July 19, 201015 yr I just got short notice to build up a Windows 2008 R2 server and, well, since I built my unRAID with it, I was curious if anyone built a 2008 server box with it as well? It's replacing a Windows Server 2003 box with an old 3GHz P4 at a small medical office. The office has several "thin" clients at the moment; the rest full desktops, but all needing access to the server for their SQL-based medical billing and scheduling database. Even tho Atom D510 is rated 1.66, will its newer dual-core architecture match or provide comparable, if not superior performance to the existing box?
July 19, 201015 yr The P4 is the more powerful CPU. Intel Atom CPUs are pretty abysmal in performance.
July 19, 201015 yr Author Well, Windows Server 2008 R2 is now all 64-bit, so that leaves the P4 and its mobo out, I'm afraid. It's just that I now want IPMI in any future mobo's and the SuperMicro board that I was looking at seems to have problems with W2008R2 and it's built-in RAID capabilities, whereas I read that X7SPA's built-in RAID works just fine with W2008R2. I've got to pull the trigger today on a mobo, so with the requirement that it has to have IPMI, that leaves just a few other mobo's in the running, if they are available that is...
July 19, 201015 yr Author FWIW, decided upon a SuperMicro X8ST3-F board. It's been around for a couple years and availability seems low so it's probably EOL soon, but the few places that posted reviews on it say the RAID works well with WS2008R2, so with its included IPMI, I can't pass it up and there's no telling when a replacement mobo will be forthcoming from SM.
July 19, 201015 yr Auggie, as you just said, there are other Supermicro IPMI boards out there. The biggest reason for my using the Atom board is simply that unRAID and Linux are not the resource hogs that a Windows OS is, it's fanless (low heat), and low power. Windows will most likely chug along contemptuously at best if you force it on that board.
July 19, 201015 yr Not to turn this into an OS-war, but if Linux had to run the same services as a Win2008 R2 server, it would run within the same relative performance. The unRAID Linux distro you're basing any performance comparisons off of doesn't run an Active Domain Controller, a HTTP server, a .NET App Server, a Domain Name Server, Time Syncronization server, Print and Document Services, Security Auditing services, Network Policy Services, or MPIO services, Windows Deployment Services, and a host of other services that a Windows 2008 R2 server does. Apples and Oranges. A fair comparison can't be had until you're providing the same features.
July 19, 201015 yr Author Thanks for the info BRIT... If I COULD stay from Windblows, I would LOVE to, but the billing/scheduling software is built around Microsnot Windblows Server AND SQL Server... least that's what it was like 5 years ago. I will be talking to them next week and see if that has since changed and if Linux and MySQL are now support...
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.