[ILUG] Dell Poweredge dual p2 450 vs Athlon 800

[Niall O Broin]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 11:56:34AM +0000, Pearse Stokes wrote:

> I've been offered a Dell Poweredge with Dual P2 450 and 500 meg RAM, 4 SCSI
> 9GB drives, tape backup. (Forklift and hearing defenders included). My
> current 'server' is a generic Athlon 800 with 128 megs RAM. I've only got
> half a dozen 'puters to serve to, doing general office stuff.

> 1. Will the lower speed dual processor be noticeably faster or slower (or no
> different) in terms of file server performance, compared with the Athlon 800?

For your serving purposes, the dual processors and extra RAM and SCSI disks
should more than compensate for the lower speed of the individual CPUs.
However given your network load, you rpobably won't notice a difference
anyway.

> 2. Is RH 7.0 or Mandrake 8.0 installation complex in a dual processor, RAID,
> multi-drive server, and can a newbie like me do it without cracking up?

I'd use Mandrake (*), on the basis that avoiding ANYTHING from RH with a .0 in
the version number has proven to be a good policy and 7.0 was no exception.
This has become such a truism that they probably won't be arsed spending any
cash on Q.A. for RH 8.0 because everybody will assume it'll be crap anyway :-)
Should be very easy,a nd you'll know you've done it right when you see two
penguins at the top of the screen rather than one at boot time :-)

> Should I leave well-enough alone?

This is the wrong place to ask that - nobody here ever leaves ANYTHING
well-enough alone :-) If as I'm guessing you're getting a very good deal on
this from your neighbour there, I'd go for it purely to get the tape drive.
If 18GB is enough space for you, you can even run RAID 0+1 and be happier
again, or RAID 5 will give you 27GB if 18 is a bit tight. That box may well
have a hardware RAID controller - if not, Linux software RAID is quite
mature now.



Niall

(*) I would actually use SuSE :-) but from the options presented . . .