64bit advantages for fileserver

S

scotty do

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 20, 2004
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164
Just wonder if there are any advantages running a fileserver with samba based on the AMD64 and 64 bit linux distro??

If so, any recomendations on motherboards?
 
It all depends. For a basic file server, no, 64-bitness won't make one bit (or 32 bits) of difference. You're not working with huge amounts of RAM, you're not computing very precise math, etc...You won't get anything "more" from the CPU being 64-bit besides potentially a bit better CPU utilization from the OS due to a larger number of registers for certain things.

In short, don't bother looking for 64-bit gear for a samba server. You're going to be more I/O- and network-limited than anything else, even if you really load the thing.
 
If its just going to be for a fileserver, a P3 will do nice, an athlon XP will work even better. Anywhere from 512-1gb ram, and a fast hard drive.
 
Fast hard discs and a nice RAID card is about all you really need for a file server. Your raid card should probably be the single most expensive item for your setup imo.
 
Seems as though most HW based raid cards are for 64bit/66mhz slots.

I don't have too much of a budget, but looking for redundancy rather then speed.

I was hoping for SATA, but I guess IDE would do just as well.

This is replacing an ANCIENT IBM PC Server 300 (p166 scsi-2 2gb hard drive)

Not too many files..

From what I understaind linux doesn't support "fake-raid".

I just looking to run 2 disks in raid-1.

I think i'm overdoing what I actually need.
 
I meant more of an integrated raid controller. Like a sil 3112a, promise, hpt, etc. Would it be better to have a boot drive with the OS and then a seperate array for files if SW raid is a good option?

I don't have too much linux experience...I know my way around samba fairly well.
 
It would be better to have a dedicated system disc (just for easyness), plus you dont really need to access that disc so client need for speed on that one isnt so great. Then have (n) discs for the storage array. Those (n) discs will be built into the raid array via controller, software, or whatever. Thats my usual setup.

As always though, YMMV.
 
Ok cool...thanks for your input. Is there somewhere you could direct me so I could read a bit more about linux in general.

So even with software raid 0, if one disc fails I can just plug the other disc in and it will work no problem?
 
When you say file server, what do you mean? Are you talking about a small system so you can access your MP3s from a handful of machines in your home, something much larger with a few dozen simultanious users?

If you're going to have a bunch of users, you probably want an SMP box which, if you go AMD, is going to be 64-bit capable hardware anyways.
 
There is a thread in here in the linux section of the forum titled "where do you go for linux news" or something like that. I'd suggest looking there. IIRC w/ RAID0 if one disc fails the whole array is crap. In some cases data can be recovered but its more than likely going to be bad. However, with my personal favorite RAID level, RAID5, striping is provided and there is also a parity bit included. Unfortunatly, with a RAID5 setup at least 3 discs are required since approximatly one disc worth of storage will be dedicated to parity. So you'll only have a storage area of (totalStorageArea - oneDiscWorthOfStorage).
Here is a wikipedia article for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks . You might also try looking around in the disc storage systems area of the hardforum and see what people's experience is with RAID0. I've never had the guts to do it but if others have done it and they think it's solid it might be a good cheap solution for you.
 
Oops!! I meant Raid1! Sorry.

The box will be for about 5-6 users at any time accessing documents/pictures/accounting.

I am trying to help out a local non profit organization hence the linux...
 
About the fake-raid with onboard controllers, ease your mind around this instead:

Think of the onboard controllers as seperate interfaces, and run linux software raid which is going to be about the same, but you dont _have_ to have documented RAID capabilities on the controller themselves.

Check out this for a howto
 
Dawizman said:
If its just going to be for a fileserver, a P3 will do nice, an athlon XP will work even better. Anywhere from 512-1gb ram, and a fast hard drive.
Click to expand...
For the record:

512 is over kill. So is 256. Hell, 128 is too. 64megs will work just fine ( assuming no gui ).

Anything higher than a p2 ( over estimating ) will be way overkill for a file server with about 50 clients.

I have a 1ghz tbird serving 50 people. At peek time, the server is running at .2 load. Oh, and it's my email and web server.
 
^^^^^^^^ so true, you hardly need any sort of heavy metal for simple file and network I/O. Go cheap on the system and get yourself a decent controller card card for the array.
 
XOR != OR said:
For the record:

512 is over kill. So is 256. Hell, 128 is too. 64megs will work just fine ( assuming no gui ).

Anything higher than a p2 ( over estimating ) will be way overkill for a file server with about 50 clients.

I have a 1ghz tbird serving 50 people. At peek time, the server is running at .2 load. Oh, and it's my email and web server.
Click to expand...

Huh... I've got the same number of clients here and it can keep my dual Opteron 244 w/ 2GB busy pushing data over the GigE. 1TB RAID5 on a 3ware hardware RAID and LVM. It's probably a bit overkill but load's normally pretty high.

OTOH, it's clone which is constantly rsyncing to it's own RAID (looking into some sort of real-time FS mirroring) and then tarring to a removable USB device (way more convenient for restores than tape)... that can use the power.
 
I've used my server before as a fileserver, and it did alright, but not awesome. It's a Pentium 3 750MHz w/ 512MB of PC-133 (1x256MB, 2x128MB). While uploading to the server, it would pause sometimes on large files while the HDD caught up. I'd recommend an AXP system w/ ATA133 and a matched drive at that speed, assuming it's not for anything real intense.

As for 64-bit, I had the rig in my sig running 64-bit Gentoo for awhile, and it was amazingly fast. I've never seen things compile so fast in my life, lol, impressive to say the least. But, I diddn't emulate 32-bit to see the difference, so it might have been fast on either platform. But if you can run 64-bit, why not? ;)
 
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