Bryan J. Smith wrote: >Since good server designs have come up in the past, I wanted to point >out a "low-cost" server option that has good I/O, and the vendor offers >_your_choice_ of not only Fedora Core or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but >_also_ CentOS _shipped_ with it! > > >IN-A-NUTSHELL ... > >Starting at just over $750, you can get a single Socket-939 Opteron 1xx >(dual-core is an option) system with up to 4GiB of ECC (but non- >registered) DDR SDRAM, up to 4 hot-swap SATA bays (8114 model), one PCI- >X slot (perfect for a 3Ware card, which they _do_ support ;-) and dual >on-board GbE Broadcom NICs -- all in a 1U rackmount form-factor. The >resulting I/O performance is excellent at the price-point for those that >want a good server I/O well beyond typical "desktop/workstation" but for >around the same price. > >The 4 hot-swap drive configuration, with a decent amount of RAM, 3Ware >card with the 4 drives in RAID-10 or 5, and, most importantly, with >CentOS 4.2 shipped runs just a little over $2K. Not really much more >than an equivalent "self-assembled desktop" you might be able to put >together, while being a heck of a lot better in interconnect >configuration and resulting server performance. > >ASL Monarch 8110/8114/8115 (Left Column): > http://www.aslab.com/products/storage/monarch.html > > > Thanks Bryan, this is a timely post for me. By the way, I tend to like your verbosity. My 0.02 cents worth. Ed