Hardware : Server Hardware?

[Greg]

I spoke with my CTO about hardware needs for these new systems and he seemed to recommend that I try to standardize my hardware and focus on redundancy (hes pretty sick of having to constantly troubleshoot/rebuild my gigastudio rigs) Based on that, he seemed to think that buying a server from a vendor like HP or Dell would get me the type of performance spec's I need, the linux compatibility as well has the hard disk space and the rack mount option.

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/quic ... 01_na.HTML

HP ML 150

Options from 1x Dual Core Xeon up to 2x Quad Core Xeon
1-16gig of Ram
SATA as well as SAS drives (in, or out of RAID configuration)

I had him spec out a system with 3 SAS drives, a single Quad Core and 8gig of RAM.

Is there any reason why I 'shouldn't' go with a setup like this? I'm a professional composer, I really can't afford to have any downtime on my systems so the idea of RAID 0, redundancy on most of the other hardware, and the hardware support from HP is attractive, but I don't want to run into issues with drivers or applications not running well on the server hardware.

Anyone looked into this or have any type of insight into the pros/cons of doing such a setup?

[dahnielson]

I wrote a long reply when the forum software decided to loose it and log me out. So here's what I was able to type after punching a hole in the wall...

Using server hardware is probably a good idea.

A general brief:

Hardware

• A motherboard with as little integrated stuff as possible. Because you really want to have control over the IRQs and those buggers have a tendency to seize all the valuable IRQs (and IRQ sharing is a big no-no) and you end up disabling them anyway.
• Ideally a BIOS that let you reassign IRQs.

Software

• Run a Linux kernel patched with Ingo Molnar's Realtime Preemption patch.
• RTLIMITS must be set for RT-priority and memory lock.
• At boot rtirq should run to sort out the IRQs.

Note that this is what a specialized audio distribution like Studio64 or JAD should do for you. A heads up: Because of some work in the mainline kernel have somewhat thrown a spanner into the machinery of realtime kernels, I would recommend running a patched 2.6.24.* kernel until it has been sorted out.

Past threads with info
Using disks with noatime
Performance - 64 bit hardware

Waiting for Alex Stone (composer and big time LinuxSampler user) to turn up and give his opinion...

[Alex]

Hello Greg.

Gosh, where do i start.

Ok, i've been researching a little about using a server board for a dedicated linuxsampler box, with jack and netjack providing the ethernet link between it, and the daw computer.

So far, Tyan seems to be the most used server board that gives reasonable results for linux, without too much angst with drivers, etc...

I used to have 4 gig boxes going into a 5th, and i understand the pros and cons of such a rig. It's been my experience that linuxsampler offers a lot more than a standard gig setup, with only hardware limitations, as opposed to gigastudio's software limitations as well. To give a brief idea, I used to get around 1GB of memory working for giga, per box. That pretty well got me a medium orchestra, provided i was careful how much pressure i put on the system. With LS, in my 64bit boot, and i have 4gb of ram installed, i can use 3.4gb of that for linuxsampler, running a larger orchestra, because LS doesn't suddenly fall over, or start to struggle when i push the limit. It simply won't allow you to load any more instruments. So when you build a template, it will tell you if you've gone too far, by refusing to load anything else, but it will play in stable fashion, all the stuff you've managed to load.

But more than this, LS will let you use only what you need, even if you have a giant bank and patch template. I'm still in the middle of setting up a total template, where every gig i own is mapped to a bank and patches, spread over two hard drives. So far i have 62 banks with an average of 70-80 patches each, and there's about a quarter to go. The setting to use when doing this is "Demand and hold", but you can also have your 'default' gig set loading, ready for immediate use, and use "On Demand", or "On Demand and Hold" for the occasional articulations. So in summary, you can template your entire collection, load up your favorites, and still have prompt access to the rest.

Looking at your specs, with a 64bit linux distro, and going on my own modest experience, it's my view you're going to get a lot of mileage.

Some questions.
Are you going to spread your gig samples over two drives? (and i assume here the third of three drives you wrote of is the system drive.)

Are you going to use a second and/or third box to do the donkey work, feeding your dawbox, or stick to the one mighty beast? (and it's more than feasible to do this...)

Will you be using Win, or Linux, as the main Daw rig? (Which software are you using to compose with?)

Alex.

p.s. Please note Anders' comments about realtime kernels. There's still some work to be done on the latest RT patch and vanilla kernel, so his recommendation for an earlier version is sound advice.

[dahnielson]

Will you be using Win, or Linux, as the main Daw rig? (Which software are you using to compose with?)

Digital Performer on a PowerPC Mac:

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