[nylug-talk] Slim home server for samba and subversion ( and possibly IMAP)

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Fri, 2008-05-09 at 15:46 -0400, Chris Knadle wrote:
> I had looked it up, so I was talking about the NX (but thanks for the link 
> anyway) -- I just didn't know that AMD LX and NX had L2 cache, which is why 
> it seemed like I may have been talking about the LX.

I'm getting older and I always have to look up specs to verify myself.
And even then I regularly slip up, and don't always admit to it the
first time either (by second, I'm pretty good though).  

> Mmm.  Good to know.  I'll keep it in mind for when I need the next FW 
> upgrade.

With Intel dropping the price on the Yonah series Celeron 220
(especially in a "ready-to-use" Mini-ITX at just over $60), it's really
hard to recommend any ViA product, or an older AMD Geode NX.

And with the x86 Atom hitting in products, from the planned Centrino
Atom to what will likely be a slew of "commodity" Atom-based products
replacing the reference Intel IOP/IXP X-Scale designs (now in the hands
of Marvell), yet more options will appear and become commodity rather
quickly.

> But for what I currently need embedded HW for, the LX is really more 
> fitting being that it runs much cooler (no heat sink required).  I just got a 
> few of:
>     http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2c3.htm
>  also available at:
>     http://www.mini-box.com/Alix-2B-Board-3-LAN-3-MINI-PCI_1

The Celeron 220 is sold as a fanless solution,e ven the Athlon
XP-M/Geode NX is also sold as a fanless option, when the appropriate
voltage is applied for lower-power.  E.g., even when the Geode NX
solutions come with a fan, under-volting to the reduced specs is one way
to lose the fan.  ;)

If you want to go even lower power, then non-x86 is the way.  Again,
even Apple signaled it was not going completely Atom when they snatched
up a major IBM Power 5 licensee with a PowerPC 970 (Power 5-based
PowerPC) compatible solution.  Most people, myself included, assumed
Apple was done with even looking at PowerPC when IBM never delivered on
the promised, 1.2GHz, low-power PPC970 for a G5 notebook.

> Fun little boxes.  Loading Debian wasn't terribly hard because I found 
> instructions; because there's no VGA  they require understanding how to 
> redirect all of the normal console I/O to the serial port (grub, kernel 
> bootup messages, getty login).

Because of these, among other things, Intel figured most wanted an x86
compatible embedded, commonly one with commodity PCI ASICs on-die as
standard, to address such for only a "few extra pennies" and a "few
extra watts."  Time will tell if they made the right move.

All I know is that I got tired of seeing how Intel "supported" their
IOP/IXP lines though last year.  But I can't talk more about that (under
NDA).  It will be interesting to see what Marvell does.

> Oh.  Well, that's a damper!  ;-)  I suspected this, but wasn't sure.

It's like IBM and it's Power.  It's not about "end-user products"
anymore (well, Centrino Atom will be, but besides that), it's about
becoming a serious Foundry that everyone taps -- just like IBM.  People
don't realize that IBM now _dominates_ several industries.

They were smart to get out from dealing with Apple, and their failure to
ship the low-power PPC970 was no loss to them.  It's much more commodity
to only design twice -- once at release, once at a shrink a few years
later -- over 4-6 years -- a single product design, and one that ships
in tens (if not hundreds) of millions of units (e.g., Sony PS3 and
Microsoft Xbox 360), than 9-18 month revs for various Apple models of
varying specs.

2007 was the year set-top finally outsold PC, and had it not been for
Microsoft and others "crippling" some of the features of the former, the
PC's limits would have been far greater.  Most people don't need, and
don't really want, a PC -- but that's another story.

> Sure, yeah.  I just happen to like the convenience of not having to load a 
> cross-compiler, and not having to have any concern over packages that FTBFS 
> [Fail To Build From Source] for the target non-x86 architecture.  Just trying 
> to keep things simple.

Although it's more than that, it mainly boils down to similar.

>  Right.  And 3.5" disks in portable drives, so yes, apples + oranges.
>    Gotcha.

Okay, we're on the same wavelength then.  ;)

> Hey, now that's cool.  I thought it was a special SATA connector for laptop 
> SATA drives.  Nice that that's not the case.

No, internal SATA (also SAS) has a single edge connector with very
strict and rigid, mechanical standards.  It has been extremely well
proliferated and followed (with few exceptions).  SAS cabling is also
well spec'd and followed, but SAS is hardly commodity (and enterprises
take things more seriously).

Unfortunately, eSATA has not, not at all, and there are a lot of "cheap
vendors" that tend to dominate for consumers.  Just research Tivo Series
3 and eSATA cables and people will talk about different mechanical
specifications and their variations in implementation.  ;)

> Friends of mine have had their fair share of dead 3.5" disks from
> dropping them, but we all avoided 2.5" disks where possible.

For years now several vendors have been selling "sealed" tape-sized
cartridge drives that are actually 2.5" drives in them.  ;)

> Probably the wrong decision knowing what you've told me.  ;-)
> Oh well.

I'm a firm believer in "managed" 3.5" drives that never leave a system
and are well-managed for spin (average 5,000-10,000 restarts over 5
years, with only 6-10 hours/day usage, maximum), thermals, etc...  They
currently dominate massive arrays of commodity disks.

But for SOHO usage, I started liberally deploying 2.5" drives as
short-term (3 years or less), near-line/off-line storage -- in addition
to DVD-R/RAM (which I've been utilizing since 1998) and other options.
Although when someone is hitting 1TB in an off-line backup need on a
weekly basis, and needs 10 year retainment, LTO is really the option
I've gone to for a good 6-7 years now.


-- 
Bryan J  Smith              Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith
-------------------------------------------------------------
           Fission Power:  An Inconvenient Solution