How much ram for a file server?

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SKy042

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 27, 2003
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It's going to be a storage drive on my network.
It won't see any regular use aside from just sitting there holding hard drives. I already have 2 dual core machines for my day to day tasks.

The machine so far consists of
Opteron 148
ECS KN1 Motherboard(hand me down from my X2 the X2 is going SLI)
MX4000 video card
High Point rocket Raid 2320 PCI-E 8 port SATA-II raid 5 card
6 WD 320 Raid Edition Hard drives.

So I'm wondering on ram.
512mb 1GB or 2 GB
I'm thinking I won't need anything with really tight timings and it's not going to be overclocked as I'm valuing the stability of my Raid Array.
I was thinking G.Skill Normal series or maybe OCZ Performance series (copper heatspreaders)
Maybe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231027
or http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231012
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146996 <-- Micron chips
I'm open to suggestions. I think if I understand things right that the system won't really have a lot to do since the Raid card will be doing all the XOR work.
 
Id go 512mb but seeing as you have the cash to use those parts in a file server ill say throw in a gig incase in the future you wanna run somenthing else on it.

Good Luck TopGun
 
for a file server that will just host files on your LAN? why the hell are you wasting a 148 in that? :D:D:D
you barely need a pentium 3, just make sure you have fast hd's and a good NIC. 512mb should be enough ;)
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
for a file server that will just host files on your LAN? why the hell are you wasting a 148 in that? :D:D:D
you barely need a pentium 3, just make sure you have fast hd's and a good NIC. 512mb should be enough ;)
Click to expand...
148 is the least powerful CPU I own.
I originally was planning to let the CPU do the XOR work.
and a 148 was the only thing I could get my hands on quickly.

Plus you never know when I'll get the bug to move the Raid to another PC and OC the hell outta that 148.

The Raid Edition HDD's should be up to the task and the network is on GIG-E with Jumbo Frames.
 
TopGun said:
Hmm you give me ur 148 and ill give you my sempron lol.

-TopGun
Click to expand...
if it were 939 and you were including cash I'd entertain the offer.
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
hahahaha, you're my hero :D

well, i guess if the cpu is gonna do work, it might have to be able to hold files in the ram a bit. how about two of these?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231036
Click to expand...

I'll consider that.
Mostly going to depend on if I keep with that rocket raid card that has the XOR engine on it or if I use a different card that doesn't have a XOR engine.

For now assuming I'm using the one that has it's own engine think 512MB is adaquate for a machine that's basically going to sit there?
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
hahahaha, you're my hero :D
Click to expand...

Assuming I'm not counting my slow ass laptop that is.
But despite it's slowness that northwood in my laptop gets used daily so I can't steal it.
 
SKy042 said:
For now assuming I'm using the one that has it's own engine think 512MB is adaquate for a machine that's basically going to sit there?
Click to expand...
yeah, it should be.

i still think it's funny that the 148 is the slowest cpu. how's it clock?
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
yeah, it should be.

i still think it's funny that the 148 is the slowest cpu. how's it clock?
Click to expand...
No idea.
It's still in it's pretty green and black box.
Waiting on my NZXT Lexa case to show up.
it's a CAB2E I think 0545 MPMW
 
all i know is i have a dual p3 933mhz in my closet with 2 gigs of ram so i can use it to download bittorrent, and it needs every ounce of power that rig has...i lied.
 
Plaman said:
all i know is i have a dual p3 933mhz in my closet with 2 gigs of ram so i can use it to download bittorrent, and it needs every ounce of power that rig has...i lied.
Click to expand...

heh??
 
Plaman said:
all i know is i have a dual p3 933mhz in my closet with 2 gigs of ram so i can use it to download bittorrent, and it needs every ounce of power that rig has...i lied.
Click to expand...

Wha?

I'm not going to try to pretend to know what that means, but BitTorrent ran fine on my dual 400 MHz celeron system when I used to have it. It didn't max out the CPU usage either.

But god... an Opteron the slowest processor... my current slowest processor is like a 733 MHz something-or-another. It's made my AMD. Never bothered to check anything else out about it though.
 
I'd go for a gig of ram as it is cheap and will help make the server run good. Plus it will be nice in case you want to add any extra services to that machine.
 
I got a P4 2.8E Dell running CentOS 4.x with 512MB, works just fine for serving files, websites, gameserver.

Your CPU is major league overkill as others have said.

I'd just get the largest case humanly possible, and a 8-12 controller card from 3Ware :) RAID5 for tha win.

Are you running 10/100? Your best bet might be to bump all your networking gear to gigabit, and find yourself an old Supermicro board or something along those lines with a P3 / P4 and run 64bit PCI Gigabit NIC in it. Gigabit saturates regular PCI in a heartbeat.

I mean, we're looking for best throughput and most redundancy with the best overall performance in multi-user, multi-task environments, then my suggestion is going to reign supreme until we walk into the RAID SCSI realm, and that can get pretty pricey.
 
My house server is a Via Epia SBC, running at 600 mhz with 256 meg ram. It serves files as well as controls outdoor lighting, the heating/ac ducts, and the security system. Hoping to add AV switching to it this year...that will probably require me to upgrade to a faster cpu though.
 
stiltner said:
I got a P4 2.8E Dell running CentOS 4.x with 512MB, works just fine for serving files, websites, gameserver.

Your CPU is major league overkill as others have said.

I'd just get the largest case humanly possible, and a 8-12 controller card from 3Ware :) RAID5 for tha win.

Are you running 10/100? Your best bet might be to bump all your networking gear to gigabit, and find yourself an old Supermicro board or something along those lines with a P3 / P4 and run 64bit PCI Gigabit NIC in it. Gigabit saturates regular PCI in a heartbeat.

I mean, we're looking for best throughput and most redundancy with the best overall performance in multi-user, multi-task environments, then my suggestion is going to reign supreme until we walk into the RAID SCSI realm, and that can get pretty pricey.
Click to expand...

I'm running gigabit Ethernet as posted in a post above (part of the NF4 chipset).
The RAID 5 controller is HighPoint PCI-E 8 port card with built in XOR engine.
The server is going to inherit my Thermaltake Armor series case which has room for 12 drives. so it's more than adaquate as there will only be 8 hard drives and 1 optical.
And I think I'm going with a Tyan Mobo now instead of reusing my ECS board.
 
(cf)Eclipse said:
for a file server that will just host files on your LAN? why the hell are you wasting a 148 in that? :D:D:D
you barely need a pentium 3, just make sure you have fast hd's and a good NIC. 512mb should be enough ;)
Click to expand...

QFT
I run only a 200mhz Pentium with 96mb of RAM in my file server. A Pentium II would be a bit nicer, but a P200 does the job fine enough. If I was running a gigabit network, maybe, but i'm just using 100mbps.
 
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