The collected works of edikat - Page 1

Hi there

Anybody help me in determining the cheapest but computationally powerful UltraSPARC system for under $500 in the UK?

I have narrowed the choice down to:

V210/240
I already own one of these (V210, 2 x 1.34GHZ USIIIi CPU, 2 x 36GB 15K ATLAS Drives) and need something that is preferably faster. It is however a nice system, small, compact 1U and not too noisy once fans stabilised.

V440, V480 in Quad UltraSPARC IIIi
Problem is not available on ebay at under $500 in UK, they are in the US but shipping is too much (several hundred $) and I am unsure of how well packed it might be.

V880
Available but huge power consumption and noise as well as weight and size. Really not an option for my small apatment In the UK can get for around $400+ but shipping is $100-200, so just barely within the $500 if I am lucky.

T1000
Not possible under $500, and US prices are $1500+

Advice gratefully received.
ed

Quote:

I could barely give away about half a dozen sub-$100, 1.5GHz uS-III Blade-1500s about a year ago

Here in the UK vendors on eBay have totally unrealistic price expectations. Your 1,5GHZ Silver Model are on offer for $1000+ (don't believe me, check! ) and even a "make me an offer" is refused at $500.

Quote:

The USIIIi you have is almost as fast as it gets if your app is not multithreaded

Agreed, however my application does Multithread (numerous single instances of php with fcgi so I can alter apache from prefork to multithreaded), and lots of MySQL. Looking at Solaris, I see plenty of LWP's implying multithread would be useful. However you are absolutely correct, single threaded one instance php cannot go any faster.

Quote:

Any further info on what type of computational work you're aiming for?

I do a lot of geoprocessing involving delivering XML from a geonames database. The actual geonames import to MySQL (with postgis) takes about 5 days on my V210 (importing the entire world). The process involves considerable multi-threading both of mySQL and the application (Gisgraphy).

I agree about the V440 (being Ultra160 SCSI?) as opposed to the older (FCAL?) V480, V490 have seen for around $1000 with 2 UltraSPARCIV CPU.

I was looking at a cluster of V210/240's (1.34x2) as these are cheapish, reliable and take standard SCSI drives. But computationally clustering the application is something I haven't looked at and I'd imagine not easy.

I do used memcached however (the V210 is linked to a coupled of 4GB V100/120's and a Blade 1500 red).

Really like SPARC stuff and am frustrated that their are no powerful low-end stuff being produced since those last Dual 1.6 Ultras back in 06/07?

I guess the next (reluctant) step is the V series Opterons!

Thanks guys

thanks guys.

Actually in the SunBook the V440 is classed as "entry level" where the V480 is classed as "Mid-range".

Given the V480 has FC Disks as opposed to the likely slower U160 SCSI on the V440 I can see the enterprise heritage of the 480.

The advice of a V480 over the V440 is especially welcome. Looking at the stats, they both consume the same power (650W+-) and are the same weight, and probably very similar dimensions, and I found it hard to really tell much quality difference between them.

I guess the "mid-range" as opposed to "entry-level" server tag by Sun should have been a hint!

Have located on eBay UK a Sun V480 with 4 x 900Mhz, 8Gb mem, 72Gb disk + Warranty for UK 250 + 65 post (USD $507) just within my budget!

Thanks again guys - great advice!

Yes, a dual 2500 would be a fair deal, but as mentioned I/O may be an issue, although the V210 I know also is U160 (where it's competitors such as the Dell 1750 were dual channel U320 RAID.. and cheaper!). I do like my 1500 Red.. no matter how others dislike it )))

I will lean towards a Quad 1.2 V480 as the best bang for the buck, both computationally and I/O. It's a mid-range deal, rock solid, only 650W (I think the Blade 1000/2000 wasn't far of this power consumption!) and sure looks cool.

In the meantime I'll push my Dual 1.34 V210 a bit more... wasn't bad for $150...

When I can afford it I'll be going for a T1000 (once prices drop!).

gkl, thanks for those benchmarks... very very useful.

Incidently, my Dual 3GHZ Xeon P4 HT Dell 1750 1U Server crushed the V210 under load.... this was VERY disappointing!!

Unfortunately I don't drive, and also I am in Scotland.. way North!!!!

Thanks for the offer though!!

Oooooh, Imagine my girlfriends reaction if she came home and saw "the beast" all powered up, whirring and humming and lights flashing.... ((((

I had a VAXStation 2000 back in 1995 (!) and even then it was free from the System Admin at my University.

I do remember that the MFM RD53's were scarce then, and the RD54's very hard to find. Now I expect it even more difficult to obtain an RD54.

Just checked eBay

The two RD54's for sale are going for $750 and $875-00.

I think the VS2000 could only take RD53/54, but the TK50 tape I/F was pseudo-SCSI and I know a long time ago some guys tried to interface it to SCSI drives (this is 15 years ago or so!).

edikat

Mostly I used 5000/25's (Personal DECStations) with Ultrix. They were very cool at the time (with Mosaic, gopher and veronica!!).

