Testing a large server

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freitasm

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#616480 28-Apr-2012 10:33

Seriously though folks, this is a engineering sample, to test the board, processor, memory, SSD... But it's noisy!

I thought the rack mounted UPS I have under the desk here at home was noisy, but when this server is on, it's like a jet taking off. I will be using my noise cancelling headphones during the tests because there's no way this can leave in a house...

amanzi

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#616483 28-Apr-2012 10:40

freitasm: Seriously though folks, this is a engineering sample, to test the board, processor, memory, SSD... But it's noisy!

I thought the rack mounted UPS I have under the desk here at home was noisy, but when this server is on, it's like a jet taking off. I will be using my noise cancelling headphones during the tests because there's no way this can leave in a house...

Perhaps the firmware hasn't been optimised yet to control fan speeds. These new Intel boards and processors should be pretty energy efficient so I wouldn't expect the server fans to be going mental unless under load.

freitasm

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#616484 28-Apr-2012 10:41

Thought it would be that, so I have changed BIOS settings for Power Efficiency instead of Performance... Still pretty noise in a quiet environment. But that's not to worry since it's not a production box anyway.

amanzi

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#616485 28-Apr-2012 10:46

I haven't used it myself, but there's an app called Prime95 that can be used to max out all the cores on a box. It calculates prime numbers and should be able to max out all 32 of the logical processors.

Zeon

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#616486 28-Apr-2012 10:48

The fans should calm down after startup, if not check the BIOS.

A couple of tests you could try are:

- Check disk IOPS and read/write on the disks. The SAS controller on the C606 chipset is what stopped the e5 series coming out due to buggy firmware in testing last year so will be good to see how it goes.
- Run a massively parreleled processing script. You could do this running something like imagemagick with a cron to spawn 100+ convert processes and measure throughput against other machines
- Very difficult to measure otherwise as you really need to put it in a commercial setting with various VMs for Exchange, Sharepoint etc.

Point 2 is probably the best way I can think of measuring performance

Speedtest 2019-10-14

freitasm

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#616487 28-Apr-2012 10:49

They do calm down, but still noisy... I will tweak the Power plan as well.

freitasm

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#616645 28-Apr-2012 17:17

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alexx

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#616696 28-Apr-2012 18:22

Who would have thought that something designed to sit in a server room would make a lot of noise. :)

But virtual machines would be the way to go if you want to keep it busy. You can have several windows servers and desktops, one each of the leading Linux distributions, plus FreeBSD, Android-x86 and still have a few cpu cores left over.

Or you could install FreeBSD and source code.

# cd /usr/src
# make buildworld

Effectively rebuilds the entire OS from source. You might need to experiment with the "make -j x" where x is the number of cores to use, but you could get it down under 10 mniutes on a box like that.

#include <standard.disclaimer>

timbosan

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#617207 30-Apr-2012 07:35

freitasm:

Glad to see you took up my idea ;-) Can I ask what projects you have on BOINC? And could you post some stats after its been running a while? If you have this for long enough (weeks) you could easily get to into the top of the NZ stats!

freitasm

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#617209 30-Apr-2012 07:50

Remember I am testing this at home - to have this running a few weeks I'd have to put it in the Datacom DC (or someone else's DC around Wellington) where it could make all the noise it wants ;)

Kraven

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#617213 30-Apr-2012 08:23

freitasm: Seriously though folks, this is a engineering sample, to test the board, processor, memory, SSD... But it's noisy!

Intel Server boards and chassis need to have their FRUSDR (Field Replaceable Unit/Sensor Data Record) updated to tell the board what chassis it is installed in, what fans are connected, etc. This optimises fan speeds and will quiet the server down... however since this is a reference sample it may not be possible.

It's a command line tool anyway and a bit of a pain in the bum to use.

networkn

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#617215 30-Apr-2012 08:30

Rack Servers from Intel have always been noisy (it's normal). They are designed to go into a server room/rack where the noise isn't really a factor. I replaced our Virtual Server which was an earlier version of this, with a Tower Server for that very reason. Same with 3COM Rack switches.

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#617220 30-Apr-2012 08:47

Seeing it's so noisy, I'll happily take it off your hands and keep it at my place :-P I need a new ESX host ;-)

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup.

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