spikespiegal
Golden Member
Had a friend call me up and ask me if I'd take a side job upgrading the server at a Machine shop a friend of his was running. Hey, easy cash - easy job - no problem.
Current server they had was a Dell *something* running dual P3 700s, and utterly trashed with grease and dust, but still working fine, if not too slow for their needs. The environment is pretty dirty, and even the cleanest office where the server was housed is barely more than a pigpen. No A/C.
Luckily the P3's in the Dell were running on passive heat sinks given that all the other fans in the box were long since frozen stiff. The dilema now is what to replace it with.
I want to avoid blades, which really need a cool environment to run in, and dual core Intels, which put out marginally less heat than a paint dryer. The problem is these guys are on a tight budget, want a brand name server, I can't talk them into DIY, and they need either dual cores or dual processors.
Naturally this is a good solution for a dual opteron or even an X2 given the processors run much cooler than the latest Intel dual cores. This is obviously a big reason the Opteron is so well liked in dense blade clusters. Problem here is that I can't find any big computer vendor that sells basic dual processor opteron, or dual core X2 servers. It's either a dual core P4, or Opteron blades. Sun want's a stupid amount of money for their Opteron servers, so nix that option.
So, what gives with the strange market for AMD servers? I wasn't aware that the only businesses that buy servers have environmentally controlled server rooms, or, are only allowed to buy Intel. Does the Opteron also have a CPU lock on it that prevents it from being installed in anything but 2U Blades and workstations or something? I run into small Dell and IBM business servers all over the place, but obviously AMD is only good for corporate data centers I guess. I just don't get it.
Current server they had was a Dell *something* running dual P3 700s, and utterly trashed with grease and dust, but still working fine, if not too slow for their needs. The environment is pretty dirty, and even the cleanest office where the server was housed is barely more than a pigpen. No A/C.
Luckily the P3's in the Dell were running on passive heat sinks given that all the other fans in the box were long since frozen stiff. The dilema now is what to replace it with.
I want to avoid blades, which really need a cool environment to run in, and dual core Intels, which put out marginally less heat than a paint dryer. The problem is these guys are on a tight budget, want a brand name server, I can't talk them into DIY, and they need either dual cores or dual processors.
Naturally this is a good solution for a dual opteron or even an X2 given the processors run much cooler than the latest Intel dual cores. This is obviously a big reason the Opteron is so well liked in dense blade clusters. Problem here is that I can't find any big computer vendor that sells basic dual processor opteron, or dual core X2 servers. It's either a dual core P4, or Opteron blades. Sun want's a stupid amount of money for their Opteron servers, so nix that option.
So, what gives with the strange market for AMD servers? I wasn't aware that the only businesses that buy servers have environmentally controlled server rooms, or, are only allowed to buy Intel. Does the Opteron also have a CPU lock on it that prevents it from being installed in anything but 2U Blades and workstations or something? I run into small Dell and IBM business servers all over the place, but obviously AMD is only good for corporate data centers I guess. I just don't get it.