My only question would be "what load". SPARC is definitely a "commercial instruction set" CPU rather than a technical CPU, so it it optimized for integer and moving data around. Intel x86 is primarily integer as well, but for the most part it isn't as good at moving stuff around.

Of course there is that old analogy.

If you want to get 2 people as fast as possible from point A to B, use a Porsche (Intel).

If you want to get 100 people as fast as possible from A to B use a Bus (SPARC).

Or something like that

very very cool..........
Yeh, a youtube video would be great dude!

$160 is a lot of postage for a Blade 150, but it may be the smallest self-contained unit (with Video) with an USII processor.

Also a 150 should cost you $50 max... $150 is way too expensive!

The 150 is a slow machine, I believe it has the USIIi 650 and IDE disk(s).

I would look for a Blade 1000/2000, available on eBay for around $50 (UK eBay) and postage from UK->UKR shouldn't be really expensive. One UK seller was selling Blade 2000's with 1GB and 9GB Drives recently for UK £20 + postage ....

Basically the 150 is nyet bistro!

I have some V100's/V120's with Solaris 10 U9, this machine with a network connection to a PC is a far better solution (using something like VNC, or NoMachine NX) - the same CPU in the V120 as the Blade 150, but 15K disks can give it a boost in performance.

Has anybody actually got one of those System 370 instruction set emulated in microcode using a 68000 add on boards to the IBM PC/AT?

I think they could run VM and MVS native....

I have been looking for a long long... time for one of these boards but they seem *extremely* rare (even rarer than an AlphaBook )

Anybody even hard of this?

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

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.

V210's on UK eBay sometimes fail to fetch a BIN price of $100 or so. The V240 maybe around 20% or so more. Things are getting better though as 1500/2500 Silvers are sometimes now put on by sellers with "best offers" (meaning they either have no clue of pricing or just want to shift the box).

I really like my 1500 "Red", since purchasing 8 months ago it has been on mostly 24/7, and even with 1GB, it is a nice dual 120+80GB ZFS based web development platform (with CoolStack) - and its quiet.

If anybody has the latest PROM for the Blade 1500 red I'd appreciate it. I still run with the 2003 original PROM! The new PROM would allow me to use some spare 1GB sticks I have which don't work with the old PROMS....

Their isn't a day where I don't curse Oracle believe me. Thank god I have the last Sun Internal partner edition of the System Handbook on DVD...

Just seen on wiki the P/370 (Personal/370) a late 80's early 90's MCA card for the PS2.

Could run *complete* VM or MVS...

I suppose none now exist or knowing luck in some attic or dusty old never used machine ready to be binned...
still.. lookin' !

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:))

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!

Would love a MicroPDP 11/23 (a smaller 11/23 in the same BA23 as the MicroVAX II)...

I dream of running RSX-11 natively on a small compact 80's last generation PDP machine..


RIP Olsen... gone but not forgotten

yes SAQ...

But their's nothing like that hum and whir of the boot sequence... and just that ('ol memories) feelin'

I'd forgo the VT100 though... (and remember the agony of VT52's at college even in the 90's!..) in favour of emulation at the terminal end!

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 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

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....

Interesting to here the V240's nearly perform as well as the T1 (T1000/T2000) servers.

The T2K must not really be so fast as I thought as a Dual V240 with USIIIi 1.5's was still a slow box compared to a Dual Core Intel 1U Generic Server!

If I recall correctly the benchmarks for the T1K/T2K compared against the then withdrawing NetBurst Xeons (absolute Dogs in speed, power and heat) which I thought was a bit cheeky. Against even a 2006 Dual 5300 they were struggling.

So why don't they sell cheaply (((( at least in the UK...

Although this is an old thread, things have been happening fast since last year.

V440, 480 and 490's (even those with Quad US IV) are now around $100-150 in the UK, and I see T1000's 8-core 2x73GB (20+ by one seller) on sale for around $350 with NO interest!

It seems the SPARC market has crashed somewhat with prices tumbling.

I am considering a V490 4 x 1.35Ghz USIV 16Gb Ram 1 x146Gb for less than $120, there is even another less specified for $40(!) - the postage is more - but luckily the guy is 20 minutes drive from me.

But is the noise that bad and is the power consumption huge?

If this is a ProLiant 8500 prototype which I assume it is, back in 1999, when I was procuring Xeon processor options for these beasts on behalf of a Mega Bank here in UK I saved them I think £5K just by slightly reducing the cache size of the CPU's purchased on ONE machine!! (I think I purchased CPU's with 512K/1MB instead of 2MB cache, or 2MB instead of 4MB, can't remember now).

I think (in UKP) the price per processor difference was £1000 or so.

And I purchased 50....

50 x £5K...( 0.250 Million!!! at the time $400,000) saving... and didn't even get thanked ))) Nobody noticed!!!! not even the users I suspect..... I am not sure why I did this... possibly because I was bored that day ))))

The Bank ran server farms of 8500's in a custom built data centre. They were the big engines behind the bank at the time!

Thanks.

In the end I went with a T1000. Basically V100 size, light, fast, low power with 8-core/32-thread, 8GB, 2x73GB SAS.

Cost me $300 on eBay offer (cheap for US, real cheap for UK) and will attempt to replace the V210 as my primary server.

