On Thu, 2005-07-28 at 13:30 -0700, Kirk Bocek wrote:
> Tyan Thunder K8SE S2892, BIOS 1.01
> ...
> Antec Truepower 2.0 550W PSU
Is that the 550EPS12V? Or just the regular 550?
The former has an 8-pin (4x2) SSI server connector.
The latter has only the 4-pin (2x2) P4 connector.
Don't confuse either with the 6-pin (3x2) SSI Workstation (WS)
connector, now known as a PCIe connector. And no, that's not
the 6-pin (6x1) "AUX" connector.
[ Confused yet? ;-]
> Chenming 901A-0-0 RTL Case
Isn't that an ATX case, and _not_ an EATX/SSI EEB case?
> I thought I bought a plenty large case.
There are (not including newer BTX, or older formats):
FlexATX: 9.0" x 7.5"
MicroATX: 9.6" x 9.6"
ATX: 12.0" x 9.6"
Ext ATX: 12.0" x 13.0"
SSI EEB: 12.0" x 13.0" + additional height/spacing/thermal
Most of the time, an EATX case will fit an SSI EEB mainboard, but
sometimes you don't have the headroom. Although some ATX cases may
physically fit an EATX, they often don't have the stand-offs required,
and definitely not the height required.
> Turns out the CPU heat sink at
> the front of the motherboard sticks up far enough to interfere with the
> drive bays at the bottom of the case. I had carefully mounted the CPUs,
> heat sinks and memory before mounting the motherboard. When I tried to
> insert the motherboard, the front heat sink hit the shelf that supports
> one of the two internal hard drive cages that come with the Chenming
> case. I had to peel off the heat sink to get the board in then reinstall
> it -- something I didn't want to do. If the case was 9" wide instead of
> 8", this probably wouldn't be an issue.
Welcome to SSI EEB. ;->
"Drive overhang" is typical of most ATX cases, and will quickly
interfere with EATX and especially SSI EEB mainboards.
> The heat sink sticks up far enough to keep me from reinstalling the
> internal hard drive cages. Not a problem since I'm using the Supermicro
> SATA cage, but it bugs me to lose expansion possibilities. Can anyone
> recommend a "low-rise" Opteron heat sink?
The problem is that you need to use a case designed for SSI EEB
mainboards. You have a case designed for ATX, possibly EATX. You can
tell if its EATX if you're last 2-3" of your mainboard has
standoffs/screws. If it's "overhanging" without them, then you only
have an ATX case.
> Booting the first time, I was happy to see that everything was
> recognized by the system, all three network ports, the Nvidia SATA
> controller and even the 3Ware controller.
> However, the boot messages showed:
> warning: many lost ticks.
> Your time source seems to be instable or some driver is hogging
> interrupts
> and several repeating messages:
>
> powernow-k8: error - out of sync...
> Also, /proc/cpuinfo showed each cpu as running at about 1004Mhz with
> about 900 bogomips. Not what I expected.
Turn off PowerNOW in the BIOS. It's what's slowing down your CPUs.
Everything I've read says do _not_ use it on a server.
> So I downloaded, compiled and installed kernel 2.6.12.3. On rebooting,
> the error messages went away and the 3Ware worked without complaint. Now
> /proc/cpuinfo showed each cpu running at 2009.267 Mhz with 4014.08
> bogomips. Ah, much better! In addition, the system came up in with NUMA
> enabled. Looks like the Red Hat kernel had it turned off by default.
