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1U Apache Servers - Sun or Intel?
odoa4 asks: "What do you think will make a better 1u Apache Server? A Sun Netra X1 or a 1U Ontel box such as a Dell PowerApp.Web 120 or a VA 1220. This is a difficult question because the Intel boxes are about $1800 a piece and the Sun machine is only $1000. The Sun machine can only use 1 CPU and it runs at 400Mhz, where the Intel machines run at 800+Mhz with up to 2 cpus. Keep in mind that the web servers will be clustered, so the real question isn't so much about whether the Intel boxes are faster, but more along the lines of are they worth the $800 more when I could almost get another Netra for the cost.
As far as OSs go, I would use Solaris 8 on the Sun machines and FreeBSD on the Intel boxes. Here are some links to various servers I've looked at:
Sun Netra X1,
VALinux 1220, and the
PowerApp.web 120" Are there other alternatives for 1U servers, that the submittor might do well to look into?
We've got a PowerApp.web 120 over here and a brand spanking new Netra T1 AC200.
The AC200 is a carrier grade system, and it shows. It's (relatively) cheap, it's got a USIIe chip, and it's the most manageable box I've ever touched, even amongst other Sun gear.
The PowerApp may still have a bad motherboard revision floating around that doesn't work with their own Redhat install.
The most important issue to take in, however, is that upgrade cost. Sun will charge you an arm and a leg to upgrade, but you won't *need* to in most cases. These are throwaway boxes.
The nicest part, though, is the size. The T1/X1 is about half the depth of the PowerApp. For a 2 post rack, the PowerApp is a 2 man job. For the Netra, it's 1 person, no problems. The box is just easier to hold in place while screwing it in.
Just make sure you have the 25-pin male/female adapter for the Netra if you ever want that serial port to work.
Of course, once they're up, the hardware's proven stable, and the apps are installed, they're about equal. I don't touch them after they're up, because they both run just fine. But I prefer the Netras based on size, price range, support, and OS. Re: Solaris vs. Linux for anything critical, I'll have to stand by the one with a more stable default filesystem, better manufacturer support, and more thorough testing. I still feel burned from the motherboard incident, regardless of how quickly it got handled. We should never have gear that is not 100% guaranteed to work with the installed OS.
Raptor
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Then on the other hand, there are some nice cheap x86 boxes from Einux. They're cute, and fuzzy, and are happy running Linux. And they cost exactly the same as a Netra X1. But I don't have one, so I can't say much about them.
In the end, there are several questions that you have to ask. Actually, just one. Which environment do you like better? The price point between the Einux boxes and Netra X1's isn't a difference. The Sun's are more easily managed, if you put some resources up front to learn the Sun way of doing things. And there may be a hidden value in how much a PHB will like the Sun name. Or you may have a non-PH Boss, who likes the Linux name. The x86 box might have a bit more horsepower (or maybe not)
In the end, it's really close to a wash. Choose the environment you're more comfortable in. If you're equally comfortable in both, do what I do. Take a coin, flip it in the air, and quick! Before it lands! think to yourself "which way am I hoping it will land?" If that doesn't work, look at the coin, because the two choices really are equal.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
You can see SPEC CPU results for a 500 mHz UltraSparc IIe on this page. Yep, that's a base CINT of 165, which is a helluva lot lower than the 307 result of a mere Pentium-III at 700 mHz (results can be seen here). In fact, no Intel chip has ever turned in a performance nearly that bad since the Spec CPU2000 benchmark was created in late 1999. Ouch.
Since these Netras also have IDE drives, you won't be improving performance along that axis either. I'd definitely go with the Intel options as far better bang-per-buck.
--JRZ
Agreed, disk access speed is a factor - but:
The UltraSparc throughput is the answer to why the Sparc outperforms under load. The UltraSparc can handle nearly x6 the throughput of the Pentium III. The Sparc will be a much more stable under pressure than the Pentium, which will start to cave under a massive number of context switches. However, the Sparc's slower horsepower will start to smell if you are doing lots of SSL.
Someone you trust is one of us.
The serial ports are rj-45? WTF?
The ethernet is rj-45, the serial ports are either db9 or db25. The only box i have ever seen with any sort of rj connecter for the serial port was a VAXstation.
-- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.
Not the grandest of ideas; it was what brought PitBull's "great hack attack" (yeah, one of those).
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
We have a stack of Netra T1's (8) and another bunch Dell PowerApps (6). They are both nice reliable machines and I have had no problems with either. The T1's we use have higher specs than the PowerApps, but the PowerApps are well specified. I'm assuming the X1's are of a lower spec.
The Dell boxes have a really nice bios, you can configure them to take input and output during the POST through a serial port which is invaluable, the Sun does the same but uses an RJ45 connecter (which is different to bigger Sun servers, which is different to Cisco equip, which is different to Arrowpoints... bleh). The Dell hardware also performs impeccably with FreeBSD, had a few of them running as firewalls for 6 months with no problems.
Anyway, they are both good machines - pick the one your happier looking after.
Not on the Dells, you can plug a null modem cable and off you go - they have been designed with the datacentre in mind.
Solaris is free up to 8 cpus.
CPU speed might very well be irrelevant to your decision. If you're making a web server farm, your local disk access bandwidth and network bandwidth may be the limiting factors. (Local disk access because you want silly amounts of swap space to allow caching of many pages in virtual memory).
The Right Thing to do, given that you have a hefty cluster-building budget to work with, is to buy one of each type of machine, subject them to simulated loads, and see how they perform. Throttle network and fileserver and database server bandwidth to simulate demands from the rest of the cluster when running the test.
Don't have time to run the test? Then I hope you're good at guessing.
