[rescue] Sun 711

[Shawn Wallbridge]

I had my doubts about the MPX, but I didn't see any dual Xeon boards on
Intel's site (I was thinking Intel boards when I was thinking Intel chips).

I was surprised when he said they got 150MB/s per 160MB/s card, but that's
what he said. I will probably get a quote for 3 cards and see what he says.
Any recommendations on RAID cards? We only need RAID 0.

I had planned on 2GB of system memory, and we always buy SMP. Xeon's would
be interesting (we don't have any P4 systems right now).

thanks
shawn

-----Original Message-----
From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
Behalf Of Chris Byrne
Sent: Wednesday, May 01, 2002 6:58 PM
To: rescue at sunhelp.org
Subject: RE: [rescue] Sun 711


Shawn,

Unfortunately the TigerMPX wont do what you need it to do. The PCI busses
wont handle that kind of traffic (it does have a dual bus, but it doesnt
have two seperate 64 bit busses) and it only hasw two slots and you
realistically need four controlers.

Tyan does however make a dual XEON board that will work for you, the Thunder
i7500. It has four 64/66 slots on two pci busses. As far as I know that's
the ONLY x86 based off the shelf solution that will support even clsoe to
the I/O bandwidth you are looking for.

I know your boss says that other people are doing it, but if they are they
ar eusing custom hardware. Either that or they are quiting the theoretical
limit  of their systems not the realworld performance. I've done a hell of a
lot of storage and I/O testing and I can tell you right now NEVER expect
more than 80% sustained throughput from a system. The more likely figure is
60%. So if it says it'll do 300 MB/s I'm willing to bet that it's realworld
sustained rate is more like 200.

Chris Byrne

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rescue-admin at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-admin at sunhelp.org]On
> Behalf Of Shawn Wallbridge
> Sent: 02 May 2002 00:08
> To: rescue at sunhelp.org
> Subject: RE: [rescue] Sun 711
>
>
> Yup. x86. No choice. The software only runs under Windows.
>
> Basically this is going to be a video playback machine. 2048x1556
> uncompressed tiffs x 30fps. Steady. It CAN'T drop frames or it is useless.
> The 'plan' so far is.....
>
> Dual 1.6GHz Athlon MP's on a Tyan Tiger MPX (64/66)
> 2GB Ram
> 2xU160 RAID controllers
> 16-24 36GB 15k Cheetah's
> Radeon 8500 (I have no idea why ATI)
> 24" Sony monitor
>
> I am just trying to find something to put the drives in. I would
> like to get
> a couple 711's, but I need to know if they will operate at U160
> or not (I am
> checking docs.sun.com now).
>
> I was thinking FC-AL, but then I need to find an enclosure, cards that can
> do 150MB/s (I have no clue about FC-AL). And ensure my boss that I can get
> it all working.
>
> shawn
>
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