HP/DEC/Compaq

I'll post the link until I can get image inline

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-Proliant-DL560-G1-4x-Intel-Xeon-2-0Ghz-4GB-Server-2-/330583240810?pt=UK_Computing_Networking_SM&hash=item4cf84bf06a#ht_5395wt_1045

So.. Quad 2GHZ CPU in a 2U package with 4GB and a PCI-X RAID card... for £40+postage = total less than a hundred bucks

I guess it be loud... even under my Bed where it's gonna hide

But I urgently needed cheap CPU power (and plenty of it) for a lot of computation I need to do with XML (on an UltraSPARC IIIi 1.06GHZ Blade 1500 it's taking 4.5 hours to process one command line XML program written in php).

I want to get that 4.5 hours down to under 30 minutes

I have optimised the program as much as I can (can't do anything about the crap slow XML lib...)

My question guys is....

php is single threaded so the task is going to be bound to one thread execution unit on one CPU (out of the 4 units available on 4 Xeons).

So does that mean the other 7 units are wasted? Well I know OS and stuff (MySQL) will use some but they are low demand tasks...

I think may be 1 x 3GHZ Pentium 4 would have been faster!?

Advice needed

A single or perhaps a dual CPU box would indeed have been more 'correct' for that job of yours but can't beat of the cool factor of having those additional processors

Perhaps once you've actually seen what's in the box you might be able to source a cheap faster replacement CPU to use for this particular purpose. Whatever you do with the hardware it sounds unlikely that 270 minutes will drop to 30. At least not for this kind of money

It's actually the smallest and least power consuming Quad CPU box out there.. at least amongst the old stuff (this is a 2002/2003 model).

Max CPU option is 3GHZ (x4=12GHZ) compared to my 2GHZ (x4=8GHZ) so 33% faster - but also larger L3 cache (4MB) vs the 1GB L3 on the 2GHZ I have.

Still as you say mmk - it is uber cool! **** the correctness!!!

But.. it was purchased for a task... and it was also the most powerful box available for under £50 (it was either that or a Dual 3GHZ machine). I am concerned though that the Dual 3GHZ were probably HT processors = 2 thread units = 2 CPU x 2 thread units = effectively 4 CPU = what I purchased anyhow.

I checked the DL560 specs and the Xeons were single thread units... (not HT)... damn I thought all P4 class Xeons were HT!!!

I will post a video of the grand "opening" in the next few days on youtube so we can all see how loud it's gonna be.

Best not to think that way. Tempting, but it never works out quite like that.

The real question is... why on earth do you do that in *PHP*? I can't think of any language I'd prefer *less* for doing that

1. Move to a true compiled language, C, C++ even Pascal or COBOL.

2. Are you using SAX or DOM? Each has pros and cons. SAX means you don't have to load it all up first and processing may be done in parallel with reading, but you are dependent on the element orderings. DOM you have to read everything, but it's all there.

3. Split the XML parsing from the business logic, ideally with a sensibile intermediate so you can have the two in separate processes in a pipeline.

4. Did I mention use a decent language?

I know... but it was quick and easy and I had familiarity with the XML library...

.
I might move to Erlang or C... I'm doing some Erlang and it's pretty cool, but I know C reasonably well and can code fast...


Not sure as the library methods are hidden...


Done this... and have split so that the php processes are bound to separate threads/processors... so I have four parallel php threads on the DL560.... has helped a little.. but some processes are inter-dependent and must be executed synchronously.


Yeh...

Thanks guys!

On another note can anybody ID the cards on the lower server for me? (I know what the NIC one is:))

Looks like two 2gbit Fibre Channel cards...If I had to guess, probably Qlogic 2340 based on some additional googling

thanks mmk
I just purchased these 2 servers (faulty) for spares... hope to get lots of stuff from them!
£25 + £15 for both
at least get some spare ram, processors, PSU and 36GB 15K U320 disks.... maybe a U320 card from the top server (to replace my U3 card)
Keep me in spares for some time

Just had a "pop" and smoke.. and one of my DL560 PSU went south only hours after starting the server! So spares are going to be useful!

Top SCSI board looks like a Smart array 6400 that someone removed the 2ch addon on. The other with the square connector are the Qlogic HBA boards for probably connecting to a SAN. Those are some nice servers. We have older Proliants and they just don't quit. You can grab the HP Firmware update CD/DVD off HP's site to get them up to date (BIOS, Smart array firmware,etc) and they have the Smart start CDs too if if you ever need to do an automated install for Windows/Linux.

Thanks

Yes, received both "faulty" servers. After reseating PSU cage, PCI-X cage, and replugging in the cables, the "faults" seem to have cleared themselves and I have another two *working* DL560's (so three in total!). Initially they were showing amber faults on all 4 CPU's, one didn't come out of standby and the other indicated a red server fault light on the front panel.

