[rescue] Hardware Recommendations for upgrading sunhelp.org?

[Bill Bradford]

Due to my mom's passing, I have some inheritance with which to rebuild
and upgrade sunhelp.org (which also hosts my personal mail, websites for a
few people, a couple of VMs.. it's my main core server).

I already have a case and PS.

Need recs on

1: ryzen/motherboard/32g ram with as many SATA ports as possible
OR
2: i7/motherboard that takes DDR3 (I already have a bunch of DDR3) with
as many SATA ports as possible.

Budget: $600 or less.

Thoughts?

Doesn't have to be current gen, just good for the money - current system is
an AMD Phenom II X4 960T with 16G RAM and four 1TB SATA drives so I want
something newer than that with at LEAST 4cores/8threads or better.

Bill

[Mouse]

Post by Bill Bradford
I already have a case and PS.
Need recs on
1: ryzen/motherboard/32g ram with as many SATA ports as possible
OR
2: i7/motherboard that takes DDR3 (I already have a bunch of DDR3) with
as many SATA ports as possible.
Budget: $600 or less.
Thoughts?

No specific recommendations, positive or negative, but it does occur to
me that you might want to describe the case in a little more detail.
For example, if you have a 1U rackmount case, the set of mobos that
will fit is rather different from the set that will fit a full-tower
desktop case.

/~\ The ASCII Mouse
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X Against HTML ***@rodents-montreal.org
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_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

[Bill Bradford]

Post by Mouse

Post by Bill Bradford
I already have a case and PS.
Need recs on
1: ryzen/motherboard/32g ram with as many SATA ports as possible
OR
2: i7/motherboard that takes DDR3 (I already have a bunch of DDR3) with
as many SATA ports as possible.
Budget: $600 or less.
Thoughts?

No specific recommendations, positive or negative, but it does occur to
me that you might want to describe the case in a little more detail.
For example, if you have a 1U rackmount case, the set of mobos that
will fit is rather different from the set that will fit a full-tower
desktop case.

Case is a Fractal Design R5 desktop case with eight drive bays.

https://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-r5-black

I'll have two SSDs in RAID-1 for the OS, then six 1TB SATA HDs (probably
in a RAID5 or a pair of RAID-1s with a hotspare) for data storage.

Bill

[Phil Stracchino]

Post by Bill Bradford
Due to my mom's passing, I have some inheritance with which to rebuild
and upgrade sunhelp.org (which also hosts my personal mail, websites for a
few people, a couple of VMs.. it's my main core server).
I already have a case and PS.
Need recs on
1: ryzen/motherboard/32g ram with as many SATA ports as possible
OR
2: i7/motherboard that takes DDR3 (I already have a bunch of DDR3) with
as many SATA ports as possible.
Budget: $600 or less.
Thoughts?
Doesn't have to be current gen, just good for the money - current system is
an AMD Phenom II X4 960T with 16G RAM and four 1TB SATA drives so I want
something newer than that with at LEAST 4cores/8threads or better.

Two days ago, I would have said "I have never had a problem with an ASUS
motherboard." However, yesterday I started trying to upgrade my
daughter's PC with the Asus B350-Plus and Ryzen 5 2600 that I just
bought for her, and it appears to have defective fan sensing *and*
defective voltage monitoring.

I'm not a fan of Intel for a variety of reasons, and have preferred AMD
processors for about 25 years. But having a bunch of DDR3 RAM on hand
to use may be a compelling argument. Is there a reason why any
DDR3-using board should be i7? Or is it simply than any AMD-based board
newer than what you have will require DDR4?

Will the board you have take a newer processor with more cores? Do you
need more than four SATA ports? Is there a reason you can't add an
additional SATA/SAS controller to the existing system? What's the
bottleneck on what you're running right now?

[Bill Bradford]

Post by Phil Stracchino
Two days ago, I would have said "I have never had a problem with an ASUS
motherboard." However, yesterday I started trying to upgrade my
daughter's PC with the Asus B350-Plus and Ryzen 5 2600 that I just
bought for her, and it appears to have defective fan sensing *and*
defective voltage monitoring.

I tend to lean towards Gigabyte or ASRock..

Current board is:

Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
Product Name: GA-880GM-UD2H

It maxes out at 16G and well is just getting old.