> I benchmarked disk array performance using Bonnie++ version 1.03a. I ran
> six benchmarks using 50GB of data, three using 16k blocks and three
> using 64k blocks. During the raid 0 testing I had two instances of
> Setiathome running. During the raid 5 testing I had three instances of
> Setiathome running. Here are the results:
>
> Raid 0, 64k Stripes:
>
> bonnie++ 1.03a ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
> -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
> Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
> Tyan 50G:16k 49317 99 138307 62 +++++ +++ 46765 80 183180 22 88.9 0
> Tyan 50G:16k 48911 98 148421 67 77099 21 46018 79 182136 21 89.8 0
> Tyan 50G:16k 49188 98 143615 65 77381 21 46158 78 181181 21 90.5 0
> Tyan 50G:64k 49372 99 146417 67 77185 21 45828 78 179758 21 76.7 0
> Tyan 50G:64k 48585 98 145376 66 76580 21 45609 78 171888 21 76.3 0
> Tyan 50G:64k 46093 92 134903 58 67851 18 45200 77 172103 21 75.6 0
> ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
> -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
> files:max:min /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
> Tyan 16 2524 97 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 2542 97 +++++ +++ 8670 99
> Tyan 16 2385 98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 2579 97 +++++ +++ 8408 98
> Tyan 16 2627 97 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 2437 92 +++++ +++ 8671 100
> Tyan 16 1582 98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 1647 98 +++++ +++ 8488 100
> Tyan 16 1399 85 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 1632 98 +++++ +++ 8476 99
> Tyan 16 1654 95 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 1636 98 +++++ +++ 8405 99
>
> Writes at about 140MB/Sec, reads at about 180MB/Sec. Very nice.
>
> Raid 5, 64k Stripes:
>
> bonnie++ 1.03a ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
> -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
> Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
> Tyan 50G:16k 33394 68 35889 16 26513 7 44096 75 157248 19 84.1 0
> Tyan 50G:16k 32601 67 36058 16 26623 7 43964 75 156970 19 83.3 0
> Tyan 50G:16k 37892 77 35702 16 26960 7 44390 75 157084 19 83.5 0
> Tyan 50G:64k 36168 74 35560 17 27003 8 43463 75 155179 20 69.1 0
> Tyan 50G:64k 32713 68 36187 16 26580 7 43922 76 156752 20 69.2 0
> ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
> -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
> files:max:min /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
> Tyan 16 1561 98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 1694 97 +++++ +++ 8428 97
> Tyan 16 1672 98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 1712 97 +++++ +++ 8751 99
> Tyan 16 1542 98 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 1355 81 +++++ +++ 8986 100
> Tyan 16 2534 96 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 2408 96 +++++ +++ 7945 98
> Tyan 16 2382 97 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 2380 97 +++++ +++ 7989 99
>
> Whoa! Writes drop to about 35MB/Sec under raid 5, about 25% of the raid 0
> performance. In fact, it was taking so long that I aborted the last test. Just to be
> sure that setiathome wasn't interfering, I killed seti and reran a smaller test.
> Writes increased to about 50MB/Sec without seti running. I was expecting some hit for
> raid 5 but not this much. Guess I'll stick with the hot rsync backups to other hosts
> scheme that I'm using now.
Or consider RAID-10. Send some benchmarks of that. ;->
> The 3Ware controller is pretty cool. As I said, the driver (3w-9xxx) is
> included in the 2.6 kernel. 3Ware provides a simple CLI utility for
> management. They also have a GUI tool but I didn't bother running it.
> You can create, remove and verify 'units' on a running system. The
> associated /dev entries are dynamically added and removed as you make
> changes. Very nice.
Make sure you have the latest 3Ware driver and firmware for the 9500S
series. Also consider the "tweaks" on 3Ware's site.
> In summary, the Tyan S2892 plus the 3Ware controller runs well under CentOS 4.1
> although you will have to update to a more current kernel than the one provided by
> Red Hat. Watch your clearance at the front of the motherboard when selecting a case.
Or just get an SSI EEB case in the first place for an SSI EEB
mainboard. ;->
--
Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx
---------------------------------------------------------------------
It is mathematically impossible for someone who makes more than you
to be anything but richer than you. Any tax rate that penalizes them
will also penalize you similarly (to those below you, and then below
them). Linear algebra, let alone differential calculus or even ele-
mentary concepts of limits, is mutually exclusive with US journalism.
So forget even attempting to explain how tax cuts work. ;->
