http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Opteron+254&id=1806 We have two 1RU Sun servers which each have 2 of the above CPUs. One server has 16G of RAM and the other has 32G. One of them has 2*70G 15000rpm SAS disks and the other has 2*140G. There is also a spare 70G SAS disk. One of the servers is currently in use as the LUV server but that is to be decommissioned. The other is at my home (we used it for the ZFS and BTRFS training). The servers are extremely noisy which is one of the reasons why I haven't done any other training on the server in my home (the other reason being that I have some other servers for this purpose). NB if someone wants to use these commercially then they can buy them from LUV. But they are free for home or non-commercial use. If I don't get any interest then I'll put the RAM and disks in the hardware library and the rest in e-waste. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On Tue, Jan 05, 2016 at 07:46:34PM +1100, Russell Coker wrote:
The servers are extremely noisy which is one of the reasons why I haven't done any other training on the server in my home (the other reason being that I have some other servers for this purpose).
FYI, i saw this while reading the FAQ on http://quietpc.com.au/ - sound dampening server racks. probably horribly/scarily expensive. http://www.acoustiproducts.com/en/quiet_rack_cabinets.asp (alternatively, some of the fans in the servers **may** be replaceable with quiet fans - many available from Quiet PC) craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):
FYI, i saw this while reading the FAQ on http://quietpc.com.au/ - sound dampening server racks. probably horribly/scarily expensive. http://www.acoustiproducts.com/en/quiet_rack_cabinets.asp
Novel concept. The people I know who routinely work in colos seem to all have permanent hearing damage. (I took warning from that and always use ear protection in data centres.)
(alternatively, some of the fans in the servers **may** be replaceable with quiet fans - many available from Quiet PC)
One of my disappointments while working for (the late) VA Linux Systems, Inc. was discovering that _they too_ used terrible, horribly noisy, failure-prone case fans in order to save tiny amounts of money. The noise and tendency towards early fan death (which in turn can cause runaway heat buildup, and thus death of much more expensive things) owed primarily to cheap fans' reliance on sleeve bearings rather than good ball bearing sets. When I learned that, I immediately replaced the three 80mm case fans on my VA Linux Systems model 2230 2U rackmount unit at home with much better ones from Antec -- and it immediately became very significantly quieter and almost certainly ran cooler and lasted longer. It suddenly ran quietly enough that I'd probably have been fine with it running inside my house, though fortunately I had utility space for it (and for its successor). FWIW, the last of my stockpile of the circa-2001 Intel L440GX+ 'Lancewood' PIII-based server motherboards died in that chassis a couple of months ago. I've kept the dead unit's 2U chassis around, though, because I am scheming to bring it back to life with a modern ATX server motherboard, partly for sentiment's sake. But I still say, if you really want a quiet server, the only really effective way to do so is choose motherboard, SoC, chassis, and mass storage that has a low enough heat load that either passive cooling only or minimal fan ventilation suffices. And, for fan cooling, don't forget that larger fans tend to be much quieter than small ones (as they move more air at lower RPMs). Another antique I keep is a VA Research StartX MP (VA Research Corporation being VA Linux Systems's name until 2000). It has a PII-based (Intel N440BX 'Nightshade') motherboard and a 200mm case fan, which I long ago upgraded with a quality replacement. With the aftermarket fan, it's ultra-cool and almost completely silent, and some day I hope to make it a 'stealth' modern workstation with a 2010s motherboard, too. As the PSU fan's noise is also a significant factor (and the Dear Old Firm's parts selection there probably also sucked), I'll probably put an Antec or Cooler Master replacement PSU there.
On Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 10:17:46PM -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):
FYI, i saw this while reading the FAQ on http://quietpc.com.au/ - sound dampening server racks. probably horribly/scarily expensive. http://www.acoustiproducts.com/en/quiet_rack_cabinets.asp
Novel concept.
yeah, that's what i thought...hadn't seen quiet racks before. as the web site says, if the rack is quiet enough, it can be much cheaper than setting up a proper server room.
When I learned that, I immediately replaced the three 80mm case fans on my VA Linux Systems model 2230 2U rackmount unit at home with much better ones from Antec -- and it immediately became very significantly quieter and almost certainly ran cooler and lasted longer.
yep, i've done the same thing with numerous servers...cuts the noise down from screaming jet engine to about the same as a normal desktop machine - and the fans tend to be better too, both more reliable and better at cooling. big name brand servers (intel, dell, hp, etc) often make it difficult by using proprietary parts and, worse, proprietary connectors and cables. and non-standard sizes. all sorts of crappy little tricks to make it difficult to swap in third-party parts. 2nd tier brands like supermicro, you can pretty much use standard third-party fans (noctua make some excellent quiet fans, e.g. 120mm fans blowing 60, 70 CFM or more at under 18db or so). i suppose they have to, their stuff would be too expensive if they couldn't source commodity parts, while the big names obviously think the lock-in is worth charging their customers more for (partly because their customers don't care too much about price, they're covering their arses by buying big-name brands that their bosses recognise).
