I am building a dual opteron server which i will be colocating.

Buying a sata backplane which gives me the hot swappable drives, adds $100 to cost approximately to the chasis

I can not think of any good reason to have hot swappable drives in a colocation environment.

If something goes wrong [touch wood], I can anyway open the server and put the new drives

What am i missing here, why do people spend $100 extra to get the hot swappable sata backplane which basically allows them to swp drives in and out at run time,

Illuminate me,

the whole idea of hot-swap which requires backplane and HDD carries is that the server won't have to be powered down while changing failed RAID member.

depending on chassis and who built it, some internally fixed mount HDD can be rather tricky to swap out. i'm not sure the DC tech guys are willing to do that for liability issue. the best way still is sending them the HDD pre-installed in drive carrier, then DC can just 'hot-swap' the bad one in seconds with 0 downtime.

as for supermicro 1U case, a 1U SC811T (2x Hot-swap SATA) only costs $30 more than SC811I (2x fix-mount HDD)! but if u started with SC811I, and want to purchase the hot-swap carriers and backplane later on from Supermicro, yes, it will be $100. extra drive carrier can be purchased separately at about $20 for quick hot-swap at DC.

as for higer-end SC813 series, it comes with 4x hot-swap built-in, either SATA or U320, no option not to include them.

also, hot-swap HDD can be uesd as removable 'super tape drive' for super quick backup/restore (internal HDD transfer speed!), then store it away off server.

Hi, cwl@apaqdigital thanks for your quick replies.

I went over to your ebay page and saw that you are not selling any dual 1U opteron servers, though at the same time you have the answers to most of my questions on building a dual opteron server in a 1u chasis. :)

Any particular reasons for this co-incidence

we will list 1u dual opteron pretty soon.

no techincal reason not to, just couldn't get around to do the auction page and taking photos, etc. yet......

BTW, thanks for digging out the chenbro RM117 chassis. the more I look at it, RM117 will be more suitable for dual Opteron than SC813M because RM117 has 'wind-tunnel' kit readily availabe for dual opteron setup, and custom-fit IO plate are offered for various server board. we may give it a try, too!

Hi, cwl@apaqdigital thanks for your quick replies.

Tyan S2881 does not need a "wind tunnel"
www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8sr.html

Take a look at the picture of the motherboard and you will soon realize why it does not need the wind tunnel. The ram chips and the processors arrangement is the best i have seen ever.

Chenbro case is also better because it has more blowers

I have two more questions:

1. I want to put 1 GB ram chips ECC DDR can u suggest me some cheap once. I am already over budget :)

2. Should i go for activie colling with 1U cpu fan, or should I go for passive colling with 1U cpu heat sink
www.dynatron-corp.com/products/cpucooler/search_result.asp?search=940+1u&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=Search

sysadmin
http://www.grmtech.com

well, I believe RM117 is shipped with wind-tunnel kit for dual Opteron which can only be good than bad.

RM117 comes with 4x 4cm mid-chassis fans which won't be able to compete with dual 10cm blowers from supermicro in term of air volume. but since RM177 comes with wind tunnel pre-installed, I would still choose RM117 over SC813M.

plus, if you look closely, the dual blowers position inside SC813M may not exactly aligned with CPU sockets position on S2881, therefore the efficiency of passive cooling could be reduced.

for 1G ECC reg., always installed in pair for dual-channel mode, do try eBay. just the other days, I picked up some Micron original 1G ECC reg. DDR400 stripes for $125 apiece! u just can't beat that anywhere!

also, if you run Linux, make sure both APIC and ACPI are off on any of dual MP or dual Opteron platform, and use 2.6+ kernel for x86_64 only.

Which CPU cooling solution should i choose ?

Should i go for activie colling with 1U cpu fan, or should I go for passive colling with 1U cpu heat sink
www.dynatron-corp.com/products/cpuc...p;submit=Search

sysadmin
http://www.grmtech.com

well, wind tunnel is the ultimate form of passive cooling. so, I would use big all copper heatsink only. if you put active cooling in wind-tunnel, then the CPU fan just might blow against the intended air flow. not quite desireable!

the dynatron A11 can be a nice choice:
http://www.dynatron-corp.com/products/cpucooler/cpucooler_model.asp?id=72

or Thermaltake A1819 (not A1882):
http://www.thermaltake.com/coolers/rackmount/a181982.htm