[nycbug-talk] 1U Server Recommendations

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005, Charles Sprickman wrote:

> However I'm a bit intrigued by all the new AMD 64-bit stuff.  Since the
> next box will be doing a fair amount of Postgres work, that might be
> helpful if only by allowing more RAM.  Also looking at the prices on
> Xeon chips, AMD looks like a steal.
Keep in mind that on 64-bit architecture, you will need about twice as 
much RAM to get similar performance as on 32-bit architecture. If your app 
requires 2G to get decent performance on i386, you'll need 4G on x86_64.
Prices on Xeon and AMD Opteron 2xx are very close. Motherboards are too. 

If you are looking for AMD just for the purposes of 64-bit-ness, consider 
latest Intel Xeon's ("nocona") chips, which are also x86_64. (I.E. 
whatever runs on AMD opteron x86_64 platform runs on nocona just as well).

> Supermicro doesn't offer any AMD stuff, so I'm looking for some general
> recommendations.  We don't want any homemade beige-box stuff nor do we
> want to pay a premium for someone else to put together some "it may work
> with FreeBSD" beige-box stuff. :)
> 
> Suggestions?  Our budget is OK, but not huge.  We're frugal but not
> dumb.
Get Dell SC1425 (nocona, dual xeon). They aren't expensive at all, if you 
buy minimum config and add memory and second CPU from newegg.

-alex