But I still say, if you really want a quiet server, the only really effective way to do so is choose motherboard, SoC, chassis, and mass storage that has a low enough heat load that either passive cooling only or minimal fan ventilation suffices. And, for fan cooling, don't forget that larger fans tend to be much quieter than small ones (as they move more air at lower RPMs).
yep. the reason i was looking into quiet fans again was that my partner and i had to rebuild her desktop machine yesterday (CPU died a few weeks back just before i went into hospital, and i've recovered enough now from surgery to do stuff like this again. we ended up replacing CPU, m/b, and RAM - was overdue for an upgrade anyway). the drive is a 2.5" SSD which had just been hanging loose in the case (no need to worry about vibration or over-heating with SSDs). installed a 2.5" 4-drive hot-swap bay i had lying around (a cheap vantec ezswap). being cheap, the vantec unit naturally comes with a noisy 40mm fan. which MUST be replaced. found a decent one for $10 or so, can't remember the brand/model now (scythe mini or something like that). Could probably get away with just disabling the fan because it's only a single SSD in the system (will add another later for raid-1), but $10 for a quiet fan is reasonable. also wanted to replace the OK-ish case fan that came with the case with a very quiet noctua NF-S12A.
Another antique I keep is a VA Research StartX MP (VA Research Corporation being VA Linux Systems's name until 2000). It has a PII-based (Intel N440BX 'Nightshade') motherboard and a 200mm case fan,
my main desktop machine has an Antec 1200 case (as does my myth server - mostly so they have an abundance of drive bays for ZFS - using Lian Li hot swap bays), which has a giant 240mm fan at the top of it, as well as a pair of 120mm fans on the back.
which I long ago upgraded with a quality replacement. With the aftermarket fan, it's ultra-cool and almost completely silent, and some day I hope to make it a 'stealth' modern workstation with a 2010s
why 2010 when 2015/2016 stuff is so much better, cooler, less power, and faster? like that AMD APU we were talking about last year sometime. but not cheaper when you can get 2010 gear for free or nearly free.
I'll probably put an Antec or Cooler Master replacement PSU there.
yep, two quite decent brands for PSUs. Thermaltake's OK too. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):
big name brand servers (intel, dell, hp, etc) often make it difficult by using proprietary parts and, worse, proprietary connectors and cables. and non-standard sizes. all sorts of crappy little tricks to make it difficult to swap in third-party parts.
Yes, this annoyance goes _way_ back. Even back in XT clone days, we hobbyists noticed that generic Taiwanese clone gear was greatly more standardised, and easier / more inexpensive to work on, than any of the brand-name gear. Typically much more IBM-compatible, too (which then mattered).
2nd tier brands like supermicro, you can pretty much use standard third-party fans (noctua make some excellent quiet fans, e.g. 120mm fans blowing 60, 70 CFM or more at under 18db or so). i suppose they have to, their stuff would be too expensive if they couldn't source commodity parts, while the big names obviously think the lock-in is worth charging their customers more for (partly because their customers don't care too much about price, they're covering their arses by buying big-name brands that their bosses recognise).
Indeed. Only the major manufacturers _can_ standardise on bespoke parts, because any smaller company would get destroyed by parts churn from their suppliers. That is, for example, my old firm VA Linux Systems were[1] obliged to pick components very carefully to attempt to ensure a supply pipeline over the product production life of the models the parts were spec'd for. If a key upstream part suddenly were EOLed, that would be a huge problem unless our engineers were able to quickly find a highly compatible replacement from that or a different supplier. The firm in some cases bought up huge stockpiles of a particular component against future use on the assembly line, such as one particular PSU custom-manufactured for the firm by Converter Concepts. Before I departed employment at VA Linux Systems, I made sure to scrounge half a dozen of those as spares, because I heard they were selling at premium prices, used, on eBay. Meanwhile, my employer made the mistake of oversupplying, and ultimately took a big loss on excess inventory. (I still have my hoard, but doubt they're still a supplier's delight in the market. Such is life.) But in other cases, the firm guessed well: The firm chose Quantum's Atlas V SCSI 18GB and 73GB hard drives as their standard drive for various 2U and 1U rackmount servers, estimating correctly that Quantum would keep that product alive a very long time, and VA did _not_ lay in a big stockpile. This proved a much smarter gamble than the PSU one. FWIW, each drive's option ROM was reflashed to a particular firmware revision that tested best for use with RAID on Linux (either md software RAID or Mylex hardware-RAID cards). Apparently, option firmware version made a difference. Some of the parts and assembly problems were legendary. I'll have to tell LUV the one about the pencil marks on the RAM sticks, soon.
