Bryan Vyhmeister wrote:
On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 9:57 PM, Chris Hoogendyk <hoogendyk@bio.umass.edu> wrote:
Curtis Maloney wrote:
Umm... apart from "shiney toys", is there any legitemate reason for such expense on performance tuning?
I ask because we have about 30 users using our IMAP server (Dovecot 1.1), which also serves as our main Samba server, and until recently was also a CUPS server.
This on a Sun V100 ( 450MHz UltraSPARC-IIi ) with 1G RAM and two dull, standard IDE HDDs ( a 40GB for OS and mail, and a 320GB for Samba).
I was going to bring up something like that, but I wasn't sure it was fair comparing my server.
I do not have SSD's. But, I have a larger user base and I have a Sun T5220, which is 8 core, 8 threads per core, etc. The drives are 15Krpm SAS. Using Sendmail, mimedefang, Dovecot, Squirrelmail, etc. Also running Apache2 with Drupal, MySQL, gene sequencing apps, PostgreSQL, Samba for file sharing and printer spooling, as well as some other stuff. Squirrelmail/Dovecot is virtually instantaneous even with very large mbox format inboxes. Thunderbird mail checks via Dovecot are also virtually instantaneous. I have over 1500 accounts on the system, although probably only a few hundred are very active. Granted, it is summer, and things will pick up in the Fall, but I doubt it will push this server too much.
I do understand where both of you are coming from completely. I have also run a similar setup as the Sun Fire V100 with a Sun Fire V120 and it performed beautifully. There are two main scenarios where using an SSD is interesting to me. Both scenarios involve using a Mac mini.
Nothing against SSD's.
Where are we coming from?
Well I guess we were both thinking in terms of general ideas of system tuning -- looking at a system from the perspective of all the components and trying to see where the limiting factors are. The interesting thing about the T5220 is that the clock speed is less than half what most Intel based servers are these days, but it is highly tuned for a multi-threaded web2 type environment. As well as 8 core and 8 threads per core, it has 8 encryption accelerators for all those ssl connections. Throw a huge load of web and mail transactions at it, and it outperforms the competition. We have an example of an 8 core AMD based system that is virtually new, purchased to be a multi-department web server, and our T5220 is noticeably faster carrying a heavier load. That's tuning. However, if we had non-threaded, compute intensive applications, the scales would tip the other way.
From that perspective, I don't see anything wrong with a Mac mini for a small group of users. But, if cost is an issue, I think I would be trying to get a better tuned custom Intel or AMD box for the money, rather than adding an SSD to a Mac mini. Multi-core cpu's are becoming pretty standard. Adding memory is a big item. Faster disk drives in general can make a difference -- compare all the options. Look at the bus structure and the general i/o capabilities. Although I'm the primary Solaris admin, we've been using Ubuntu for more and more things. It performs quite well. All of those things get juggled together when choosing a system and deciding how to set it up and tune it.
There's certainly nothing wrong with experimenting and playing with these things, as long as you can do it without stressing out your budget.
--
Chris Hoogendyk
- O__ ---- Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center
<hoogendyk@bio.umass.edu>
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Erdös 4