Zacate - Did I just not do my homework?

[Genx87]

Wow some are using p4's for fileservers that are always running? Electricity is too high to do that here. Anyway I know alot think that a atom or zacate system is plenty for a fileserver but I dont' think we are quite to the point yet where you can have a powerful and efficient fileserver that will do everything that most call on them to do. Yeah it will do the job but it's not really going to feel snappy. It will get there before long, but we are probably still a year or two away. At least where a atom is concerned, it feels alot snappier at 2ghz and above when it's overclocked

C2D E6600

Win2008 R2, 4GB ram. Also does DNS, DHCP, and Active Directory.

 

[Zap]

Putting the system spec here so it's easier to find:

Asrock E350M1
8GB GSkill DDR3-1333
Boot drive: 2.5" WD Scorpio Blue 320GB
GigE Ethernet to the switch, rest of network is wireless

This is part of the problem. These are 5400RPM notebook drives.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Must be a problem with you, to be honest. Firefox, for example, fully starts up in 4 seconds in my mom's ThinkPad X120e with 4GB of RAM and a Hitachi (don't know the exact model) 7200RPM 320GB HDD. You can't really notice the system being more unresponsive until you open at least 5 programs.

I know what it is, now that I think about it. It's your Western Digital Scorpio Blue. The problem with using them for a file server is that the Hard Drive automatically parks its head every 8 seconds of inactivity and ignores anything you set on the OS, hence making it feel very unresponsive. You have to wait until the CPU unparks the head which takes around 3 seconds, not to mention the 5400RPM rotational speed makes for some very crap-tastic performance. The end result is very persistent Hard Drive access, which is your main problem.

If you want to solve it, get an SSD for a boot drive and keep the Hard Drive for media, or return the Hard Drive and get a Seagate Momentus 7200.4/7200.5 or Samsung Spinpoint MP4 instead. With those you can set when you want the Hard Drive to sleep, if you want it to sleep at all. They also have faster access times and read/write speeds while still allowing you to have all your media in a single drive. Don't get the Caviar Black, either. It has the same problem.

 

[cebalrai]

I know what it is, now that I think about it. It's your Western Digital Scorpio Blue. The problem with using them for a file server is that the Hard Drive automatically parks its head every 8 seconds of inactivity and ignores anything you set on the OS, hence making it feel very unresponsive. You have to wait until the CPU unparks the head which takes around 3 seconds, not to mention the 5400RPM rotational speed makes for some very crap-tastic performance. The end result is very persistent Hard Drive access, which is your main problem.

If you want to solve it, get an SSD for a boot drive and keep the Hard Drive for media, or return the Hard Drive and get a Seagate Momentus 7200.4/7200.5 or Samsung Spinpoint MP4 instead. With those you can set when you want the Hard Drive to sleep, if you want it to sleep at all. They also have faster access times and read/write speeds while still allowing you to have all your media in a single drive. Don't get the Caviar Black, either. It has the same problem.

I don't think this is the problem. It doesn't explain why it took 3 hours for his OS to install. Also I use WD Scorpio Blues all the time and I've never encountered anything like this.

The other thing that's not the problem is the notion that Zacate is too slow for the middling task of file service. That's just not the case.

And lastly, nobody needs a SSD for a lowly file server.

 

[SunnyD]

This is part of the problem. These are 5400RPM notebook drives.

And the spec sheet for this, arguably modern, drive isn't any different from a desktop class bulk drive. 5400rpm, 8mb cache, sata2 interface, 5ms average seek time.

The problem isn't the hard drive at this point, it's the general CPU power. As I said earlier, once I got the AHCI drivers installed, drive access was markedly better.

There's little swap-to-ram going on with nearly 4.5GB uncommitted memory still available. On a whim I took a look and I'm seeing both cores pegged on mundane tasks like opening up the dashboard. I'm really thinking an E-350 is simply underpowered to run something like WHS2011 effectively.

