Koozali.org: home of the SME Server
Obsolete Releases => SME Server 7.x => Topic started by: del on October 28, 2009, 03:29:31 PM
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I was going to build a micro ITX for my SAIL/Asterisk SME box and a regular socket AM3 box for my SME file server, but in searching around the internet and Contribs it seems that almost all motherboards are using a Realtek LAN that's not supported by Centos 4 (or 5 in some cases) and looking here: http://wiki.contribs.org/KnownProblems (http://wiki.contribs.org/KnownProblems) it also states that
SATA II drives are not fully supported
Is this still the case?
Would anyone care to share their recommendations for a new SME box?
Thanks
Del
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Is this setup for production or for home use ?
If it is for the first i would recommend going for a brand name server , (i have just tested sme 7.4 on a dell T100
And it works great.)
For the second option ( home use) you can plug in an intel network card which should work.
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I use sme 7.4 tunnung under vmware server at Centos 5 64 host. This means that the SME server will not "see" the physical hardware. Works perfect for iptelephony and server purposes. Full backups and "spare servers" and "experimental servers" is made very easy and in a minute by just making a copy of the virtual installation file. As long as hardware is supported by the host system, everything will work.
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It is for my small office, but I don't like Dell, I've had problems with them before and their support was useless. I prefer to build my own hardware. At the moment it seems like I'm going to struggle with any new hardware, searching Centos forums shows that even some Intel NICs have problems.
I've always used redundant PCs in the past so I've never encountered problems. I don't really want to use old stuff this time. I'll keep searching and see what I find. Anyone used the ASUS P5BV-E/SAS with the Broadcom BCM5721 LAN. Or the Intel EXPI9301CTBLK PCI-Express LAN card? Thanks again.
Del
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do you hate Dell? ok.. and what about HP or IBM or Fuijtsu or....?
my 2c: if you are going to build a server for your WORK, use only linux certified hw with nbd onsite 3 year support
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i hate HP (bad service in my experience) ,
Back to the point , invest in server grade gear which is built to run 24/7 , has better compatibility , better support,
and in the long run will save you money if it breaks down and you need to replace it ASAP .
Dead server = no work can be done = the business is loosing money
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i hate HP (bad service in my experience) ,
Back to the point , invest in server grade gear which is built to run 24/7 , has better compatibility , better support,
and in the long run will save you money if it breaks down and you need to replace it ASAP .
Dead server = no work can be done = the business is loosing money
I don't mind investing in server grade gear, I just want to put it together myself :smile: But nothing I find seems to be supported by Centos, especially modern NICs :sad:
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But nothing I find seems to be supported by Centos, especially modern NICs
another reason to buy only linux certified hw, like an entry level server ;-)
trying to save 50$ and spend 2 days to find a supported nic it's not, IMVHO, a smart choice
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I don't mind investing in server grade gear, I just want to put it together myself :smile
Building the server yourself will not give you nbd warranty , and in the case of a fault in the server replacing part
By part your self will cost time and money
But nothing I find seems to be supported by Centos, especially modern NICs :sad:
Red hat and centos are server os meant mostly for pre built servers which easier to test for compatibility ,
Think about red hat trying to test hundreds of motherboards , until the finish testing a new os version comes
Out :lol:
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OK, I have been repairing and building PCs for 17 plus years and in my experience mine have always been higher spec and outlasted any Dell or HP that I've ever worked on. I have a SME server that I built for my CPA's office in 2003 and it's still running :cool: I don't understand what the problem is with building my own, unless Dell etc. are using older parts then I should at least be able to use whatever NIC their using :smile: I'm just trying to find out what is able to work with SME/Centos as every motherboard from a $50 MSI to a $300 Tayan seems to have a LAN that is not supported :sad: So you see I don't get NBD service I get same business day service and not just for 3 years :P
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del
Intel JOE m/bds are certified for Centos 5 & the onboard NIC works OK ie both run sme 8.x OK
Intel PCIe (I think it's called copper) NICs work OK with sme 7.x or 8.x.
While not certified for Centos 4.7 they do run sme 7.4 OK with a boot switch, Search the forums for details.
I have my servers & workstations built by a no name supplier, but using good name/quality parts. Cost, reliability & speedy support are provided by a combination of my and his efforts.
Whenever Linux is mentioned, we tend to use Intel products so as to avoid compatibility issues.
