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Need comments. The most economic GE director.

To: <lvs-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Need comments. The most economic GE director.
From: "Chanik Jo" <mailing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 16:52:24 +0900
Hello.

I posted this yesterday and today.
But it was encoded weirdly by M$ Outlook Express by my ignorance.
Sorry for messing up your screen and waisting your time and various
resources..
Please please forgive me...
Hope this shows correctly.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, this is my first posting on this list so please let me know
any mistakes that I may make.

In section 23.23 of LVS-HOWTO, I found the following remark.

> In some tests I've done with FTP, I have seen *significant* improvements
> using dual and quad processors using 2.4. Under 2.2, there are
improvements,
> but not astonishing ones.
> Things like 90% saturation of a Gig link using quad processors, 70% using
dual
> processors and 55% using a single processor under 2.4.0test.
> Really amazing improvements.

I guess this test was done with P3-550 stuffs.

I'm planning to make un LVS-DR system using GE.

- director uses 2 GE NICs, for VIP and DIP respectively.
- realservers use 100base-TX NIC for getting incomming packets from director
  and GE NIC for transmitting outgoing packets.
- Cisco Catalyst 3500 switch (with 2 GE and 24 100base-TX ports) would be
  used for connecting director and realservers.

I'm looking for the most economic director that can saturate the GE link.
I browsed the web for kinda *chip* dual-processor machines.
(quad-processor machines are too expensive.. )

I guess director is mainly bound to memory speed and PCI bus speed.
Please give me any comments on which one you would choose for
'the most economic LVS-DR GE director' among the following machines.
(I will not mention the storage related stuff because I guess they would not
 make much difference to director performance)

[1] Two P3 1GHz Processors (256KB L2 cache)
  (or two 1.26GHz tualatins with 512KB L2 cache)
  with Serverworks HE-SL chipset motherboard.
  This chipset uses PC133 SDRAM so the throughput of the memory io
  will be around 400 MB/sec thou the spec. bandwidth is 1GB/sec.
  This one provides two 64 bit PCI slots each on independent PCI buses
  that can be used by two GE NICs respectively.
  Spec. bandwidth of the system bus(aka FSB; bus between CPU and north
bridge)
  is 1GB/sec. (I have no idea on real throughput)
  (FYI, This machine is DELL Poweredge 1550. Under $3000 with 1GB RAM
   and P3 1GHz. Tualitin adds several hundereds of $'s.)

[2] Two Xeon 1.7GHz (256KB L2 cache) with Intel I860 Chipset motherboard.
  This chipset used PC800 RDRAM and the memory throughput will be
  over 1 GB/sec thou the spec. bandwidth is 3.2GB/sec.
  Two 64bit PCI slots are provided but they are on the same bus, and
  sometimes the PCI bus itself may be saturated. This can be a significant
flaw
  compared to [1], huh?
  Spec. bandwidth of the system bus is 3.2GB/sec. (I have no idea on real
throughput)
  (FYI, this is around $6500 with 1GB RAM)

[3] Two Athlon MP 1800+ (1.533GHz, 256KB L2 cache) with AMD 760 chipset
mainboard.
  This chipset uses PC2100 DDR SDRAM and the memory throughput
  will be around 600 MB/sec thou the spec. bandwidth is 2.1GB/sec.
  Two 64bit PCI slots are provided but they are on the same bus,
  same problem as [2].
  Spec. bandwidth of the system bus is 2.1GB/sec. (I have no idea on real
throughput)
  (FYI, this is around $4000 with 1GB RAM)

By 'economic' I mean the minimal recommended(?) hardware that
doesn't compromise the performance needs as the GE LVS-DR director.
I want experiences and opinions on which part of the system
is critical for the GE director;
amount of L2 cache of processor, clock speed of processor, number of
processors, system bus throughput, memory throughput,
PCI bus related throughput, etc..  I'm so confused.

Any comments would help.
Thanks.





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