[Samba] hardware to use with samba?????

[Gary Dale]

 From the sounds of it, your server won't be breaking into a sweat 
trying to handle the workload. :)

If you are experiencing performance problems, you need to look at where 
the bottlenecks are. Monitor first, then optimize. Right now it sounds 
like you've got a lot of machine with very little load. "Optimizing" is 
a waste of time if you can't see any performance changes.


Mazen Ghalayini wrote:

>it's an environment where 30 mac machines and 10 windows machines will need to upload multimedia photoshop, illustrator files to the server. users can not delete files on the server; they can only upload or download. that's the setup i have now. if i have 4gb of ram on my new server, what caching parameters i should set in the samba conf file? and how do i optimize my linux filesystem to allow optimal performance for samba?
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>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "Gary Dale" <garydale at torfree.net>
>>To: "Mazen Ghalayini" <mazengh at linuxmail.org>
>>Subject: Re: [Samba] hardware to use with samba?????
>>Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 15:01:39 -0400
>>
>>
>>ECC memory is useful for preventing memory errors. It doesn't 
>>matter how long it takes to get the wrong answer.  :)  I recommend 
>>it for anything critical.
>>
>>The memory access speed is minuscule compared with the disk I/O 
>>speed and network speed. The type of memory is not important. The 
>>amount of memory usually plays a bigger role on servers.
>>
>>How much caching helps depends on usage patterns. If your users are 
>>accessing the same files frequently, it can really boost 
>>performance. If they don't, you won't see a great performance 
>>increase.
>>
>>The processor you've chosen has a lot of power for simple file 
>>serving. I gather from the questions, you're not doing this for a 
>>large organization, so you're unlikely to need more performance.
>>
>>You should do some performance monitoring on the server to find out 
>>if you need to change anything. Put it up in the live environment 
>>and see how much CPU is being used, what percentage of cache hits 
>>you're getting, etc., and upgrade it accordingly.
>>
>>
>>Mazen Ghalayini wrote:
>>
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>>
>>>thanks a lot gary. do u know if ECC memory or registered memory 
>>>helps? also how much does caching provide performance increase, 
>>>and i will be using two gigabit ethernets using link aggregation, 
>>>right now i am thinking of getting one AMD Dual-Core Opteron 275 
>>>Italy 1GHz HT Socket 940 but the motherboard allows two of that. 
>>>shall i go for two of them or just one?
>>>
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>>>>----- Original Message -----
>>>>From: "Gary Dale" <garydale at torfree.net>
>>>>To: samba at lists.samba.org
>>>>Subject: Re: [Samba] hardware to use with samba?????
>>>>Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 14:08:16 -0400
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Mazen Ghalayini wrote:
>>>>
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>>>>>if you are to build a samba file server what hardware would you 
>>>>>pick? does samba benifit from dual core, or dual processors or 
>>>>>even quad? also does it benifit from memory? and how does it 
>>>>>benifit from memory? more ram is better for samba? any ideas 
>>>>>here?
>>>>>
>>>>>regards,
>>>>>Mazen
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>Like any file server, you'd want the fastest drives available, which
>>>>means SCSI, put into a RAID array. Beyond that, more memory allows for
>>>>more caching. Processor speed is not a huge concern unless you're
>>>>running gigabit Ethernet, in which case you may need a fast processor
>>>>just to be able to pump the data into the pipe.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>-- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the
>>>>instructions:  https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba
>>>>
>>>>
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