building a server.

[Whoopee]

First off I want to thank everyone for the hard work they have put into the creation of eqemu!
I am currently building a new box to serve as my server and I was wondering if L2 chace will play a big role in the servers performance. I have been looking a few of the lower end core 2 duos that run around 60$ most them only have 1-2mb of L2 cache.

[pfyon]

Short story: pretty much anything that uses the processor will benefit from a larger L1 or L2 cache.

Long story:

Your cache is where your processor will look for data or instructions first. If the instruction/data is found in cache, it's much quicker to read it from there than memory. If it's not in your cache, the next spot it'll check is memory. If the data or instructions isn't in the memory either, then the last place to check is your harddrive or some other I/O device. When the data is found, depending on your processor's architecture, it'll probably be put into the cache (until it's replaced or discarded) or memory.

edit: a larger cache means more data can be stored there which increases the likelihood of finding the instruction on cache instead of memory/static storage.

[Whoopee]

this is the setup I am thinking about going with. How well do you think it will run as a server? I only have residential cable service, and I do realize that will limit the amount of people I can have at a given time.


Intel Pentium E5300 2.6GHz 2MB L2 Cache 70$
WINTEC AMPX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 50$
4x Western Digital Caviar Blue 80GB 7200 RPM 134$ set in raid 5
HEC Orion XPOWER585 585W ATX12V 2.01 Power Supply 25$
HEC 7106BB Black 1.0mm Thickness ATX Desktop Computer Case 33$
LITE-ON Black SATA DVD-ROM Drive 20$
Foxconn G31AX-K 50$
Total build is 388$


-the board has onboard video, would adding a video card increase performance at all?
- also I have considered adding a killer NiC to offload the network processing from the cpu, wise move, or waste of money?

[pfyon]

I'll preface this by saying I haven't managed any servers with any real load on them. My personal server is just an old acer aspire one netbook with a cracked screen with pretty much the worst possible hardware configuration (512mb ram + 8gb first gen ssd). The extent of my experience is from building dozens of computers for friends, family, and my old highschool (oh, also, I'll be graduating this year as a computer engineer).

It's going to depend on what you want to use the server for. Will it be used exclusively to host an eqemu server? Are you going to host a website on it as well? Use it as a fileserver? What operating system do you plan on running on it?

If it's going to be exclusively for eqemu, that much space is overkill. Like I said above, my server's only got 8gb of space, with ubuntu server 8.10, all the maps/db/source and compiled as well as hosting my (pretty small) blog, I still have ~14% remaining.

A graphics card shouldn't improve performance unless you want to run a display on the server as well. No idea about the NIC.

You also might consider dropping the dvd-rom and installing anything you need from a u3 usb drive or the internet (once you get your OS on), and spending a bit more and getting a UPS for it.

[iggi]

Intel Pentium E5300 2.6GHz 2MB L2 Cache 70$
WINTEC AMPX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 50$
4x Western Digital Caviar Blue 80GB 7200 RPM 134$ set in raid 5
HEC Orion XPOWER585 585W ATX12V 2.01 Power Supply 25$
HEC 7106BB Black 1.0mm Thickness ATX Desktop Computer Case 33$
LITE-ON Black SATA DVD-ROM Drive 20$
Foxconn G31AX-K 50$
Total build is 388$

To be honest, your biggest bottleneck is going to be throughput, unless your going to be hosting this on something with a 5mbit+ connection, this hardware should be just fine

Intel Pentium E5300 2.6GHz 2MB L2 Cache 70$

Respectable enough, should do fine for a couple hundred users, the old grand creation ran on a p4 with 150 users.

WINTEC AMPX 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 50$

4GB is enough for a substantial system, if you want to run 100% static zones, I would recommend getting 8GB of ram, however 4Gb is more than enough for any decent server

4x Western Digital Caviar Blue 80GB 7200 RPM 134$ set in raid 5

Use raid 10, it will run MUCH faster, I would ASSUME for this price that this is software raid, which in that case the parody bit calculations will be taking many precious cpu cycles from the EQ EMU server. Only do raid 5 if you absolutely need the space, but last I checked EQEMU didn't need more than 160GB.

HEC Orion XPOWER585 585W ATX12V 2.01 Power Supply 25$

I would suggest a Powersupply with active PFC, helps a lot to stop over voltaging and only $20 or so more for a comparable PSU.

HEC 7106BB Black 1.0mm Thickness ATX Desktop Computer Case 33$

It's a server, case doesn't matter so long as airflow is sufficient, especially 4 hard drives are going to crank out the heat so put in some good fans.

LITE-ON Black SATA DVD-ROM Drive 20$

Other than for installing the OS, this is not needed IMO.

Foxconn G31AX-K 50$

Perfectly fine, if you want 8GB of ram I would suggest the MSI P43 Neo-F


Again, I have not run a EQEMU server in about a year, but sine we have not drastically changed version numbers, I would assume all of this to still be true, but as stated before, this all depends if the system is used for other purposes.

[pfyon]

Originally Posted by iggi

...the parody bit...

Parity

Also, wtf, minimum 10 characters for a response?

[iggi]

Originally Posted by pfyon

Parity

Also, wtf, minimum 10 characters for a response?

I originally wrote it as such, must have changed because firefox complained.