Post by Phil Stracchino
I'm not a fan of Intel for a variety of reasons, and have preferred AMD
processors for about 25 years. But having a bunch of DDR3 RAM on hand
to use may be a compelling argument. Is there a reason why any
DDR3-using board should be i7?

i7 is the best proc I can think of that would still let me use ddr3.

Post by Phil Stracchino
Or is it simply than any AMD-based board
newer than what you have will require DDR4?

Anything with a Ryzen will require DDR4.

Post by Phil Stracchino
Will the board you have take a newer processor with more cores? Do you
need more than four SATA ports? Is there a reason you can't add an
additional SATA/SAS controller to the existing system? What's the
bottleneck on what you're running right now?

Bits of the current system are nearing 10 years old, and I just want to
"forklift upgrade" and build a new box and migrate everything over, then
use the old system for backups.

I'd prefer as many SATA ports on-board as possible, case has eight drive bays
and I intend to fill them all (two SSDs in RAID1 for OS, six more 1TB drives
in some sort of RAID config for everything else). Linux software raid
preferred; I *might* look at ZFS-on-Linux.

If I have to pop in an additional SATA controller it needs to just be
a JBOD / non-raid card.

Case is a Fractal Design R5 so anything needs to fit into that.

https://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-r5-black

Bill

[Andrew Luke Nesbit]

Dear Bill,

I, likewise, am sorry to hear of your mother's passing.

Post by Bill Bradford
It maxes out at 16G and well is just getting old.

[...]

Post by Bill Bradford
i7 is the best proc I can think of that would still let me use ddr3.

Intel Xeon E3-1200v1 or v2 CPU with an X9 series Supermicro motherboard
is a great combination when you've got DDR3 RAM. My "go to" X9 boards
for E3 CPU's max out at 32 GB.

Post by Bill Bradford
Case is a Fractal Design R5 so anything needs to fit into that.
https://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-r5-black

These are great cases, especially for the price. There are X9 board
options with micro-ATX form factor that can be had for very cheap.

You'd have 4c/8t (as well as the aforementioned 32 GB RAM). In another
message you mentioned using this server as a virt host as well. I'm
still learning the intricate relationships between cores and memory.
(If anybody has particularly useful resources on the latter point,
please let me know.)

Finally, I can't help but ask. Why are you not looking at a Sun stack
as your preferred option?

Andrew

[Jerry Kemp]

Another benefit, pushing the SPARC T4 option. Case is included, and is not cheap.

You also get redundant/dual power supplies.

I've upgraded my personal/desktop x86 (read ATX) to some nice/pricey $$$ stuff that, short of a lightning strike, expect to outlive
me, but still, no redundant power supplies.

Plus, lots of virtualization options including hyperviser/LDOM's, half-a-dozen standard type zones, +branded zones (lunix, BSD).

Jerry




STUFF DELETED BELOW.

==========================================================================


Intel Xeon E3-1200v1 or v2 CPU with an X9 series Supermicro motherboard
is a great combination when you've got DDR3 RAM. My "go to" X9 boards
for E3 CPU's max out at 32 GB.

Case is a Fractal Design R5 so anything needs to fit into that.

https://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-r5-black

These are great cases, especially for the price. There are X9 board
options with micro-ATX form factor that can be had for very cheap.

You'd have 4c/8t (as well as the aforementioned 32 GB RAM). In another
message you mentioned using this server as a virt host as well. I'm
still learning the intricate relationships between cores and memory.
(If anybody has particularly useful resources on the latter point,
please let me know.)

Finally, I can't help but ask. Why are you not looking at a Sun stack
as your preferred option?
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

[Bill Bradford]

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit
I, likewise, am sorry to hear of your mother's passing.

Thanks.

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit
Intel Xeon E3-1200v1 or v2 CPU with an X9 series Supermicro motherboard
is a great combination when you've got DDR3 RAM. My "go to" X9 boards
for E3 CPU's max out at 32 GB.

But do any of them work with non-registered/non-ecc RAM? All of my DDR3
that I have sitting spare is regular desktop DDR3 RAM.

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit

Post by Bill Bradford
Case is a Fractal Design R5 so anything needs to fit into that.
https://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-r5-black

These are great cases, especially for the price.