Having said the above I don't know if the JOE motherboards are "new" enough for you.
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i have built systems going on 24 years. started with 8088 machines and dos.
for a good reliable motherboard that works with sme7.4 and 8.x i have been using Supermicro X7sbl series boards for the a couple of years. Approximately
90 servers. see this site.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/3200/X7SBL-LN1.cfm
You can use several different Intel CPU's with it. For Hard drives i typically use a raid rated drive from either Western Digital or Seagate. the motherboard has six sata ports on board. downside you can only put 8gb's of ram on the board. Would like more but 8 is good.
Sal
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i have built systems going on 24 years. started with 8088 machines and dos.
for a good reliable motherboard that works with sme7.4 and 8.x i have been using Supermicro X7sbl series boards for the a couple of years. Approximately
90 servers. see this site.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/3200/X7SBL-LN1.cfm
You can use several different Intel CPU's with it. For Hard drives i typically use a raid rated drive from either Western Digital or Seagate. the motherboard has six sata ports on board. downside you can only put 8gb's of ram on the board. Would like more but 8 is good.
Sal
That looks like a nice board, I came across this one on their site
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/3200/X7SBL-LN2.cfm (http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon3000/3200/X7SBL-LN2.cfm)
Essentially the same board but with dual LAN, I usually use my SME in server/gateway. Thanks for the heads up.
Del
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My 2c
Realtek NICs are "generically" supported by sme 7.4 using generic realtek driver from the installation CD... even if the NIC release two last numbers doesn't match 100% :wink:
anyway in case of more reliability needed, you can buy a pair of better nics to add-on to your box and bios and disable your on-board NIC.....
or follow more expensive advices as being told.
that's my experience. (many time running sme without so many money)
Regards
Ale
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My 2c
Realtek NICs are "generically" supported by sme 7.4 using generic realtek driver from the installation CD... even if the NIC release two last numbers doesn't match 100% :wink:
anyway in case of more reliability needed, you can buy a pair of better nics to add-on to your box and bios and disable your on-board NIC.....
or follow more expensive advices as being told.
that's my experience. (many time running sme without so many money)
Regards
Ale
I know that they can use the R1869 driver instead of the R1868, but they become very flakey and you lose the connection from time to time. All this started in the Asterisk/VoIP forum here on contribs because I wanted to build a miniITX with dual LAN for my PBX and then I would have just put my file server behind it, so you can see that the option to disable and install another LAN card becomes a problem with the mini ITX format. I tried in vain to get help on compiling the r8168 drivers and have tried a few ways without success, keep getting told that I don't have the kernel source file, when in fact I do have it, or at least I think I have it :smile:
Thanks for your input though,
Del
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Hi There,
I'm looking also in to buy a server for a company that needs to be reorganized, and they will start using SME.
to my surprise there was a discussion in this posting about 8GB of memory.
but nobody reacted on that that there is a 4GB limit for 32bit systems.
is my statement about 4GB true or is this only a Micky(mouse)soft / windows issue?
what is the real maximum for the SME to address?
Kind regards,
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It seems to that CentOS does support more than 4gb of memory in 32 bit systems:
http://www.centos.org/product.html
Can anybody please advice me the best max memory for SME? i would like to run 2 VMwares also on it.
Kind regards,
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with its standard kernel SME can handle 16 GB of ram
search in the wiki for more info
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You can use up to 16 GB of memory in sme (more if using the "hugemem" variant of the kernel) , but the real
Limit here is that each process can use only 3 Gb of memory - this i believe is the limit with 32 bit systems ,
Windows server 2003 works in the way - you can use more then 4 Gb in a 32 bit os but only 3.some thing Gb for
process , it's called PE .
In pure 64 bit system every process can have access to all most all the memory.
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tropicalview
Documented here
http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:FAQ#Memory_usage_and_limits
Also see
http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:Administration_Manual:Chapter4
and while correct it is of limited value when considered in the context of modern equipment, virtual servers and email systems with all features enabled.
Can anybody please advice me the best max memory for SME?
Such a generic question (ie what is best?) can only be answered generically.
There is no best amount of memory that will suit all situations, as system specification depends on anticipated usage and load volumes.
Typically you would want not less than 4GB RAM if intending to run VmWare for good performance. If your system is going to cater for lots of users who frequently run server based web applications eg webmail, egroupware etc then memory demands will be much higher. Also if your systems receives large volumes of email and you have anti virus and spam scanning enabled, then these processes alone will place large demands on memory usage.
