Re: Request for feedback on hardware for a new database server

On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 1:16 AM, Arjen van der Meijden
<acmmailing(at)tweakers(dot)net> wrote:
> On 18-3-2011 4:02 Scott Marlowe wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 6:51 PM, Oliver Charles
>> <postgresql-perf(at)ocharles(dot)org(dot)uk>  wrote:
>>
>> Another point.  My experience with 1U chassis and cooling is that they
>> don't move enough air across their cards to make sure they stay cool.
>> You'd be better off ordering a 2U chassis with 8 3.5" drive bays so
>> you can add drives later if you need to, and it'll provide more
>> cooling air across the card.
>>
>> Our current big 48 core servers are running plain LSI SAS adapters
>> without HW RAID because the LSI 8888s we were using overheated and
>> cooked themselves to death after about 3 months.  Those are 1U chassis
>> machines, and our newer machines are all 2U boxes now.
>
> We have several 1U boxes (mostly Dell and Sun) running and had several in
> the past. And we've never had any heating problems with them. That includes
> machines with more power hungry processors than are currently available, all
> power slurping FB-dimm slots occupied and two raid cards installed.

Note I am talking specifically about the ability to cool the RAID
card, not the CPUS etc. Many 1U boxes have poor air flow across the
expansion slots for PCI / etc cards, while doing a great job cooling
the CPUs and memory. If you don't use high performance RAID cards
(LSI 9xxx Areca 16xx 18xx) then it's not an issue. Open up your 1U
and look at the air flow for the expansion slots, it's often just not
very much.