Hardware remedies

[William H. Magill]

On 10 Mar, 2005, at 11:18, Scott Pilz wrote:
> 	I'm looking for advise on hardware, what works good, what doesn't, 
> what to stay away from, and what has been proven efficient.
>
> 	We currently run a load of Dell PowerEdges, which work great, but are 
> limited in their i386 nature. I would like to get a few HP/Alpha 
> machines, and start building up on these instead of sticking with 
> i386.
>
> 	HP offers very little information on FreeBSD. They have a working 
> demo on two older systems (only one is Alpha, and it's slow - very 
> very slow, and old). HP cannot tell me what will or will not work.
>
> 	I'm curious as to what others are running (HP or non-HP) for Alpha. 
> What has worked good in a server environment?

As much as I'm an "Alpha Bigot," having used them since their 
introduction circa 1990, with OSF/1, Digital Unix, Tru64 Unix, in the 
Enterprise Server environment, today, I would warn anyone away from any 
kind of "bet the farm" Enterprise server environment.

The issue is simple. Alpha is a dead product line. It doesn't matter 
that the high-end Alphas, including many "older" EV6 boxes that are 
still more powerful than any of their Intel competitors, still hold top 
slots in the Super Computer list. (Although they have now fallen to #6 
from #2).
http://www.top500.org/lists/plists.php?Y=2004&M=11

Compaq sold the Alpha to Intel (as part of the deal to get bought by 
HP, according to many of us), the week before Capellas admitted to 
holding negotiations with HP on the Purchase of Compaq.

It is probably true that you can obtain quite a few high-end boxes at 
pennies on the dollar. But, if I remember correctly (being retired 
since 2003) HP support for Alphas only continues through 2008 ... and 
that means hardware support, not software.

That said...

Any EV6 or EV6/7 Alpha runs FreeBSD like a barn-burner! I have two 
XP1000s, one an EV6 and the other an EV6/7 both running FreeBSD 5.3. 
The only thing I have that runs more trouble free is my "antique" 
PWS433a (EV5/6) running Tru64 "Hobbiest" edition. That box has not 
crashed or been rebooted now in something like 5 years. [I ignore power 
failures of more than an hour since I have only minimal battery backup 
here at home.]

All my systems have DEC/Compaq StorageWorks ultra or ultrawide SCSI 
"towers" (disk drives).

I haven't tried to do anything with FreeBSD on the PWS433 because I 
think it's actually older than FreeBSD, even though it is an EV5/6 
machine. Besides, I "trust" the way it is currently running under 
Tru64.

The only problem I have with the two XP1000 systems is that they are 
both on the same 20 amp basement circuit with a Mac and the garden 
lights ... and the Ground Fault breaker keeps getting tripped by the 
garden lights. ... someday I'll ... but that's another project.

In short, I don't know which "smaller" systems are still available for 
purchase "new" from HP. But there are many available from other venues.

There are a couple of good and reputable dealers and 3rd-party Alpha 
folks on the Alpha-Linux list over at Red-Hat.

Oh yeah, one last thing... FreeBSD and Tru64 Unix (aka OSF/1) are both 
descended from BSD Unix, and have far more in common with each other 
than either has with any Linux variant!

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 [Rev A motherboard - 300 MHz 768 Meg] OS X 10.2.8
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) [800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg] OS X 10.3.8
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg] Tru64 5.1a
# XP1000  [Alpha 21264-3 (EV6) - 256 meg] FreeBSD 5.3
# XP1000  [Alpha 21264-A (EV 6.7) - 384 meg] FreeBSD 5.3
magill at mcgillsociety.org
magill at acm.org
magill at mac.com
whmagill at gmail.com