CentOS - Jun 2013 - CentOS 6 SFF motherboard or complete system

I am trying to assemble or purchase a set of CentOS 6 compatible SFF
workstations, and am finding it incredibly frustrating to do so.
hardware.redhat.com is so slow as to be useless and provides almost no
information about each of the 1,300 or so products listed in their database;
clicking through them one at a time is incredibly frustrating (and about half of
them are discontinued or out of stock when I actually go looking for them, like
the Intel DQ series motherboards I was interested in).  Vendor web sites are
almost no use; they trumpet their Windows 8 compatibility all over the site, but
finding information about Linux compatibility is next to impossible.
	My requirements aren't overwhelming; an i7 processor, four memeory slots
preferred, dual 24" (1920x1200) monitor capability, and dual ethernet (or
an expansion slot for a second Ethernet card).
	Anyone have any advice on how to attack this these days? I've been out of
the hardware-purchase game on the Linux side for years, and most of my bookmarks
no longer point anywhere useful, sadly.

-G.
--
Glenn Eychaner (geychaner at lco.cl)
Telescope Systems Programmer, Las Campanas Observatory

Glenn Eychaner wrote:
> 	I am trying to assemble or purchase a set of CentOS 6 compatible SFF
> workstations, and am finding it incredibly frustrating to do so.
> hardware.redhat.com is so slow as to be useless and provides almost no
> information about each of the 1,300 or so products listed in their
> database; clicking through them one at a time is incredibly frustrating
> (and about half of them are discontinued or out of stock when I actually
> go looking for them, like the Intel DQ series motherboards I was
> interested in).  Vendor web sites are almost no use; they trumpet their
> Windows 8 compatibility all over the site, but finding information about
> Linux compatibility is next to impossible.
> 	My requirements aren't overwhelming; an i7 processor, four memeory
slots
> preferred, dual 24" (1920x1200) monitor capability, and dual ethernet
(or
> an expansion slot for a second Ethernet card).
> 	Anyone have any advice on how to attack this these days? I've been out
of
> the hardware-purchase game on the Linux side for years, and most of my
> bookmarks no longer point anywhere useful, sadly.
Well, I have no idea was SFF is an acronym for, other than Science Fiction
and Fantasy, but I see from your sig that you're doing astronomy, so I'm
guessing it has something to do with scientific computing.

Question 1: do you want to build them yourself, or buy full systems?

OEM: Dell's fine, though to talk to someone in support about Linux, you
need "enterprise support", *not* desktop support.  Right now, I'm
on an
AMD, but Dell Precision T3500 workstation, I *think* it ran around $2k
when we got it a year and a half or two years ago; the newer ones are the
same price. I'm running CentOS 6.4. Pretty much anything you buy, except
*possibly* for just-released-in-the-last-month hardware is supported: it
may not be ultra-heavy gaming ready, but for anything else, yes.

Our servers with Intel are running Xeons, of course, as well as the one
workstation I just looked at....

        mark

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Glenn Eychaner <geychaner at mac.com>
wrote:
>         I am trying to assemble or purchase a set of CentOS 6 compatible
SFF workstations, and am finding it incredibly frustrating to do so.
hardware.redhat.com is so slow as to be useless and provides almost no
information about each of the 1,300 or so products listed in their database;
clicking through them one at a time is incredibly frustrating (and about half of
them are discontinued or out of stock when I actually go looking for them, like
the Intel DQ series motherboards I was interested in).  Vendor web sites are
almost no use; they trumpet their Windows 8 compatibility all over the site, but
finding information about Linux compatibility is next to impossible.
The big vendors should list RHEL compatibility, but perhaps more for
servers than workstations.  CentOS should match RHEL in terms of
hardware compatibility and using vendor-supplied drivers.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/info/x86servers/serverproven/compat/us/nos/redchat.html
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/linux/hplinuxcert.html

--
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Glenn Eychaner <geychaner at mac.com>
wrote:
>         I am trying to assemble or purchase a set of CentOS 6 compatible
> SFF workstations, and am finding it incredibly frustrating to do so.
> hardware.redhat.com is so slow as to be useless and provides almost no
> information about each of the 1,300 or so products listed in their
> database; clicking through them one at a time is incredibly frustrating
> (and about half of them are discontinued or out of stock when I actually go
> looking for them, like the Intel DQ series motherboards I was interested
> in).  Vendor web sites are almost no use; they trumpet their Windows 8
> compatibility all over the site, but finding information about Linux
> compatibility is next to impossible.
>         My requirements aren't overwhelming; an i7 processor, four
memeory
> slots preferred, dual 24" (1920x1200) monitor capability, and dual
ethernet
> (or an expansion slot for a second Ethernet card).
>         Anyone have any advice on how to attack this these days? I've
been
> out of the hardware-purchase game on the Linux side for years, and most of
> my bookmarks no longer point anywhere useful, sadly.
>
I assume SFF is small form factor.  If you're willing to buy from Dell, the
Optiplex 9010 SFF has 4 memory
slots, i7 capable, 2 expansion PCIe-16 (one wired x4) slots.  You could use
one for a dual monitor graphics
card, and the other for extra ethernet ports.

You'd need to get to someone in  Dell enterprise support if you want to buy
one without Windows, or
you could just not use the Windows license.

I'm curious though: why do you need dual ethernet for a workstation?  Does
your office have
two lans?

-- 
Dale Dellutri