Hardware ordered December 2004

See also: Wikimedia servers.

This order consisted of five 3GHz Pentium 4 computers with three gigabytes of DDR2 RAM and a Seagate 200GB drive. One substitutes a pair of Western Digital RE 250GB SATA drives in software RAID 0 for the 200GB drive. Total cost was US$10854 plus any taxes.

The order was placed in part because of four faults on web servers, three with lots of RAM, taking them out of service. This left a shortage of high RAM machines for Squid and Memcached service, and a desire for more Apache/PHP CPU power. The machine with two SATA drives in RAID 0 was part of ongoing tests to see how much load less costly database servers might be able to handle, as well as providing another option for a backup-only database slave. These are known as R100 systems by Silicon Mechanics, the vendor. They use a different motherboard chipset and CPU mounting socket from the previously purchased Pentium 4 servers and have a new option for a remote power and server health monitoring board at $60 extra cost, an option we took for this order to investigate the effectiveness of this solution. Remote power and health reporting helps to reduce the need for colocation facility labor, which can sometimes involve costs or delays. DDR2 RAM is used in these, currently somewhat more costly than DDR but likely to fall to a similar price as we continue to buy these systems in 2005. The order was confirmed on 3 December 2004.

4 of R100 "Apache - 3GB"
CPU:  Intel P4 530 (3.0GHz) 1MB Cache - HT - 800 FSB LGA775
RAM:  3GB (2 x 1GB, 2 x 512MB) DDRII-533 - Interleaved
NIC:  Dual 10/100/1000 Mbps NIC (Broadcom BCM5721) - Integrated
Management:  IPMI 2.0 Controller
HDD :  Seagate 200GB 7200.7 (7.2Krpm-8MB Cache) SATA
CD-ROM:  Slimline 24X CD-ROM
Floppy:  1.44MB Floppy
O/S:  Fedora Linux Core 3 - Preload, No Media
Rail Kit:  2 Piece Ball Bearing Rail Kit
WARRANTY: Standard 3 Year - Return to Depot
NOTES:  Fedora Core3 or recommend

At the time of initial quotes these were offered for $2116 while the older SM-1151SATA with similar configuration were offered for $1813. The difference in price is mostly the DDR2 RAM and the $60 for the IPMI remote power and monitoring controller.

1 of R100 "Dual use Apache and Test DB slave"
CPU:  Intel P4 530 (3.0GHz) 1MB Cache - HT - 800 FSB LGA775
RAM:  3GB (2 x 1GB, 2 x 512MB) DDRII-533 - Interleaved
NIC:  Dual 10/100/1000 Mbps NIC (Broadcom BCM5721) - Integrated
Management:  IPMI 2.0 Controller
HDD 1:  Western Digital RE 250GB (7.2Krpm-8MB Cache) SATA
HDD 2:  Western Digital RE 250GB (7.2Krpm-8MB Cache) SATA
CD-ROM:  Slimline 24X CD-ROM
Floppy:  1.44MB Floppy
O/S:  Fedora Linux Core 3 - Preload, No Media
Rail Kit:  2 Piece Ball Bearing Rail Kit
WARRANTY: Standard 3 Year - Return to Depot
NOTES:  Drives in SW RAID0
        Fedora Core3 or recommend

At the time of initial quotes this was offered for $2390 while the older SM-1151SATA with similar configuration were offered for $2087. The difference in price is mostly the DDR2 RAM and the $60 for the IPMI remote power and monitoring controller.

Vendor description of the system edit

R100 name is preliminary - they were offered to us a few weeks before full production availability. The remainder of this section is vendor description.

"R100 The Rackform iServer R100 1U P4 Server brings greater throughput capability to the entry-level, rack dense 1U server space. With an Intel® Pentium™ 4 processor, 800MHz Front Side Bus, EM64T extensions support, 4GB of DDR-II memory, PCI-X expansion slot, dual Gigabit Ethernet adapters and two swappable SATA hard drives, this server defines new levels of price/performance."

System edit

CPU edit

  • Single LGA775 ZIF Socket
  • Supports an Intel® Pentium™ 4 processor (800MHz FSB)
  • Supports Intel® EM64T Extensions
  • Supports an Intel® Celeron™ processor with (533MHz FSB)
  • Hyper-Threading enabled

Chipset edit

  • Intel® E7221 chipset
  • 800/533MHz System Bus

Memory edit

Capacity edit

  • Four 240-pin DIMM sockets
  • Supports up to 4 GB DDR-II 400 / 533MHz unbuffered ECC memory
  • Dual channel memory bus
  • Memory must be populated in pairs

Memory Type edit

  • DDR-II 400 / 533MHz unbuffered ECC SDRAM 72-bit

Error Detection edit

  • Corrects single-bit errors
  • Detects double-bit errors

Storage edit

Drive bays edit

  • 2x 1" SATA swappable drive bays

Network edit

Integrated Interfaces edit

  • 2x Broadcom BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet Controllers

Management edit

Software edit

  • Optional IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) 2.0
  • Watch Dog
  • NMI

Peripheral Drives edit

Floppy edit

  • 1.44MB

CD/DVD/RW edit

  • Slimline CD, DVD, CD-RW or DVD/CD-RW

Input/Output edit

Graphics edit

  • On board server quality graphics integrated into MCH

USB edit

  • 2 x USB 1.1 ports (rear panel)

Parallel Port edit

  • 1x ECP/EEP Parallel Port

Serial Ports edit

  • 1x Fast UART 16550 serial port (rear panel)

KB/Mouse edit

  • PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports (rear panel)

Front Panel edit

Buttons and Switches edit

  • Power button
  • Reset button

LEDs edit

  • Power LED
  • Hard Drive LED
  • NIC 1 Activity
  • NIC 2 Activity
  • Overheat LED

Back Panel edit

Power Recepticle edit

  • IEC-320 C14 AC

Chassis edit

Form Factor edit

  • 1U rackmount chassis

Height edit

  • 43 mm, 1.7"

Width edit

  • 426 mm, 16.8"

Depth edit

  • 574 mm, 22.6"

Color edit

  • Black face, Plated Metal body

Rack Support edit

  • Compatible with four-post or two-post racks

Power edit

Power Supply edit

  • 260W AC switching

AC Voltage edit

  • 100 - 240V, 50/60Hz

Environment edit

Ambient Temperature edit

  • Operating: 10°C to +35°C; non-operating: -40°C to +60°C

Relative Humidity edit

  • Operating: 8-90% non-condensing; Non-operating: 5-95% non-condensing

Safety/Regulatory Compliance (Chassis) edit

United States edit

  • UL Listed, FCC

Canada edit

  • cUL listed

Europe, CE Mark edit

  • EN60950 (complies with73/23/EEC)

Germany edit

  • TÜV Certified

International edit

  • EN 60950/IEC 60950 Compliant


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