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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.syd.connect.com.au!news.bri.connect.com.au!fjholden.OntheNet.com.au!news From: Tony Griffiths <tonyg@OntheNet.com.au> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD hardware recommendation Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 12:50:31 +1000 Organization: On the Net (ISP on the Gold Coast, Australia) Lines: 68 Message-ID: <328D2BF7.352D@OntheNet.com.au> References: <56a5id$si0@is3.hk.super.net> Reply-To: tonyg@OntheNet.com.au NNTP-Posting-Host: swanee.nt.com.au Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) To: eho@fore.com Eric Ho wrote: > > All, > > Could anyone please advise hardware configuration (brand name) for the > following requirement: > > 1) 5G to 10G SCSI harddisk > 2) 64MB RAM > 3) 100Mbps fast ethernet (full duplex) > > Also, we would like to know whether it's possible to back up a FreeBSD > server? > We run two FreeBSD 2.1.5 servers, one is the WWW proxy and the other is the News server. Configs are- WWW proxy: P120 (ASUS motherboard), 128MB RAM, NCR810 SCSI, 2 x 4GB Seagate for proxy cache, 1 x 3GB EIDE system/log disk, SMC PCI Ethernet card (DEC 21x4x chip) FreeBSD 2.1.5 Squid 1.1 beta16 News server: P90 (DEC XL590), 72MB RAM, NCR810 SCSI, 2 x 4GB Seagate for news 1 x 1GB EIDE for system/log SMC PCI Ethernet card FreeBSD 2.1.5 News ?.? The news server is basically I/O bound. It typically runs with about 30-35MB in the buffer cache and uses 15-30% cpu. Expiring articles rattles the disks for anything up to 10-11 hrs per day. [There has got to be a better way of handling News!!!] The WWW proxy just likes a LOT of memory and swap space but uses little cpu (4-5% average!!!) and I/O is very moderate also. On this machine I had to build a special kernel with a larger default and maximum data segment size then that provided by the "stock-standard" kernel because Squid (after 17 days) has grown to > 299MB virtual! Time to restart it I think... > If possible, please reply to eho@fore.com. Thanks in advance! > By backup, do you mean Unix 'dump'. Sure, I backup my personal FreeBSD system to DAT tape every couple of days using dump. I would never attempt to do this on the News or WWW proxy partitions. The number of files in these filesystems is from ~ 200,000 per filesystem for the two proxy partitions to > 600,000 in .../news and > 250,000 in .../news/alt ! Dump can't hack these sorts of numbers and it is simply not worth trying to backup this ephemeral data anyway. If I lose a disk (which I have done), it's back to newfs and a clean start. You don't say what services you want to run on this machine. The memory might be a little light on and the 100Mbps Ethernet may be overkill! > Cheers, > Eric > Tony