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Dual P3 300 with 512MB Ram as a file server?

T

TechBoyJK

Lifer
In your opinion, how well would a dual p3 300 with 512MB ram with 10K rpm scsi hard drives on raid 1 fair as a file server if it was running freebsd/apache and had to serve out 50-150KB photo files, as many as 30 per second? Consider it having a 10/100 Network card and a 10Mbps port to the internet, and that the file server would have 200-300GB of photos.
 
Math time...


30 files/sec x 150KB/file x 0.001MB/KB = 4.5MB/second. That shouldn't present much of a challenge to the drives, the CPUs or the memory.

However, a 10-megabit network connection x 0.125 byte/bit = 1.25MB/sec peak throughput at the network cable (theoretically), so there's your bottleneck (assuming all the data is going to the Internet).
 
Cool, then if the only real problem may be the port speed, then I can bump that up to a 100mb port with very little financial consequence.

So, if port speed is not the bottleneck, how many 150KB files do you think that server could churn out? Any guesses on maximum output?
 
I was thinking about using a GigE nic since they are supposed to have faster processors to handle the additional data. Would this matter in this situation even if the port to the internet is only 100Mbps?
 
Also, what if I went with IDE Raid and dual 200GB drives with 8MB buffer in raid 1? Would this create a bottleneck? Could I at least churn out 30-50 150KB files per second?
 
Is this mission-critical stuff, or are you ok with the lesser reliability of IDE? The cost of 300GB of SCSI RAID1 is certainly not trivial, but the drives will be coming with five-year warranties and they're built to hammer 24/7. They also feature command queueing and much lower seek times. What's the application here, anyway?
 
Function of server is a photo server (NOT PORN...) We expect to need to output to the web 30-50 150KB photo files per second. Mission critical yes. RAID 1 not enough? That or I could start with 2x73GB SCSI drives and upgrade to something bigger when the time comes.....
 
If you get a quality raid controller (ide or scsi) you can upgrade your raid 1 array to a faster (and larger) raid 5 array by adding a disk. It's not so simple to just add a disk and run with it (you'll have to backup the files first) but the option is there if you need it. A few good IDE drives should be able to handle the load, but if downtime is costly, I'd go with SCSI.
 
It being mission-critical, you should probably also get yourself an adequately-sized tape-backup drive, maybe one of the 110/220GB LTO types (about $3000), and a respectable UPS such as an APC SmartUPS Pro 750XL (nice units, about 1hr runtime on our servers at work, they're around $500).

That's not cheap stuff, but if a pipe bursts in your server room, you'll be kissing that backup tape all the way from the safe-deposit box to your new server that the insurance settlement bought you. 😀 Ditto for when an important file disappears... heck, my whole folder on the server at work got inadvertently overwritten on Friday, but the Thursday backup tape...? Bingo. 😎
 
First of all, is it a P3 300? P2 300?

Second of all, what kind of "port" is this to the internet?
Cable, T3, OC?
 
Id stay with raid1 personally, raid 5 is overrated for anyhting other than economical reasons (total space isnt cut in half) RAID 1 read speeds are actually superior to that of RAID 5 in a general sense....especially because of the size of the files youll be dealing with, youd need a small stripe on a raid 0 or 5....so read throughput would decrease.

Also, i cant say this for sure, but this isnt 1985.....back whenthey made SCSI disks at a certainplant and crappy IDE's at another....fromwhat ive been reading, and what ive been told by friends in the industry, the disks all come off the same line man....they just get a different controller slapped on em. Youre right about the command queing though.
 
Originally posted by: sh4nsen
Id stay with raid1 personally, raid 5 is overrated for anyhting other than economical reasons (total space isnt cut in half) RAID 1 read speeds are actually superior to that of RAID 5 in a general sense....especially because of the size of the files youll be dealing with, youd need a small stripe on a raid 0 or 5....so read throughput would decrease.

Also, i cant say this for sure, but this isnt 1985.....back whenthey made SCSI disks at a certainplant and crappy IDE's at another....fromwhat ive been reading, and what ive been told by friends in the industry, the disks all come off the same line man....they just get a different controller slapped on em. Youre right about the command queing though.
Click to expand...

Where did you get this information? SCSI drives don't even always have the same size platters as IDE. The firmware is also different, connectors, etc. If it were just a matter of changing the chip on the drive, there'd be giant scsi drives.

RAID 5 has superior read times compared to RAID 1 due to striping. Any time you're dealing with smaller files, sustained read throughput will decrease. It's not a matter of the stripe size as much as it is the file size that makes this difference. Stripes of 32k or so would be good.
 
Originally posted by: TechBoyJK
Cool, then if the only real problem may be the port speed, then I can bump that up to a 100mb port with very little financial consequence.

So, if port speed is not the bottleneck, how many 150KB files do you think that server could churn out? Any guesses on maximum output?
Click to expand...

100Mb/sec = 12.5MB/sec
12.5MB / 150KB = ~83.3files/sec

If you went with GigE that'd be 125MB/Sec or ~833 files/sec however current top of the line IDE drives top out @ around 55MB/Sec so assume they average 50MB/Sec best case RAID would give you ~110MB/Sec so you'll never quite reach the limit of GigE unless perhaps you get Raptors or SCSI and RAID them but that'll kill your budget. (Not to mention the cost of a 1Gb connection to the 'Net)

Thorin

PS > Just in case someone is unclear capital B = Byte(s) small b = bits
 
Originally posted by: sh4nsen
Id stay with raid1 personally, raid 5 is overrated for anyhting other than economical reasons (total space isnt cut in half) RAID 1 read speeds are actually superior to that of RAID 5 in a general sense....especially because of the size of the files youll be dealing with, youd need a small stripe on a raid 0 or 5....so read throughput would decrease.

Also, i cant say this for sure, but this isnt 1985.....back whenthey made SCSI disks at a certainplant and crappy IDE's at another....fromwhat ive been reading, and what ive been told by friends in the industry, the disks all come off the same line man....they just get a different controller slapped on em. Youre right about the command queing though.
Click to expand...

Holy damn. RAID 5 is superior to any incarnation of RAID 1. Its the industry standard for server storage because not only does it offer redundancy, but it also offers a huge amount of speed. With multiple drives, you can easily exceed double or triple the sustained bandwidth of a single drive (assuming you have the IO).

SCSI drives made on the same line as IDE drives with a different controller slapped on? Excuse me? Their platters arent even the same size. The rotation mechanism is different. Moreover, you cant just "slap" on an interface. There are LVD to IDE adapters, true, but no SCA to IDE or FC to IDE. Also the MTBF for SCSI drives is significantly higher. What your friend probably means is that they come from the same plant.
 
Originally posted by: dmw16
I thought the first P3 was a 450mhz...
-doug
Click to expand...

You are Correct

first PIII was indeed a 450.


And I would go 2 SCSI 73GB drives to start

your bandwidth will be your bottleneck. you need 100 not 10
 
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