With the aftermarket fan, it's ultra-cool and almost completely silent, and some day I hope to make it a 'stealth' modern workstation with a 2010s
why 2010 when 2015/2016 stuff is so much better, cooler, less power, and faster?
I feel bad following up to say this, but what I said and meant was '2010s', i.e. this decade, not 2010 the year. [1] Once again, I thank LUV for the chance to speak the Queen's English. ;-> Locally, I am obliged to say 'VA Linux Systems was', or would be thought either eccentric, confused, or both: Americans and Canadians construe business enterprises _mostly_ in the singular, but also intermittently throw in pronouns 'they' and 'we' at unpredictable intervals.
Hi All, On 08/01/16 08:47, Rick Moen via luv-main wrote: ...
I feel bad following up to say this, but what I said and meant was '2010s', i.e. this decade, not 2010 the year. ...
I remember some folks suggesting we used the following nomenclature... 2000-2009 The Naughties 2010-2019 The Teenies 2020-2029 The Twenties (next ten) The Thirties (next ten) The Forties etc. Carl Turney Bayswater, Vic
On Thu, Jan 07, 2016 at 01:47:35PM -0800, Rick Moen wrote:
Yes, this annoyance goes _way_ back. Even back in XT clone days, we hobbyists noticed that generic Taiwanese clone gear was greatly more standardised, and easier / more inexpensive to work on, than any of the brand-name gear. Typically much more IBM-compatible, too (which then mattered).
yeah, i remember. it's when i first developed my dislike of name-brand PC gear. the whitebox clone stuff was so much less hassle. also better and faster for a LOT less money.
With the aftermarket fan, it's ultra-cool and almost completely silent, and some day I hope to make it a 'stealth' modern workstation with a 2010s
why 2010 when 2015/2016 stuff is so much better, cooler, less power, and faster?
I feel bad following up to say this, but what I said and meant was '2010s', i.e. this decade, not 2010 the year.
sorry, i misread that. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
On Thu, 7 Jan 2016 04:18:31 PM Craig Sanders via luv-main wrote:
(alternatively, some of the fans in the servers **may** be replaceable with quiet fans - many available from Quiet PC)
1RU systems have small diameter fans which have to spin at high speeds to get enough air flow which is always going to make more noise than the larger fans in 2RU servers or tower systems. If you are going to run a server where noise matters get a tower server. If it has SSDs and isn't going CPU intensive things then it will be very quiet. As for the Sun servers I'm offering. They are old and somewhat slow by today's standards. If they can work for someone as they currently are then that's great. If they need to have anything done with them then it's probably not worth it. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
On Fri, Jan 08, 2016 at 03:28:01AM +1100, Russell Coker wrote:
On Thu, 7 Jan 2016 04:18:31 PM Craig Sanders via luv-main wrote:
(alternatively, some of the fans in the servers **may** be replaceable with quiet fans - many available from Quiet PC)
1RU systems have small diameter fans which have to spin at high speeds to get enough air flow which is always going to make more noise than the larger fans in 2RU servers or tower systems.
umm, yes....but it's not hard to find 40 or 60mm fans that are MUCH quieter and better quality than the ones that come as standard in servers, without sacrificing airflow. it's not even hard to find small fans that are quieter, better quality, and move more air than the standard supplied fans. as Rick said, server manufacturers typically don't bother optimising for low fan noise because most customers don't care - the servers will be going into a noisy server room anyway. e.g. i just ordered a few "Scythe 40mm Mini Kaze Silent Fan (20mm Deep)" for $12.73 each from umart. http://www.umart.com.au/umart1/pro/Products-details.phtml?id=10&id2=229&bid=... 4.11 CFM (7 m3/hour) @ 14dbA (3500 rpm) They also have some Noctua fans that run at 4500 rpm that move 8.2 m3/hour at 17.9dbA, price $23 and $29 there are numerous other options available if you google for "quiet PC fans 40mm".
As for the Sun servers I'm offering. They are old and somewhat slow by today's standards. If they can work for someone as they currently are then that's great. If they need to have anything done with them then it's probably not worth it.
yep, sure....and whoever takes them off your hands may be interested in getting them to run quieter and cooler, with fans that don't wear out quickly because they have crappy sleeve bearings. personally, i'd just build my own server with commodity PC hardware in a rack-mount case (and replace the fans, of course). craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):
as Rick said, server manufacturers typically don't bother optimising for low fan noise because most customers don't care - the servers will be going into a noisy server room anyway.