Actually was amazed how small and light the T1000's actually are.

Really looking forward to getting it running (but NOT looking forward to jumpstart, as it has NO CD/DVD drive or USB!).

As far as I could determine, staying with SPARC I had very few choices if I required better performance than a V210.

I could have gone Quad with the V4XX route (V490, 4xUSIV, 16GB, 146GB for $100) but the huge weight, size, noise and power consumption made this box (originally I believe $90,000) not ideal for me even at $100. A Dual V490 (=4 cores) with 16GB/No Disk was $50 including shipping - basically they were giving it away.

So it was the T1000, or stay at USIIIi 1.6GHZ x 2.

I'll benchmark but my feeling from reading the web comments is that single-threaded the USIIIi will beat the T1 easily, but once the T1 multi-threads it can even beat the V490 at high loads (not sure if I can believe that though).

As a rough and ready rule I'll assume The T1 can perform similarly to a low-end Quad core Intel at best and at worse will still be better than Dual USIIIi at 1.6GHZ. That will be more than enough for me at the moment.

Also of course the T series can run Solaris 11... unlike even the USIV....

I don't know about you.. but this freaked me out.....

A Military 7000/860.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/VINTAGE-CASED ... 4ab651e57b

Looks from the "hours counter" to be basically unused.

Is this the "ULTIMATE" VAX???

From the patent below (see bottom) looks part of the Joint surveillance target attack radar system (JSTARS).

Pics below (more on eBay listing)







Heck that thing could survive a nuke

I wanna press that "BATTLE SHORT" button ))))

It must have cost a *FORTUNE* - I reckon $0.5M each may not be far off the mark.. anybody care to guess or know?

Condition unknown - sold as seen, no returns. (That made me laugh).

Edited:
PATENT HERE
http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US5117360

I looked up the NSN (NATO Stock Number) 5998 01 348 1060

Dates it to around 1992 (Date NSN Established: 1991308 (November 04, 1991)), about the same time the "civilian" 860 was current.

Think it takes 28V DC from the pictures...

The eBay listing says "Make an Offer" and they have 3 of them.... I reckon they'd almost give them away.... but the postage and storage

I just sold my T1000 as small and powerful as it was?

Why?

The noise level was louder than servers 4U in size and twice as long.... I almost believe a V490 or even V880 would not be as loud as the T1000....
I would never have believed such a small box could be so loud.... so loud that it could be heard through concrete walls...

It is the loudest server I have *EVER* heard... and I've put software builds on 100's of Digital VAX/Compaq/HP/IBM servers in my time.

Crazy noise.

Hope you fare better with the T2000!!

Now my first VAX back in student accommodation at University back in 1995 was a MicroVAX 2000, uVAXII and a VS 3100/38.

Even then they were obsolete and the University CAD/CAM lab donated them to me.. I must have been the only guy in the UK with a VAX cluster in his dorm room....didn't impress the ladies so much but those were the days when being a geek was totally uncool....



I wouldn't have recommended it even back in 1995 as even then the MFM RD53's were hard to get and RD54's impossible. Nowadays you are looking at $500-1000 for an RD54.. they are getting rarer.

Oh my.... that was my "dream" card back in '95 for the uVAXII I had (in a BA23). So expensive then.. I guess now impossible to come by? AFAIK it was the only way to extend the disks in the machine beyond low capacity MFM... may be mistaken here but it has been 17 years

But thinking about the card still sends shivers down my spine.... ultra geeky I know.

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.

The V210 (after picl runs on Solaris or the RHEL extensions on RHEL/CentOS) is super quiet, the V100 is quieter, the V120 (with the SCSI) maybe in-between. All three are significantly quieter than a T1000, in fact the V100 is quiet enough to be used under a desk.

I could never live with a T1000 in the same room or even the next room (or perhaps further). A great pity really as a T1000/T2000 would be a beautiful box under Solaris to test multi core/threaded apps.

Any advice on a buying a MicroPDP-11 in working order in the UK?

It seems quite impossible now to find one anywhere. I don't care if it is a 11/23, 11/73 or 11 anything in fact, as long as it can run RSTS/E.

Is the BA23 the smallest case available for the machine as well?

Funny, on eBay I can always find a huge number of listings for PDP manuals, docs and magazine spreads going back from '70 through the early '80's, but never *ever* a working system.

Any advice on seeking out stuff? Should i just buy all the parts separately (eBay often lists parts) and build myself? Is that possible?

I have pretty good experience of MicoVAX hardware, but none of MicroPDP.

A sad day...

Spent many an all-nighter back in 1996 optimizing a 3100/90 (or 95/98?) on behalf at the Thrifty Foods HQ in Victoria, BC... happy days.

Before that at Liverpool Uni.... a year of VMS, and even before that three years of VMS, RSX-11 and RT-11..... back in the early 90's they were ancient then

Ended my VMS experience by selling my 3100/38 for $200 back in '96 as well.. we dumped the uVAX-II (which was donated to me beforehand by the Uni... thanks Mike Senior... respect.. must have been the only student with a MicroVAX in my dorm room!)