable pci-express connectors (Infiniband cards, GPUs, ...) * Lots of memory slots * Low price and good stability (reputation/experience) * IPMI management (if you're buying lots of servers) * Packaging (which box will this format of board fit in etc.) YMMV etc. ... /Peter> I'm somewhat puzzled about it. > It would be nice to know what MBs you are using, pros and cons. > Thank you in advance-------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20100308/72b032bc/attachment-0002.sig>
Hi,> 5400 series CPU). I have an Asus board that runs Linux and > Opensolaris just fine, but will not allow any version of Windows to > install.I want one of those :) Regards, Michel
On Tuesday, March 09, 2010 12:34 AM, Eduardo Grosclaude wrote:> Hello, > Can somebody recommend CentOS-OK, dual socket motherboards for compute > elements? A quick look up at Intel pages suggests they are thinking of > them as "server boards", but then they recommend them as "for SMB", > I'm somewhat puzzled about it. > It would be nice to know what MBs you are using, pros and cons. > Thank you in advance >Could you give us a bit more information on the HPC part? Is this clustering or computing? Do you have high i/o needs?
Eduardo Grosclaude wrote:> Hello, > Can somebody recommend CentOS-OK, dual socket motherboards for compute > elements?for real numeric stuff (as opposed to things like video processing that utilizes sse3), the AMD processors often outperform Intel. current AMD dual socket server processors have SIX cores each, but I dunno who's on top of the performance curve this year. The Intel I7 family, including the E5500 server chips, are screamers. what really counts in large HPC clusters is gigaflop/$$$ a number of vendors make 1U chassis designed to hold TWO compact dual processor server boards so you can get 2 nodes per U, but if you go this route, you really have to watch your cooling and power (50 or 60 of these in a rack means you'll have a REALLY high power/thermal load per rack). An example such board is http://www.intel.com/products/server/motherboards/S5500HV/S5500HV-overview.htm with the Intel E55xx series, you want to populate your memory 6 dimms at a time (assuming two CPUs), using 2gb or 4gb dimms, for max performance (each processor has 3 memory channels) for a high performance compute cluster, you'll probably want to use management software like Oscar, which integrates system management with MPI based distributed computing such that you can manage a cluster of 100s of servers like its a single big system
On Wednesday, March 10, 2010 12:35 AM, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:> On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 at 9:49pm, Chan Chung Hang Christopher wrote > >> If cpu processing power is the sole criteria, then why limit to >> dual-socket boards and not go for quad-socket boards? > > In general, the price goes up non-linearly as you go above 2 sockets, > making 2 sockets the sweet spot when it comes to price/performance. >Hmm, I see at most a 50% increase in motherboard pricing from a dual to a quad socket motherboard and that is with a difference in feature set too with the quad coming with an extra onboard LSI 8 port SAS controller. That is hardly going up non-linearly. (taking an extremely narrow angle ;-p)
Christopher Chan wrote:> Hmm, I see at most a 50% increase in motherboard pricing from a dual to > a quad socket motherboard and that is with a difference in feature set > too with the quad coming with an extra onboard LSI 8 port SAS > controller. That is hardly going up non-linearly. (taking an extremely > narrow angle ;-pdid you price the quad socket CPUs ? they cost significantly more, too. the newest processor chips are usually the dual socket versions. Also, 4-socket servers may have performance issues caused by 4-way cache coherency chatter, non-uniform memory access, and so forth.