> - Intel 450 Single or Dual, the application is really NOT cpu bound.
I'd get a Dual, but if you're more concerned with stability, get a dual
board, with a single PII and UMP kernel.
> - 512mb ram. Can I go bigger?, whats the max?
The GX chipset supports 2Gb, but I think boards have only 4 DIMM slots,
so you'd have to wait for 512Mb modules. Currently, I've only seen
128Mb, which would max you out at 512Mb total. The BX chipset is a bit
more limited, IIRC. You will probably be memory intensive, so you
probably want the 100MHz bus speed of those chipsets - don't get LX or
FX.
I don't need to tell you to use ECC, do I? :-)
> Current system has 512mb and is only using about 300mb of it.
Well, then you'd probably have little need for more. Run with 512 now,
get 512Mb modules when you need it, and send me the old RAM :-)
> - 4 Adaptec 2940UW Host adaptors with 4-4gb Ultra wide disks on each.
> 16 drives total. Isn't there a limit on number of scsi disks?
Many mainboards come with integrated dual-channel UW SCSI. With SCSI,
there used to be a limit of 7 drives per channel, nowadays, the limit is
larger, but for performance reasons, you don't want to go much above
that. Expect 5-10Mb/s per drive, the cable limit is 80Mb/s, so about ten
drives per channel would be optimal, I suppose.
> Progress has it's own Multi-volume support and can utilize as many
> drives as I can give it.
> I figure: more spindles + more heads = better disk performance.
And higher chance of disk failure. Ideally, you would want to RAID5,
but that would cost you performance. Get that second PII after all?
Also, you could consider more, but slower disks, the 10000RPM ones run
pretty hot, which could in turn give you trouble, either with the disks,
or with other components.
> Is Linux ready for the Enterprise Server market?
It depends - IMHO it is, but we don't have that high a requirement for
uptime - hell we even ran NT for a while.
> Will I run into a maximum on the number of processes that can run?
I don't think so. You should be able to tune this, but I never had a
reason to.
> have about 45-60 days to do this, Should I be waiting for the 2.2
> Kernel or do you think the latest 2.0.xx kernel can handle it?
We run on 2.0.xx, but we don't SMP, which has become better in 2.1.xx.
> Thanks for any suggestions you may have.
http://www.tomshardware.com/ is a pretty good resource. Also, I'd check
with SCO hw compat list, and grep through a linux-kernel archive for any
problems with hardware you might be considering.
~kzm
-- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/