Single P4 1.7 or Dual P-III 1 GHZ??

[mikeasa]

I am looking to build a SQL 2000 database server. The server will average between 5 and 15 concurrent connections. The server will be doing very little else but running SQL.

I am considering dual PIII 1GHz and a single Pentium4 1.7 GHz.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to which would be a better platform? Also, I am considering running 2 40GB IBM 60GXP hard drives in RAID 1 on a 3Ware Escalade 6200 RAID controller. The total cost for the hard drives and the controller is about $350. Do any of you feel that it is worth moving to 36GB 10000RPM SCSI drives with a SCSI RAID controller given the large increase in cost?

Thank you for any and all responses.

 

[Zach]

I'd use dual PIII's, dual Athlons of some speed, or a single high end Athlon.. and since you're doing a DB server I'll assume you know that the OS has to support SMP.

As for the drives, a single SCSI drive is as good as IDE's in RAID 1. You could use software RAID 1 with SCSI disks too, use a dual channel card and put the drives on opposite channels. Might work best, you can find lots of mobo's with integrated SCSI. But, for the absolute best, RAID 5 or 1 in SCSI is it. You could use RAID 5 with more 9.1GB or 18GB disks instead of 36GB disks in RAID 1 to save money. Should be faster too, if your card is good. 10K and 7.2K 9.1's and 18's are cheap..

Speaking of mobos, you might want to consider building the server around a dual motherboard but only filling one CPU at first, to see if you need the second. Only if you have a budjet though, with CPU costs there's no reason to bother if you can spare a little extra.

 

[fkloster]

Go P4 1.7 on a socket 478 board and then upgrade to Northwood next month!

 

[BD231]

Dual PIII or Athlon, or a single highend Athlon. Zach knows what he's talking about

 

[majewski9]

If you want to build a quick server please use Dual Athlons or even dual P3's! I will remind you that Anandtech uses dual Athlons for the main page server.

 

[Vegito]

I done a lot of sql data centers, you'll need dual processors, large cache and high Mhz..

Athlon is perfect for the job for the budget ! I just wish athlon can have those 1mb l2 cache with higher speed...

or any xeon with 2mb cache ( too costly)

at least mirror a pair of 36 scsis.. I had a sql on 18 mirror and it used 9gb of the space for replication and backup and ip mirroring

 

[MysticLlama]

forcesho was right about the dual procs + big cache point. The one thing against the PIIIs is the 256k. What would be the best for something like this is of course Xeon's, but they are quite spendy. I'd look around and see about trying to find a pair of 512k Tualitins, that would really be the way to go.

The only problem with dual Athlons that I can see is the potential price. Even with the higher cost of the chips, you could probably save enough on the motherboard to get the dual PIII-1GHz cheaper. I'm sure you can even get a board with onboard SCSI cheaper than a lot of the dual Athlon boards. Just something to think about.

Also, SCSI over IDE is makes a much bigger difference in database operations vs. file serving or app serving, etc. It's all about the seek time and moving to different places on the drive very fast, the overall throughput doesn't matter nearly as much. SCSIs are a lot more likely to hold up well to this, and they also are better at multitasking.

A line of RAID cards to look at that is usally inexpensive is the AMI Megaraid Series. I have a Dell PERC in my box which is essentially an AMI card with a different BIOS. You can usually pick up the UW version for under $200. UW isn't as fast as the other stuff of course, but you're not going to be doing massive sequential transfers from a database either. (Unless you're using it to store photoshop images or something)

Just some thoughts.

 

[mikeasa]

Just to clarify, I do have some restrictions on my choices. My superior does not feel comfortable using AMD cpu's, so that is not an option for me. The options really are only the dual P-III 1GHz, a single P4 1.7GHz and possibly a dual Xeon 1.7GHz.

The dual P-III's and the single P4 cost about the same money and the dual Xeon P4 is about $700 more. Please let me know what kind of difference the dual Xeon P4's would make.

 

[bigbootydaddy]

the xtra cache on xeons makes them better than ordinary ps.

i would wait a couple of weeks and get an iwill dvd266u-rn cuz it will support dual tutulain-s (sp?), the new p3 with the 512k cache. yum.

booty

 

[MysticLlama]

Dual Xeons in database apps are a lot faster, but only if you get the ones with the bigger cache. AFAIK the P4 Xeons are hardly any different except that they are dual capable. Just something to think about.

Are you working on a really constrained budget? Because if you aren't, then a better bet than building it would be to just purchase a real server flat out. Because what I'm thinking is that CDW has a dual proc Tualatin Compaq server for under $3400, (without drives) and it only takes up 2 rack units and has hot swappable parts, etc. It would last a really really long time.

 

[Megatomic]

Don't get the P4 system. Dual PIIIs or Dual Xeons are available right now and will definitely do a better job for you. Dual PIII Tualatin would be primo!

