[Novalug] SATA options, interconnect considerations, etc...

Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Tue Feb 16 18:32:18 EST 2010


In all honesty, anything will work these days, at least from nVidia and
Intel, on Linux -- short of some things when it comes to Fake RAID
(FRAID) requiring the DeviceMapper (DM) RAID support (dmraid).
I've had lesser success with SiS and ViA ATA solutions (even for
non-RAID), just issues with their ATA/SATA support and NICs.

I've been heavily partial to nVidia chipsets because of their MCPs
(Media and Communication Processors) are the ultimate in backward/
forward compatibiltiy, 100% GPL drivers and no, unexpected revision
issues.  nVidia semi designs their high-end nForce "Pro" for largely
Linux workstations/servers, and their consumer nForce mainboards
have the same logic.  So I default to nVidia nForce for out-of-the-box
working solutions for both AMD and Intel CPUs.

[ NOTE:  Do *NOT* confuse GPU GeForce with system nForce.  nForce
chipset do *NOT* require proprietary drivers at all on kernel 2.6.  ;) ]

This is unlike Intel where their semi team is focused on cheap Wintel.
The Linux team at Intel (which is well funded) gets the ICs after they've
already been designed, and I've seen revision after revision get slight
changes that breaks things.  I made the chronic mistaken recently in
even an old i965G chipset thinking the ICH (I/O Controller Hub) 9R
would have no issue with dmraid under Linux.  I used to swear dmraid
worked as good on Intel as it did nVidia until then, but it appears I hit
a variant of the ICH9R that did not have reliable drivers.

Now when it comes to newer features like AHCI and NCQ performance
enhancements for SATA, Intel clearly leads nVidia.  Again, nVidia is
more about backward/forward compatibility.  AHCI/NCQ used to be a
real PITA under Linux, but it hasn't been for some time (several years
now).  It's well flushed out.

But I'm not kidding when I say unless you're going to put in a PCIe x4
or PCIe x8 network or storage card, or you need multiple sockets for
eight-plus (8+) processor cores, $50 mainboard will do just fine.

-- Bryan

P.S.  Personally, I just buy redundant systems.  I recently stood up
three (3) servers in Florida -- one for my Florida home, one for my 
parent's home and one for my parent's business.  I bought a fourth (4)
system as a spare.  I put hot-swappable 2.5" bays in all of them.  So
at any time, I can pull the drives from one system and put them in
that 4th "spare" system.  That's my idea of "cheap redundancy."

The systems are late model i965G, Pentium 4 systems with 3GB
DDR2 that cost only $100 (with 1GB RAM, the +2GB added for
$20).  I just had to add the hot-swappable 2.5" bays and drives.
They do the job, aren't going to win any performance contests, but
they don't need to.



----- Original Message ----
From: Nino Pereira <pereira@speakeasy.net>
To: Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith@ieee.org>

> The Pentium III was the final AGTL+ architecture, but it's no slouch.
(snip)
> On the AMD side, everything is HyperTransport.  It's an engineer's wet
> dream.  
(snip too)

so, to make a really long and interesting story a lot shorter and more
practical:

given all this stuff you describe, which pieces of hardware would you
recommend for a really nice system? MB, processor, memory, disks,
whatever. Reliability is more important than superfast.

A little bit of the why would be interesting too, of course, but it
goes over my head really quickly.



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