The only issue I have is one of the boards indicates on bootup a CPU#4 failure. Swapping CPU/VRM's still gave the same #4 issue so I am puzzled as to why this occurs. Could the socket supporting circuitry be faulty?

As for the boards a strip revealed all. A 6400-192, 2xQLogic Boards, a Gigabit NIC and a LS1030 U320 controller. My inital machine had a 5312-128.

The machines are fantastic. With the HP RHEL5 hp-health software the fans purr along very quietly - well for a Quad CPU box... bearable to work with in the same room without issues.

So, Quad CPU 3GHZ Hyper-threaded machine from 2002.... still can handle todays stuff well.

I don't understand. These don't seem like interesting systems at all.

Not interesting in the "I want to sit down and figure out how they did this" sort of way, but good for when you want to get stuff done quickly and cheaply. A KL10 is a neat machine, but when you just want an answer fast...

I think for around $100-$200 (ebay pricing) you cannot buy a faster (= won't crack under load) general purpose computing platform. Utility value vs coolness (although QUAD is cool )

Remember, 8 x 3GHZ threads, especially when you can make use of all the threads is still pretty neat today, and in a *quiet* (with appropriate drivers) 2U box with a RAID controller and 2 x 73GB U320 (can take I think 2x300GB) it is plenty powerful.

Is it sexy? Not as much as my Suns... but in its own way it's a rather neat box and I'm kinda growing to like them.

I'm running CentOS 5.6 with a GIS server (PostgresSQL), Apache, MySQL, PHP, python, and bash scripts, all pretty I/O and CPU intensive the way I am using them in parallel with 4-5 threads at 100% CPU and can still throw more stuff at it (such as running a few compilations..).

This 2003 box is still a mini powerhouse

And there's part of the problem. I'm guessing that these are these CPUs, in which case, they're terrible netburst P4s built at 130 nm.

They might have cost <$200 on eBay, but the reason is because of their cost to power and cool.

You'd have been better off getting something like a relatively modern Athlon 64 system.

yes, 3.0 HT netbursts, but I'm surprised on the cooling and power requirements (or lack of it) in the DL560.

Quad 3.0's with 6GB DDR and 2x73GB U320 consumes according to my power socket meter approx. 235W (and this from Dual 550W/650W PSU units).

235W isn't a lot.

Cooling is via 8 fans at the front in two rows and with power management software (RHEL5 extensions) the box is very little difference in loudness from a power desktop and I mean that... it simply is a quiet beast - quieter than a single core P4 XEON 2.6 equipped Dell 1750 1U server or a Dual CPU Sun V210 1U.

I know that on the whole 2U are quieter than 1U due to to the constraints in cooling a 1U requiring more powerful fans, but still, it is quiet... and power requirements aren't at all bad.

I'm not sure how an Athlon 64 would outperform overall (computationally and heavy load I/O) a Quad HT box (thats 8x3GHZ HT cores). I'm using most of those cores daily and the box as I said is handling a nice load very well.

For under $200 I assume (for an entire unit) you mean a Dual Core Athlon 64? May be you are right... never tried... 64-bit is tempting though simply because hiphop is a real issue compiling on a 32-bit box and hiphop would be very useful for me at the moment.

Also I'm in the UK, nothing is cheap here, in the US on ebay stuff is often 50% of the UK price... or less....

I picked up a dl560 from ebay as well, and it showed up today. What a beast!

I was wondering what software you were using for controlling the fans?

Edit: Never mind found it. Wow does that ever make a difference!

Thanks
Aaron

Just saw this better late than never... but for anyone else...

CentOS or RHEL is the only real OS for this box due to the fact that the RHEL extensions for power management manage the fans superbly (and make the machine pretty quiet). I suspect any other Linux Derivative would not have these Redhat developed extensions and the machine would just be hugely noisy and power hungry.

The RHEL extensions run without any issue under CentOS of course. I think it was the OS of choice for these servers.

I have a limited amount of academic exposure to computer architecture and microprocessor design theory, but I'll just mention a few things that came to mind while reading this thread:

First, congrats! The Proliant line is a very reliable and well-built family of otherwise boring x86 servers. I've never had hardware trouble with any of my Proliants, although the ILO software can be a PITA at times.

Second, on a single-threaded program you may or may not see linear improvements in execution time by changing the CPU. There are a number of factors to account for here. A big one is cache size - bigger cache = less clock cycles spent fetching. Floating-point performance also varies between processor families.

I think the best thing you could do at at this point is to parallelize your operations across the entire CPU. Perhaps divide and conquer with your dataset to utilize the unused threads?

Are you working with a fixed data set? If so, is it necessary to constantly regenerate it? How large is the data set, and what type of operations take so long?

Also, have you used a profiler to find if there are any bottlenecks in your program? Have you used the "htop" utility to watch your CPU core usage?