I'm going to take a look tonight and see what the cpus do when the system is being utilized a bit more.

 

[dorion]

And the spec sheet for this, arguably modern, drive isn't any different from a desktop class bulk drive. 5400rpm, 8mb cache, sata2 interface, 5ms average seek time.

The problem isn't the hard drive at this point, it's the general CPU power. As I said earlier, once I got the AHCI drivers installed, drive access was markedly better.

There's little swap-to-ram going on with nearly 4.5GB uncommitted memory still available. On a whim I took a look and I'm seeing both cores pegged on mundane tasks like opening up the dashboard. I'm really thinking an E-350 is simply underpowered to run something like WHS2011 effectively.

I'm going to take a look tonight and see what the cpus do when the system is being utilized a bit more.

Have Core Temp open so you can watch the actual speeds, maybe the processor is staying at its low states.

 

[toyota]

I used the Zacate setup for a couple of weeks and it is indeed poky. opening a browser with many tabs was laughable compared to a typical modern pc. it even bogged down a bit on sites with lots of Flash. the ONLY way to make it seem fast was to use my single core Atom netbook right before using the Zacate pc.

after looking at some official AMD videos of how this platform should handle things, I clearly got the impression of a deceptive used car salesman. they make it look like it is capable of doing things smoothly that it most certainly can not.

 

[Arkaign]

There's a reason you rarely if ever see even the most basic branded file servers use things like Zacate/Atom.

For a low-power solution that's faster and even more compact, you might check out some NAS devices instead. They've gotten tremendously faster in recent years, you don't get all of the usability that WHS2011 has, but for storing data they're fantastic. Easy to map a drive letter and drop stuff on there, and basically any of them can be configged to stream content to your various non-PC devices as well.

 

[Vesku]

And the spec sheet for this, arguably modern, drive isn't any different from a desktop class bulk drive. 5400rpm, 8mb cache, sata2 interface, 5ms average seek time.

The problem isn't the hard drive at this point, it's the general CPU power. As I said earlier, once I got the AHCI drivers installed, drive access was markedly better.

There's little swap-to-ram going on with nearly 4.5GB uncommitted memory still available. On a whim I took a look and I'm seeing both cores pegged on mundane tasks like opening up the dashboard. I'm really thinking an E-350 is simply underpowered to run something like WHS2011 effectively.

I'm going to take a look tonight and see what the cpus do when the system is being utilized a bit more.

Notebook drives have more aggressive power saving firmware, up above someone mentioned that WD notebook drives will ignore OS settings in regards to power saving. I'll suggest again that you try out MooO or some other full system monitor to identify the bottleneck. Something that shows realtime HDD read and write info along with CPU usage if it is indeed the processor.

 

[cebalrai]

I used the Zacate setup for a couple of weeks and it is indeed poky. opening a browser with many tabs was laughable compared to a typical modern pc. it even bogged down a bit on sites with lots of Flash. the ONLY way to make it seem fast was to use my single core Atom netbook right before using the Zacate pc.

after looking at some official AMD videos of how this platform should handle things, I clearly got the impression of a deceptive used car salesman. they make it look like it is capable of doing things smoothly that it most certainly can not.

I've only used Zacate on a laptop and yes it's a bit pokey compared to my C2Extreme and Llano laptops. But that's what you get with a low-power processor.

Still, he's getting random slowdowns, not consistently slow performance. That's curious....

Notebook drives have more aggressive power saving firmware, up above someone mentioned that WD notebook drives will ignore OS settings in regards to power saving. I'll suggest again that you try out MooO or some other full system monitor to identify the bottleneck. Something that shows realtime HDD read and write info along with CPU usage if it is indeed the processor.

I'd say it's worth trying out a 3.5" HDD. 2.5" HDDs don't just have more aggressive power-saving firmware (by default), they park heads more frequently to prevent vibration damage. I have an HP ultraportable with a Turion X2 Neo that had similar-sounding slowdowns until I tinkered with the HDD's firmware. Now it runs great.