I wouldn't have this one, except for a consulting client who needed something
done ASAP a couple of weeks ago and bought me the case as payment. Power
supply is going to be one of the ones I picked up as a refurb sale unit from
EVGA about six months ago.

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit
There are X9 board
options with micro-ATX form factor that can be had for very cheap.

Suggestions?

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit
You'd have 4c/8t (as well as the aforementioned 32 GB RAM). In another
message you mentioned using this server as a virt host as well. I'm
still learning the intricate relationships between cores and memory.
(If anybody has particularly useful resources on the latter point,
please let me know.)

"as many cores and as much RAM as possible" :D

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit
Finally, I can't help but ask. Why are you not looking at a Sun stack
as your preferred option?

Same reason I moved off of the T1000 when I moved everything out of colo
and to a business connection at home with static IPs - what Oracle wanted
for a support contract, just to get patches, was more than sunhelp.org has
brought in, in income, total, in the past twenty-one years that I've run
the site. Plus, I refuse to give them business due to moral reasons.

(Had a long discussion about this when I moved to the current system back
in 09-10ish)

In honesty I can say that the site and everything related to it, never even
covered the costs of running it. I was lucky if I made enough to take the
wife out to dinner once a month to make up for all the time I spent on it.

Bill

[Andrew Luke Nesbit]

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit
Intel Xeon E3-1200v1 or v2 CPU with an X9 series Supermicro motherboard
is a great combination when you've got DDR3 RAM.B My "go to" X9 boards
for E3 CPU's max out at 32 GB.

But do any of them work with non-registered/non-ecc RAM?B All of my DDR3
that I have sitting spare is regular desktop DDR3 RAM.

Yes, I believe it does. Generally a board that takes unbuffered ECC RAM
also accepts non-ECC RAM. It depends on the chipset.

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit

Post by Bill Bradford
Case is a Fractal Design R5 so anything needs to fit into that.

https://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/define-series/define-r5-bla
ck

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit
These are great cases, especially for the price.B

I wouldn't have this one, except for a consulting client who needed
something done ASAP a couple of weeks ago and bought me the case as
payment.

What don't you like about it?

Power supply is going to be one of the ones I picked up as a refurb
sale unit from EVGA about six months ago.

Now you've jogged my memory and I'm wondering whether the PSU will be
compatible. This would need further investigation. What is the model
of PSU?

My experience has been that 90% of problems are due to power, for all
sorts of devices.

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit
There are X9 board
options with micro-ATX form factor that can be had for very cheap.

Suggestions?

I'm a huge fan of the X9SCM-F. Sometimes you can even find one that
comes with a 1U chassis, PSU, and fans for not much more than the cost
of the bare board itself.

This is the board I am referring to:
https://www.supermicro.nl/products/motherboard/Xeon/C202_C204/X9SCM-F.cfm

I am compiling inventory of my hardware. This will take several
additional weeks.

Where are you located? If it's not more trouble than it's worth (due to
packaging and shipping) I would be happy to donate equipment if this is
useful to you or the community. Contact me privately if you would like
to discuss this further. I am in the UK.

However it sounds like you've already got everything you need to
implement a fine solution based on the AMD FX-8320E. Plus you get 8
real cores, and a configuration that is a little more modern.

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit
You'd have 4c/8t (as well as the aforementioned 32 GB RAM).B In another
message you mentioned using this server as a virt host as well.B I'm
still learning the intricate relationships between cores and memory.
(If anybody has particularly useful resources on the latter point,
please let me know.)

"as many cores and as much RAM as possible" :D

This is usually the correct answer.

On the other hand I have encountered situations where increasing RAM can
actually decrease performance, for example :D

Post by Andrew Luke Nesbit
Finally, I can't help but ask.B Why are you not looking at a Sun stack
as your preferred option?

Same reason I moved off of the T1000 when I moved everything out of colo
and to a business connection at home with static IPs - what Oracle wanted
for a support contract, just to get patches, was more than sunhelp.org has
brought in, in income, total, in the past twenty-one years that I've run
the site.B Plus, I refuse to give them business due to moral reasons.

I have a similar issue at the moment. I recently bought an HPE ProLiant
Gen8 MicroServer but I was not expecting to be fleeced like this. It's
a development server for a personal project. All of this has been a
major blocker for provisioning the server for what I intend to use it
for (testing Infiniband hardware).

