*BSD News Article 82956


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From: Tony Griffiths <tonyg@OntheNet.com.au>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD hardware recommendation
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 12:50:31 +1000
Organization: On the Net (ISP on the Gold Coast, Australia)
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To: eho@fore.com

Eric Ho wrote:
> 
> All,
> 
> Could anyone please advise hardware configuration (brand name) for the
> following requirement:
> 
> 1)      5G to 10G SCSI harddisk
> 2)      64MB RAM
> 3)      100Mbps fast ethernet (full duplex)
> 
> Also, we would like to know whether it's possible to back up a FreeBSD
> server?
> 
We run two FreeBSD 2.1.5 servers, one is the WWW proxy and the other is
the News server.

Configs are-

WWW proxy:	P120 (ASUS motherboard),
		128MB RAM,
		NCR810 SCSI,
		2 x 4GB Seagate for proxy cache,
		1 x 3GB EIDE system/log disk,
		SMC PCI Ethernet card (DEC 21x4x chip)
		FreeBSD 2.1.5
		Squid 1.1 beta16

News server:	P90 (DEC XL590),
		72MB RAM,
		NCR810 SCSI,
		2 x 4GB Seagate for news
		1 x 1GB EIDE for system/log
		SMC PCI Ethernet card
		FreeBSD 2.1.5
		News ?.?

The news server is basically I/O bound.  It typically runs with about 
30-35MB in the buffer cache and uses 15-30% cpu.  Expiring articles
rattles the disks for anything up to 10-11 hrs per day.  [There has got
to be a better way of handling News!!!]

The WWW proxy just likes a LOT of memory and swap space but uses little
cpu (4-5% average!!!) and I/O is very moderate also.  On this machine I
had to build a special kernel with a larger default and maximum data
segment size then that provided by the "stock-standard" kernel because
Squid (after 17 days) has grown to > 299MB virtual!  Time to restart it
I think...
	
> If possible, please reply to eho@fore.com.  Thanks in advance!
>
By backup, do you mean Unix 'dump'.  Sure, I backup my personal FreeBSD
system to DAT tape every couple of days using dump.

I would never attempt to do this on the News or WWW proxy partitions. 
The number of files in these filesystems is from ~ 200,000 per
filesystem for the two proxy partitions to > 600,000 in .../news and >
250,000 in .../news/alt !  Dump can't hack these sorts of numbers and it
is simply not worth trying to backup this ephemeral data anyway.  If I
lose a disk (which I have done), it's back to newfs and a clean start.

You don't say what services you want to run on this machine.  The memory
might be a little light on and the 100Mbps Ethernet may be overkill!

> Cheers,
> Eric
> 
Tony