 

[dbcooper1]

Server O/Ss by their nature give priority to background server type operations at the expense of what you might be trying to do in the foreground- browser, explorer type operations. This is going to be more noticeable on a lower end CPU. Have you changed it in the properties to see if it makes much difference?

 

[frostedflakes]

And the spec sheet for this, arguably modern, drive isn't any different from a desktop class bulk drive. 5400rpm, 8mb cache, sata2 interface, 5ms average seek time.

The problem isn't the hard drive at this point, it's the general CPU power. As I said earlier, once I got the AHCI drivers installed, drive access was markedly better.

There's little swap-to-ram going on with nearly 4.5GB uncommitted memory still available. On a whim I took a look and I'm seeing both cores pegged on mundane tasks like opening up the dashboard. I'm really thinking an E-350 is simply underpowered to run something like WHS2011 effectively.

I'm going to take a look tonight and see what the cpus do when the system is being utilized a bit more.

All I know is upgrading from the 5400RPM HDD (was a Scorpio Blue as well) to an SSD on my E-350 ultraportable made a huge difference in responsiveness. The HDD was pretty obviously the bottleneck before, whereas now the CPU is the bottleneck now.

Although the 8GB RAM should help by preventing the system from having to access the HDD as much, my money is still on the drive being a pretty big bottleneck.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

And the spec sheet for this, arguably modern, drive isn't any different from a desktop class bulk drive. 5400rpm, 8mb cache, sata2 interface, 5ms average seek time.

The problem isn't the hard drive at this point, it's the general CPU power. As I said earlier, once I got the AHCI drivers installed, drive access was markedly better.

There's little swap-to-ram going on with nearly 4.5GB uncommitted memory still available. On a whim I took a look and I'm seeing both cores pegged on mundane tasks like opening up the dashboard. I'm really thinking an E-350 is simply underpowered to run something like WHS2011 effectively.

I'm going to take a look tonight and see what the cpus do when the system is being utilized a bit more.

There's something wrong with your system. Zacate isn't slow (for average tasks, anyway), and as long as it has a fast HDD and 4GB of RAM it should handle normal tasks like most computers. On normal tasks I have problems noticing the difference between my laptop, which has a Core 2 Duo T9600 and a GTX 260M, and my mom's, which has the E-350. It's not the CPU; I maintain that the HDD is much more likely.

 

[Kenmitch]

Maybe the motherboard doesn't like the G.Skill memory. Maybe try 1 stick and see if helps. Maybe swap with other ddr3 if you have it.

 

[Stuka87]

In my opinion, that chip should be plenty for a file server. I have some old 3GHz P4's that work as file servers and I never have any weird slow downs running a mixture of Win2K3 and Windows 7.

And I highly doubt a 3GHz P4 is faster than that Zocate, if it is, certainly not by much.

I know WHS is somewhat bloated, especially for what it does. But I would not expect it to be that bloated.

 

[toyota]

In my opinion, that chip should be plenty for a file server. I have some old 3GHz P4's that work as file servers and I never have any weird slow downs running a mixture of Win2K3 and Windows 7.

And I highly doubt a 3GHz P4 is faster than that Zocate, if it is, certainly not by much.

I know WHS is somewhat bloated, especially for what it does. But I would not expect it to be that bloated.

in single thread performance your 3.0 P4 would smoke the E-350.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

in single thread performance your 3.0 P4 would smoke the E-350.

Which, as I have already mentioned, means nothing. In anything other than audio encoding the E-350 will win by a considerable margin.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Get a better drive. Or run faster RAM. Zacate is more than fast enough for serving files.