You should also consider hardware/software support availability and cost, and in-house expertise when making the decision, naturally.
These are built from standard components: Specifically an intel CA810EAL motherboard ($141.44), Low Profile RAM (Kingmax PC150) ($101/512MB stick), Standard Floppy drive ($10), Thermaltake Low Profile Fan ($8), Standard IDE hard drive ($100ish depending on size), an a FCPGA CPU (Celeron 700's are $77). The case I buy from one of my suppliers for $179, but you can get them for about $225ish on the street.
The only gotchas are that you need to make sure that you use low profile memory and a low profile fan designed for a 1U case, but besides that it all just works.
You can also do dual-processor units, if you really need the CPU, but from your post, it doesn't sound like you're doing anything CPU intensive. The Motherboard mentioned above is a favorite of the "rackmounters" as it has built on Video AND an Intel Pro100 Ethernet card, so you don't even need to waste the 1 PCI slot you are able to get in a 1U case. (Note: There are some 1U cases which will let you use two pci cards, but they are few and far between)
I think what you will find however, is that the sun hardware doesn't really seem all that fast compared to the intel stuff. Besides that, you probably HAVE the spare components lying around if something fails.
------
Well, kind of--the Sun box already comes with two NICs built in, so you don't have to even buy a card.
And you can certainly get other than 10/100 with a Sun box--you can get GBit ethernet, hell, you can even get ATM.
VII. Memory. Sun's memory bug is no longer around, so memory is pretty much even ground here. All of these guys come with 128 Megs on the lowend, which is probably too little depending on your purpose.
There never was a "memory" problem; it was a cache problem, and it only occurred on the 400Mhz procs that came in the UE machines, which the X1 most certainly is not. And you can use standard PC133 ECC RAM in the X1s, so it's cheap to upgrade them.
And for the record, I would do straight performance tests--nothing else matters in this arena, if these are the only machines you are installing. If you already have a big data center, go with what you have. I personally think Solaris is significantly superior to any other OS I've seen for the data center, especially with Jumpstart, consoles, etc.
I. Operating Systems. Well (here comes the flamebait), there are pluses and minus to Solaris vs. BSD or Linux. In these simple systems performance wont vary much between the OS's. However, Solaris is the more reliable OS (better NFS implementation, etc). As far as the OS goes, I'd have to say Solaris, except for the sun compiler which is a complete piece of sh*t and a pain in the ass if you are doing some custom C stuff. Ultimately, if it were me, I'd prefer to work with Solaris here, especially if your running a Java middle-teir (servlets).
/. (hmmm).
II. CPU. What matters here is the usage, and my first question would be are you going to be doing SSL. If so, are you using an accelerator in front of the cluster? If you are using an accelerator, I would lean towards the UltraSPARC IIe. The SPARC wont perform SSL as fast as the Pentiums and the Pentiums frankly have better caching layouts than these lowend SPARCs. Without a SSL accelerator appliance, the Pentiums will considerably outperform almost 2:1 over the Ultra.
III. Maintenance. This is the tough one. If you have to replace one of the Sun ethernet cards or hard drives get out your checkbook (we are talking Sun here). The Intel configs will be cheaper to maintain.
IV. Hard Drives. Drives for these guys really are for caching and virtual memory since you are going with a cluster. The reality is that IDE is perfect for this use, since your net connections are going to be the primary choke points. And the Sun IDE drive is faster than the VA box drive. The Dell is SCSI which is probably not economical for most purposes.
V. Networking. The key here is that the Sun box only has room for one network card. So, if you need 2 cards, the answer is pretty simple. Both the dell and VA box have room for two. Also, if you want something other than base 10/100 ethernet, you aint gettin it with the Sun box.
VI. Other Drives. The Sun box doesnt have a CD drive, (which is fine considering its a cluster) or a floppy drive, and the others do. This is a nice cost saving measure if your clustering.
VII. Memory. Sun's memory bug is no longer around, so memory is pretty much even ground here. All of these guys come with 128 Megs on the lowend, which is probably too little depending on your purpose.
VIII. Service/Support. Dell has very good service and support. Sun has bad support, but they honor warranties. I've never used VA, but heck they own
Summary. I'm sure I'm missing stuff, but this is a start. If you are just serving up flat files, I dont think I'd go with the sun, but I dont think I'd go with either of your other choices. I'd probably go with the VA 1120, or the low-end dell. (or look at another vendor like pengiun, etc). If you are running app servers, then I'd fork based on what the medium is. Mod perl stuff probably lends better for non-solaris environments (I could be fudding now), but Java definetly runs better on Solaris (I wonder why?). For C/C++ stuff, the toss up is with your compiler choice. If you are using other open source stuff, you probably dont want to be using gcc on Solaris (flamebait alert!) for optimal performance, but you'll have a nightmare of compatibility issues if you use the sun compiler. If you're using third-party binaries, who cares.
Someone you trust is one of us.
IBM makes a nice looking 1U server that includes KVM functionality.
Compaq has one that uses the same hard drives as their other servers.
I have to agree with one of the earlier posts -- get one of each and test them. Intel/AMD/x86 chips have gotten awfully fast lately. Since the cheaper sun boxes usually use IDE and PCI, the main difference from the intel servers will be CPU, scsi vs. ide, and memory subsystem (cache amt, speed, ram amt & speed). The Sparc might make more sense if you're doing some 64 bit stuff, or using some feature that's better on sparc, e.g.: floating point.
Since the preceding seems fairly obvious, your question simplifies to: "Is solaris 8 on slower hardware better than *BSD on faster hardware?". That question is better answered by looking at your in-house solaris expertise, need to run commercial apps only available on solaris, etc.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR