Re: wanted mainboard for file server

Dear Anton,

ich bin auf der Suche nach geeigneter Hardware für einen File-Server. Er
soll mit Debian laufen und ein Hardware-RAID mit SATA-Platten haben.

What for? Our file server all run with software RAID 1 using the md
driver, an that works fine.

Some time ago I had a file server running RH with two SCSI disks and a
software RAID. The problem there was that the driver that realized the
software RAID was not available before it was read from disk. On the other
hand the disk was not available before the driver was installed. We had to
install a separate boot disk besides the RAID set. Since this time I have a
little preference for hardware RAID solutions. Maybe this opinion is not
adequate. However, does this option have an impact on the choice of
motherboard?

Darüber hinaus sollte er einen Gigabit-Ethernet-Anschluss haben und
ansonsten möglichst wenig Geräusche und Hitze produzieren. Es soll kein X
oder sonst was drauf laufen, so dass eine Grafikkarte nur für Textmodus
gebraucht wird. Sound ist ebenfalls nicht erwünscht.

You probably want ECC memory,

Is this a special type of RAM with few heat or few power consumption?

so I would look for a single-CPU-socket server board
(these typically have simple on-board graphics);

Did I understand this correctly? Single-CPU-boards in general come with ECC
memory and simple onboard graphics, in contrast to Multi-CPU-boards?

Any of these will have at least one (usually two) Gb Ethernet ports. For
coolness, get a slow Athlon 64 EE or Core 2 Duo (=Xeon 30xx) CPU, and
if you get an AMD CPU, use the ondemand governor to run is at a cool
and low clock rate most of the time. For quietness, drive the CPU fan
with fancontrol (this takes some setup work, though).

I tend to an AMD board, because I made good experience with the cool & quiet
technology. But how can I select those AMD boards that have the properties
you mentioned? Just looking for single-CPU-boards?

Thank you
Magnus
.

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