Dual Processor OSes

[skynet]

I am thinking about building a small server machine. I will want it to be a dual processor one because it will be functioning as a

Router for two people
Web Server
SQL Server
File Server

What OSes take the best advantage of two processors? Also what are the alternative programs for IIS and SQL Server 2k?

[DoPeY5007]

I know WinNT, XP Pro, and 2k as far as MS, not sure about others

[ribitch]

if you are using it as a webserver, dont go microsoft.

Any variant of linux or BSD will do.























or you can go mac :D

[skynet]

Windows 2k Advanced Server is my orginal choice because I know that it, as well as SQL Server 2k make great use of two processors.

I do however, want to keep and open mind about other OSes

[skynet]

What equivalents are there for
SQL Server
File Server?

[Jeffbx]

No need to use Advanced Server, unless you plan on clustering some servers together. Just use regular 'ol W2K Server.

Also, speaking as the voice of experience, IIS is a perfectly fine platform. I've run many commercial web sites on IIS (as a side note, of the servers in my old company, the only ones that ever got hacked were running Apache). As long as you're behind a firewall and keep up with the latest security patches, you'll be fine. Of course, that's true for most web servers.

SQL server is one of the best DBs available today, but licenses are very pricy. Good alternative would be MySQL & PHP.

Is this for a business? What type of application will be running & how many people will be hitting it?

[jase71]

For a project like this, pick the OS you know the best... (as long as it meets your requirements). Keep your variables and potential problems to as small an amount as possible.

Implementing a fairly involved project can be enough of a headache on it's own. Doing it on an OS you're less than perfectly familiar with can turn it from a headache into a nightmare.

Pick what you know, and get it up and running.

Once it's running, if you want to investigate alternatives, set up test boxes on the side, and experiment with them. That way your production boxes will be as reliable as possible while you learn and configure the newer OS. Better to learn with less at stake than to throw yourself into the fire.

[attgig]

Originally posted by jase71
For a project like this, pick the OS you know the best... (as long as it meets your requirements). Keep your variables and potential problems to as small an amount as possible.

Implementing a fairly involved project can be enough of a headache on it's own. Doing it on an OS you're less than perfectly familiar with can turn it from a headache into a nightmare.

Pick what you know, and get it up and running.

Once it's running, if you want to investigate alternatives, set up test boxes on the side, and experiment with them. That way your production boxes will be as reliable as possible while you learn and configure the newer OS. Better to learn with less at stake than to throw yourself into the fire.

:stupid:
that's some great advice...

[i6s1]

Originally posted by skynet


What OSes take the best advantage of two processors?

Unless I'm mistaken, Mac OS X takes best advantage of 2 CPUs. With
Windows, only programs that are multi-threaded can take full advantage of 2 CPUs. So you may have 100% load on one and 20% on the other.

With OS X, all programs are multithreaded.

[ribitch]

Originally posted by i6s1


Unless I'm mistaken, Mac OS X takes best advantage of 2 CPUs. With
Windows, only programs that are multi-threaded can take full advantage of 2 CPUs. So you may have 100% load on one and 20% on the other.

With OS X, all programs are multithreaded.

Any OS with symetric multiprocessing with theoretically maintain equal usage of dual CPUs. I am unsure of what version of windows can do this. Last i read (good ol NT days) 1 CPU was used by the OS and the other was for programs.

With OS X, SMP is used, and therefore all multithreaded apps can be split between 2 CPU's. The load balancing works rather will. We had a Dual 500 MHz G4 at work running X and the CPU usage would be about equal across each CPU. That was during 10.0 and 10.1

10.2 is supposed to handle SMP better, which was one of apples reasons to go dual cpu across the powermac line.

[rajatQ2]

i've got a similar dual g4 running os10.1 and i agree with ribitch


However, i wouldnt use win2k advanced server if i were you and didnt really need it! i dont have that much experience with it, but from the two times i've tried it, once on a dual proc machine, it ground both of them nearly to a halt. maybe 768 MB of ram wasnt enough?

[rajatQ2]

Originally posted by skynet
I am thinking about building a small server machine. I will want it to be a dual processor one because it will be functioning as a

Router for two people
Web Server
SQL Server
File Server


I'm not using it as a router, but i have my sturdy machine doing web, mySql, and file server all the time and i use win2k pro :-P
No need to get fancy!

[skynet]

Thanks for all of the advice.

The reason I am open to others is because this is just for me and my girlfriend. We will be moving into an apartment real soon, going up there this weekend to clean the place out. We will be getting a cable modem (hence need for a router). My case is getting overcrowded so I want to put all but my 40gig hard drive in there, maybe even one of my burners and my dvd (fileserver). And I do lots of We Development (WebServer, SQL Server).

I think any Windows NT based OS will take advantage of the 2 CPUs, The actual OS will make use of it. Then if you run a non multi threaded aplication it will use the CPU with the lease amount of load. Then aplications like SQL Server and Photoshop will use both CPUs