 

[MysticLlama]

Oh yeah, I knew I forgot something....

Look around for slower Xeons. In a database environment you'd do better with a pair of 800-900mhz Xeons with 1mb of cache than you would with the 1GHz Coppermines.

 

[Bovinicus]

Convince your boss to go with AMD. That is the best solution, it is stable, cheaper, and much better suited for this situation. You see, the Pentium3 would be good, except you will probably need a lot of memory bandwidth for an SQL database. The P3 cannot provide you with this. A 1.7GHz P4 would definitely be suitable, however, I feel the performance you lose by chosing that over an AMD dual system is just not worth it. The AMD dual systems are the best because they use an EV6 data bus, meaning that both processors have their own dedicated data path to memory. This would provide the most optimal solution. If you cannot convince him however, go with the P4, but one of the newer socket based versions so that you can upgrade to a faster processor later if necessary.

 

[mikeasa]

Do you think that dual 512K Tualatin chips are better than dual 1.7GHz Xeons with 256K or are the Xeons significantly better?

 

[jose]

You'd be safe w/ this setup:

Asus CUR-DSL w/ dual P3-933
4 - 1 gig Ecc Pc133 = 4gigs of Crucial Ram
Mylex AccelleRaid 64bit pci raid5 card
5 Quantuam Atlas 10k2 18-36g

sorry don't have time to look up prices,
but these components are not that
expensive. What ever you do don't go
ide on a multi-user system.

Regards,
Jose

 

[yourharddrive]

dualy's are good for a server

 

[bigbootydaddy]

<< You see, the Pentium3 would be good, except you will probably need a lot of memory bandwidth for an SQL database. The P3 cannot provide you with this. >>



like i said, the iwill dvd266u-rn that comes out like next week or so will support 2100 ddr like the prvious dvd266 boards, which will help as opposed to other dual intels that run sdram.

i wouldnt spend the extra cash on dual xeons...i just wouldnt...i think the 512k tualatins would be nice...1.2 can reach 1.5, with some nice cas 2 2100 ddr and raid.

booty

 

[dullard]

<< Do you think that dual 512K Tualatin chips are better than dual 1.7GHz Xeons with 256K or are the Xeons significantly better? >>



What about the 2.0 GHz Xeons? I bet those will be quite nice, although probably way out of mikeasa's price range.

 

[Kwad Guy]

A good budget solution could be a Cabrillo SC450NX server, which
is a 4-way Xeon server. You can pick one up, without memory,
processors or hard drives, for around $1000 or so. Add four
PII 450/2Mb Xeon processors at around $100 each. Add memory
(pricey, but not outrageous). Add your favorite SCSI hot swap
drives.

YOu can, of course, upgrade the Xeons (up to 700Mhz/2Mb; whoever
mentioned 800 or 900 Mhz Xeons is mistaken; real PIII Xeons only
go up to 700Mhz). But the sweet spot for large cache Xeons is
at the PII 450Mhz level.

Kwad

 

[mikeasa]

At this point I am thinking that any of these solutions will probably function well for what we are doing at the moment, the 1.7GHz P4, the Dual P-III Tualatins with 512K and the dual Xeons. I think the Xeon is the fastest, but that any will do. With that in mind, which is the best choice keeping future software upgrades and new OS's in mind? Is the single P4 good because I can put a faster chip in later? With a rig as fast as any of these and no more than 15 concurrent users, does upgradeablility for any of these systems really matter?

Also, if I were starting with a Dual 1GHz P-III, would a bigger improvement be dual 10,000RPM SCSI's RAID 1 or upgrading the processors to dual Xeon 1.7's. Or again, with a maximum of 15 concurrent users, will SCSI make a big difference over IBM 60GXP's?

 

[Viper GTS]

What OS will you be running? Win 2K Pro only supports two way SMP.

Viper GTS

 

[mikeasa]

I will be running Windows 2000 Server.

 

[Mookow]

<< like i said, the iwill dvd266u-rn that comes out like next week or so will support 2100 ddr like the prvious dvd266 boards, which will help as opposed to other dual intels that run sdram.

i wouldnt spend the extra cash on dual xeons...i just wouldnt...i think the 512k tualatins would be nice...1.2 can reach 1.5, with some nice cas 2 2100 ddr and raid.

booty >>



dude, its a server................... a business server, not your own personal server. There is no way in hell you could stand up in a boardroom and tell your boss "yeah, I think we should run this thing out of spec 24/7." I run my computer overclocked. but seriously, you cant run a business server, where uptime is a big consideration, overclocked...... ok, well, you could, but the first time it crashes, no matter what the actual problem is, people are gonna look at the overclocking, and you're suddenly focked.

 

[mikeasa]

hehe, yeah, no overclocking.

I wouldn't want to be suddenly focked.

 

[Mookow]

exactly