What was disillusioning about that is that high-noise fans are also _low-lifetime_ fans: Fans that are noisy because they are built on cheap sleeve bearings are likely to seize up within a few years, at which point they provide no cooling, only more heat, thus possibly setting off a heat-buildup cascade that substantively destroys the unit. It was depressing to contemplate that my one-time employer had saved mere pennies on fans and thereby endangered the product's service life. What was more depressing was that this bad practice is routine in the computer hardware industry -- and not just in servers, but particularly there.
Rick Moen via luv-main wrote:
Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):
as Rick said, server manufacturers typically don't bother optimising for low fan noise because most customers don't care - the servers will be going into a noisy server room anyway. What was disillusioning about that is that high-noise fans are also _low-lifetime_ fans: Fans that are noisy because they are built on cheap sleeve bearings are likely to seize up within a few years, at which point they provide no cooling, only more heat, thus possibly setting off a heat-buildup cascade that substantively destroys the unit.
Whilst we are discussing the noise and reliability of case fans ; I would be interested in thoughts on CPU fans. Following a persistently over heating CPU; I discovered the cause seemed to be a loose misaligned heat-sink , which was largely due to its weight (perhaps 40mm deep and 60 mm dia); in a cantilever load situation, whilst attached to the M/B, by very flimsy plastic clips. Now I am not a 'gamer' and had always considered 'water-cooling' as just for the 'over-clockers' and the sales guy at Scorpion Tech seemed similarly unenthused. But what I finished up getting was a Corsair H55 Liquid Cooler see for example. http://www.msy.com.au/vic/northmelbourne/pc-accessories/12163-corsair-cwch55... This seems like a very elegant solution, the pump and heat absorber are lightweight, sit close to the CPU and have a very solid conection to the M/B. The radiator sits under a 120mm case fan (non-proprietary); and the result with a Asus P6T M/B with 20GB of RAM and Intel-i7 quad-core CPU is an almost silent box and a CPU which is hard to push over 45 deg C regards Rohan McLeod ps shouldn't this be on Luv-talk ?
On Fri, Jan 08, 2016 at 02:37:10PM +1100, Rohan McLeod wrote:
But what I finished up getting was a Corsair H55 Liquid Cooler see for example. http://www.msy.com.au/vic/northmelbourne/pc-accessories/12163-corsair-cwch55...
This seems like a very elegant solution, the pump and heat absorber are lightweight, sit close to the CPU and have a very solid conection to the M/B. The radiator sits under a 120mm case fan (non-proprietary); and the result with a Asus P6T M/B with 20GB of RAM and Intel-i7 quad-core CPU is an almost silent box and a CPU which is hard to push over 45 deg C
nice. $82 isn't bad for a plug-and-play kit that you don't have to mess around with cutting tubing and crap (which has always put me off water-cooling before, too much hassle...and too much chance of screwing it up and soaking my m/b) the stock fans on my AMD 1090T CPUs are getting a bit old and noisy now (i've had them a few years - waiting for AMD Zen[1] to be released before i consider upgrading. the FX-8320 and FX-8350 are nice, but not $217/$257 worth of nice) so will need replacing with something better. [1] allegedly Q4 this year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Zen
ps shouldn't this be on Luv-talk ?
i'd say no - linux users build and upgrade machines, and cooling's an important thing to know about. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
On Fri, 8 Jan 2016 07:31:00 AM Craig Sanders via luv-main wrote:
1RU systems have small diameter fans which have to spin at high speeds to get enough air flow which is always going to make more noise than the larger fans in 2RU servers or tower systems.
umm, yes....but it's not hard to find 40 or 60mm fans that are MUCH quieter and better quality than the ones that come as standard in servers, without sacrificing airflow. it's not even hard to find small fans that are quieter, better quality, and move more air than the standard supplied fans.
Companies that buy Sun servers want Sun support and that means only getting Sun parts.
As for the Sun servers I'm offering. They are old and somewhat slow by today's standards. If they can work for someone as they currently are then that's great. If they need to have anything done with them then it's probably not worth it.
yep, sure....and whoever takes them off your hands may be interested in getting them to run quieter and cooler, with fans that don't wear out quickly because they have crappy sleeve bearings.
I think that if they wear out then they can be tossed out. Also 2 servers means 4 PSUs so 3 PSU fans can fail before it becomes a serious problem for them.
personally, i'd just build my own server with commodity PC hardware in a rack-mount case (and replace the fans, of course).
That means spending money. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/
participants (5)
-
Carl Turney -
Craig Sanders -
Rick Moen -
Rohan McLeod -
Russell Coker