(Had a long discussion about this when I moved to the current system back
in 09-10ish)

Is this discussion in the list archives?

In honesty I can say that the site and everything related to it, never even
covered the costs of running it.B I was lucky if I made enough to take the
wife out to dinner once a month to make up for all the time I spent on it.

I can relate to this, with regards to time spent online and money spent.
As such, I've become very particular about how and where I spend my
time online, and ensuring that hardware I spend money on is actually
working for me in a productive way, rather than merely being an
interesting thing to experiment with. I already have a a room full of
interesting hardware to experiment with, enough to last me years.

Andrew
--
OpenPGP key: EB28 0338 28B7 19DA DAB0 B193 D21D 996E 883B E5B9
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

[Bill Bradford]

First off, sorry about your mother's passing.

Thanks.

As you know, 32 gigs of DDR4 RAM is $300 retail, that only leaves $300 for
CPU/MB... And a current-gen i7 CPU is $300 retail, leaving you $0 for an MB.

I've been looking at this:

(amazon)
"AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Processor with Wraith Spire Cooler (YD1600BBAEBOX) and
GIGABYTE GA-AB350-Gaming 3 AMD RYZEN AM4 B350 RGB Fusion Smart Fan 5 HDMI1.4
M.2 SATA 6Gbps USB 3.1 Type-A ATX DDR4 Motherboard" - $245.08

"Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 DRAM 2400MHz (PC4-19200) C14 memory
kit for DDR4 Systems" - $279.99

total of $525.07 plus tax.

A quad-core i5 might be a better choice
i5-7500 $199.05
http://www.microcenter.com/product/485323/Core_i5-7500_Kaby_Lake_34_GHz_LGA_1
151_Boxed_Processor

Only 4 cores/threads.. doesn't give me much of an advantage over what I've got
now - looking for 4c/8t or better :(

MB w/ 6 SATA ports $28.99 (after $30 disc when bought w/CPU)
http://www.microcenter.com/product/502815/B250M_PRO-VDH_LGA_1151_mATX_Intel_M
otherboard
2x 16 Gig DDR4 lots of 2x 8 Gig DDR4 $139.99/ea
http://www.microcenter.com/product/446298/Ballistix_Sport_LT_16GB_2_x_8GB_DDR
4-2400_PC4-19200_CL16_Dual_Channel_Desktop_Memory_Kit
For a total price of $550.95, incl. $41.99 in sales tax.

Interesting..

Reusing existing DDR3 ram would be my suggestion, but that forces you into
older MB/CPUs.

I don't mind older, as long as its better than what I have now.

I built up a couple nice VM servers for home use with AMD FX-8320E Black
Edition CPUs and cheap ASUS M5A78L-M Plus motherboards. They used DDR3 RAM
which I had 8x 8 gig sticks of, so each server has 32 Gig RAM and 8x 3.2 GHz
cores. After discounts and rebates at MicroCenter, I paid under $100 for
CPU/MB, but that was over 6 months ago.

I actually have an fx8320 and motherboard for it, for what was going to be the
LAST round of upgrades, that I bought 4-5 years ago - but never got around to
throwing it together, and now at this point just want to get something more
recent. I may still build that box and dedicate it to VMs. At least, I think
I still have it.. somewhere...

Bill

Due to my mom's passing, I have some inheritance with which to rebuild and

upgrade sunhelp.org (which also hosts my personal mail, websites for a

few people, a couple of VMs.. it's my main core server).
I already have a case and PS.
Need recs on
1: ryzen/motherboard/32g ram with as many SATA ports as possible
OR
2: i7/motherboard that takes DDR3 (I already have a bunch of DDR3) with
as many SATA ports as possible.
Budget: $600 or less.
Thoughts?
Doesn't have to be current gen, just good for the money - current system is
an AMD Phenom II X4 960T with 16G RAM and four 1TB SATA drives so I want
something newer than that with at LEAST 4cores/8threads or better.
Bill

[Lionel Peterson]

Bill,

I'd build put the FX-8320e cpu/board, esp. if you've got surplus DDR3 ram for
it. I'm very pleased with mine, and it is low-ish power so a small PS and case
could get you going for $50 or so.