So on a busy system running VmWare it would not be out of place to run 8 or 16MB RAM, or even more if warranted.
A common way of assessing whether more RAM is required, is to check swap memory usage using top or htop.
If swap memory usage is half of installed or allocated RAM, then you should install more physical RAM (or allocate more in a virtual server).
Keep in mind that Linux will always try to use all available RAM, which is a good thing to keep your server running fast.
Keep in mind also that you can limit the instances of concurrent mail messages in various parts of the system and utilize RBL lists and executable content message rejection etc etc, all of which reduce the load greatly on available memory. Doing this may slow mail processing a little but will also allow you to run a server with less RAM, quite comfortably.
Ultimately and usually it just comes down to how much can one afford to install and/or the system is capable of handling. As memory and hardware generally speaking is not costly these days, you can manually install the hugemem kernel variant, select it at boot up and your system will recognize 64GB of RAM, assuming the motherboard can accept it.
yum install kernel-hugemem
signal-event post-upgrade
signal-event reboot
When you see the list of kernels displayed, select the hugemem kernel.
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For my 2c I use an HP ML110 G5 (entry level) with RAID 1 - came with M$2k3 preloaded as it was cheaper to get the hardware this way. Had great delight in formatting the hard drives. No problems installing SME, recognises the on board NIC. Installed another SMC or Edimax NIC for less than $10 (both work fine). Had an issue with the M/B after a reboot after about 9 months, but after spending a whole morning going through Mumbia help desk (as the server was my gateway, had problems getting a laptop patched through to the adsl router to get emails from HP support) but once they agreed it was a M/B, got a parcel the next morning with a brand new M/B and all instructions on how to replace the CPU etc. Even came with a small syringe of heat paste for the CPU heatsink.
As it was a server, they are bound by a next business day replacement, and I don't live in a main centre.
I have installed both HP ML110 G4 and G5 servers as well as IBM entry towers in several of my customer's sites all with SME no problems. They gather dust like a vacuum cleaner, so get a regular visit with the air hose.
I recommend a name brand with a 3 year warranty. Most M/B manufacturers only give 12 months that I know of, and if you Build it they may not give you anything more and try and blame it on other peripherals (like RAM, NIC, PSU etc)
I also strongly recommend a UPS - nothing like reliable power and clean from brown outs etc. Got a reasonable Blazer 800 UPS that supports serial cable and worked straight out of the box with NUT. APC also works.
Also think 2G of RAM is heaps. Unlike M$, Linux is not as memory hungry.
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axessit
Also think 2G of RAM is heaps....
Typically for lower load systems with a smaller number of users that is OK, but if you have a busy server with heavy mail & web app usage and lots of users, then memory and processor demands can be considerably more.
The "correct" amount of RAM for any given situation really depends on the server in question and how it's being used.
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Also think 2G of RAM is heaps. Unlike M$, Linux is not as memory hungry.
axessit how many users are those 2 GB ram servers serving ?
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Small Office - 10 - 15 users typically, only using email, file server, printing and faxing (has Hyla Fax on one of them). Not hosting any web apps, so I guess Mary's comments are to be considered. The server also runs dansguardian internet filtering (great for stopping flash movies from the likes of youtube etc yet still allowing whitelist sites to run flash tutorials).
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Hi del,
my English is not so good, that I can describe all the the details. I had the same problem with an mini ITX-board.
My solution is: disable the onbord ethernet interface in BIOS and use a dual port Ethernet-PCI-Interface-Card. (I use an old Compaq-Interface-Card, Street-price ca. 40 EUR) It is running without problems.
regards
Dieter
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Hi kellned,
The main reason I have not gone down that route is I wanted to use a 1u rackmount case and I need the PCI slot (with riser) for a Digium analogue trunk card, but thanks for the idea.
Del
Hi del,
my English is not so good, that I can describe all the the details. I had the same problem with an mini ITX-board.
My solution is: disable the onbord ethernet interface in BIOS and use a dual port Ethernet-PCI-Interface-Card. (I use an old Compaq-Interface-Card, Street-price ca. 40 EUR) It is running without problems.
regards
Dieter
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Please contact Marcel Fraunhofer IFF in the German forum. He told me from a special Atom 330 mainboard with an other chipset for Ethernet-Interface. and his English is much more better.
regards
Dieter