 

[toyota]

Which, as I have already mentioned, means nothing. In anything other than audio encoding the E-350 will win by a considerable margin.

um I was giving him an idea of how his cpu compares. and some things still use just effectively use one core. and your experience is different than mine because I found the E-350 to be barely adequate just for basic use such as internet surfing. my dads pc with a 3.0 P4 and HT felt faster in normal daily use. pretty much anything the least bit demanding can peg one or even both cores of the E350. IMO its slow as hell and only the Atom is slower.

 

[nenforcer]

Do you have a Sony Playstation 3? I took a 320GB WD Blue 2.5" 5400RPM drive from a netbook and put it in my SATA 1 PS3 since supposedely the firmware only expects a drive to run at this speed.

In the netbook I put a Seagate 7200.4 250GB drive and the difference is tangible.

I also run an ATOM 330 HTPC and yes, the CPU is a relic. I bought mine new in early 2010 and it performs like a 2003 P4 2 GHz CPU and is in-order to boot. Only with both cores is it useable for things like streaming 1080P YouTube and decoding a Quicktime .MP4 movie trailer.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

um I was giving him an idea of how his cpu compares. and some things still use just effectively use one core. and your experience is different than mine because I found the E-350 to be barely adequate just for basic use such as internet surfing. my dads pc with a 3.0 P4 and HT felt faster in normal daily use. pretty much anything the least bit demanding can peg one or even both cores of the E350. IMO its slow as hell and only the Atom is slower.

Well, objectively, you're wrong. The Fusion E-350 is faster than a Pentium 4 3GHz; there's not much room to argue over this. This "some things" you keep referencing is only audio encoding. Everything else uses at least two cores.

 

[Gillbot]

Are my expectations out of line?

Depends on your expectations IMHO. The Atom one I run is terrifically slow, but for basic tasks it does the job just fine. If it were a "daily use" machine, it would likely get chucked aside for nearly anything to replace it as it's THAT slow. For basic browsing and file serving, it does fantastic.

Wow some are using p4's for fileservers that are always running? Electricity is too high to do that here. Anyway I know alot think that a atom or zacate system is plenty for a fileserver but I dont' think we are quite to the point yet where you can have a powerful and efficient fileserver that will do everything that most call on them to do. Yeah it will do the job but it's not really going to feel snappy. It will get there before long, but we are probably still a year or two away.

I was using an i7 875k, but I just replaced it with an atom rig for the power savings.

 

[Spikesoldier]

i still think your expectations of file serving, terraria server, ect would run perfectly on the zacate. i would even try to yank a 4gb DIMM out of it and use it somewhere else, as zacate is single channel ddr3 anyway.

 

[paperwastage]

Wow some are using p4's for fileservers that are always running? Electricity is too high to do that here. Anyway I know alot think that a atom or zacate system is plenty for a fileserver but I dont' think we are quite to the point yet where you can have a powerful and efficient fileserver that will do everything that most call on them to do. Yeah it will do the job but it's not really going to feel snappy. It will get there before long, but we are probably still a year or two away.

i run my media/file server on my Asus RT-N16 router

only getting ~4MB/s read/write ,but enough to serve any media files , (or files over my 15mbps internet)

12V*1.25A(15W) max......weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

[386DX]

Well, objectively, you're wrong. The Fusion E-350 is faster than a Pentium 4 3GHz; there's not much room to argue over this. This "some things" you keep referencing is only audio encoding. Everything else uses at least two cores.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4023/the-brazos-performance-preview-amd-e350-benchmarked/3

There's some benchs of the E-350 against a single core Pentium 4 @ 3.6 GHz. The Pentium 4 easily beats the E-350 except on a few heavy multi-threaded bench where they are equal.

A 3 GHz Pentium 4 has 83% of the clock speed of the 3.6GHz. Even if you scale the benchmarks to 80% of the performance to replicate a 3 GHz Pentium 4, the P4 still beats the E-350 in all the benchmarks where the P4 3.6GHz won.

I dunno about you but that certainly looks like room for argument.

P.S. waiting for Passmark CPU bench as a reply cause we all know how accurate that is of real world performance