Micro center has cheap SATA3 HDs if you need any, and small SSDs for OS are
$20 for 120 Gig last I looked at microcenter.

It's a nice CPU - I just wanted cores for VMs, performance wasn't a driver -
and I've been very happy with mine so far.

Lionel

Post by Bill Bradford
I actually have an fx8320 and motherboard for it, for what was going to be the
LAST round of upgrades, that I bought 4-5 years ago - but never got around to
throwing it together, and now at this point just want to get something more
recent. I may still build that box and dedicate it to VMs. At least, I think
I still have it.. somewhere...
Bill

_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

[Mauricio Tavares]

Stupid question: would you consider/can split the machines, as in one
for the storage and the other for the VMs? AFAIK your old machine
could be a fine freenas box with newer HDs (SSD or some hybrid setup)
and then build the vm host for CPU and memory. I would even contribute
and give you a 4 port gigabit intel card so you can LACP to your
heart's content.

Post by Lionel Peterson
Bill,
I'd build put the FX-8320e cpu/board, esp. if you've got surplus DDR3 ram for
it. I'm very pleased with mine, and it is low-ish power so a small PS and case
could get you going for $50 or so.
Micro center has cheap SATA3 HDs if you need any, and small SSDs for OS are
$20 for 120 Gig last I looked at microcenter.
It's a nice CPU - I just wanted cores for VMs, performance wasn't a driver -
and I've been very happy with mine so far.
Lionel

Post by Bill Bradford
I actually have an fx8320 and motherboard for it, for what was going to be

the

Post by Bill Bradford
LAST round of upgrades, that I bought 4-5 years ago - but never got around

to

Post by Bill Bradford
throwing it together, and now at this point just want to get something more
recent. I may still build that box and dedicate it to VMs. At least, I

think

Post by Bill Bradford
I still have it.. somewhere...
Bill

_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue

[Bill Bradford]

Post by Lionel Peterson
I'd build put the FX-8320e cpu/board, esp. if you've got surplus DDR3 ram for
it. I'm very pleased with mine, and it is low-ish power so a small PS and case
could get you going for $50 or so.

I've got everything I need to build out a box with the AMD, but I was thinking
about going "closer to current gen" while I have the funds.

Post by Lionel Peterson
Micro center has cheap SATA3 HDs if you need any, and small SSDs for OS are
$20 for 120 Gig last I looked at microcenter.

I've got a stack of 128G SSDs here next to me and a pile (literally) of 1T
SATA HDs.

Bill

[Jerry Kemp]

Bill,

its time to quit messing around with this x86 stuff, and get back to RISC HW.

Odd you mentioned this, especially your budget.

In July, in preparation for Solaris 11.4 (AKA 12.0), I purchased a (new to me) Sun/Oracle T4-1 system from a vendor selling on eBay.

specs:

128 Gb RAM - expansible to 512 Gb.

Also shipped with Dual SAS HDD for mirror redundancy.

64 threads/CPU available to the OS.

Paid $599.xx + shipping.

It is an enterprise piece of equipment, and it is somewhat audible, but no where like your old T1000. FWIW, due to limited wall
outlets, right now it is in my living room, and have no problem hearing my TV.

Very fast. Intended to be playing with LDOM stuff right now, but having fun playing with john-the-ripper, vs 64 CPU's.

Food for thought.

Jerry Kemp





-------- Original Message --------
From: Bill Bradford
Sent: Mon, Oct 1, 2018 12:09 PM CDT
To: ***@sunhelp.org, ***@sunhelp.org
Subject: [rescue] Hardware Recommendations for upgrading sunhelp.org?

Due to my mom's passing, I have some inheritance with which to rebuild and upgrade sunhelp.org (which also hosts my personal mail,
websites for a
few people, a couple of VMs.. it's my main core server).

I already have a case and PS.
Need recs on
1: ryzen/motherboard/32g ram with as many SATA ports as possible
OR
2: i7/motherboard that takes DDR3 (I already have a bunch of DDR3) with
as many SATA ports as possible.

Budget: $600 or less.

Thoughts?

Doesn't have to be current gen, just good for the money - current system is
an AMD Phenom II X4 960T with 16G RAM and four 1TB SATA drives so I want
something newer than that with at LEAST 4cores/8threads or better.

Bill
_______________________________________________
rescue list - http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue