Re: Power usage of UltraSparc II processors

Everyone said mostly the same thing so I'll do a single reply for all:

On Tue, 03 Apr 2007 16:30:01 +0000, Rich Teer wrote:

On Tue, 3 Apr 2007, Gerald wrote:

It will be running Debian Linux. I plan to stick a 4.5GB drive in as /boot

Why would you run Linux on an E450? Solaris would be a much better
choice!

Comfort and knowledge that everything I need to run is already available
for the OS I am choosing.

There will be:

"gmediaserver" streaming media server for my in-house network audio
receiver. Possibly streaming video later

"lurker" web based searchable archive for a couple of email lists that I am
a member of who have no (decent) archive of their own

postfix mail server

Those are the top 3.

(with the extra space used to back up critical config files). a 9GB drive
as /. And software RAID 5 several 36GB drives to mount as /home (with
/var/www soft linked to /home/www).

IF you used Solairs, you could use ZFS' raidz for better performance
and resiliance for those disks.

Once again, comfort. I may look at LVM but I like the backup and growth of
RAID5. The speed hit is acceptable for a low use machine. Plugged in
either to the cable modem at home (6Meg down 384K up) or one of the T1
lines at work it won't be serving thousands of hits/day. Maybe hundreds on
SOME days and the outbound network will bottleneck before the server does.

As an in-house media server I want to be able to grow the space easily.
RAID5 with a Linux 2.6.17 or higher kernel allows growing the space, not
just adding more hot spares.

I'll be adding 2 501-5274 backplanes to max out the internal drive
availability. Remember, personal server -- refurbished 1" 36GB Ultra320
drives can be had for under USD $50 each now. I know, 500GB SATA drives
can be bought for under USD $150 and I may go that route later if I decide
I'm going to need terabytes of space.

There's a list of non SUN hardware that works under Linux at
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/sparc/hwlist.xml.

Sparc64 development in Linux is still active enough to keep me where I
want to be. I have several Ulra1 boxes and an Ultra2 all running Debian. A
few x86 machines too. I can't build a quad processor 4GB of RAM x86
machine for the same $300 I paid for this E450. The only place it will
cost more is for storage and in power consumption. And it's going to have
to consume that extra power for several years to eat up the cost
difference. A bleeding edge x86 machine probably won't last that long
increasing its cost anyway. I want a system I can turn on, load up, and
forget.

It will be headless. Not running Xorg or anything super CPU intensive so
the power per CPU should be well below maximum (crossing fingers). I may
plug it into a Kill-a-Watt power meter for a few days before I start
actively working with it to see what it draws (and how loud it us) at idle.

It's not a quiet a machine, and sucks a lot of power even when its
quiescent. Probably not the sort of thing you'd want on 24/7 in a
house! My E220R is only just tolerable...

I'm the only one living in my house. I can move it around if it's too
noisy.

Gerald

--
If you need to email me directly use: junkmail sysmatrix

Put the appropriate symbol in there and end it with a fish catcher.
.

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