P3 server Performance

[doan]

I have an old P3 1Ghz system that handles mail and video for my home network. The performance is genrally OK, but WebMail is really slow while serving video. All the videos (DVD's) are stored as ISO files and are mounted remotely by the client, so the CPU usage is very low while serving video.

So, i'm thinking it may be an I/O problem. I also noticed while copying some files from one drive to another the CPU usage goes to 100%.

I'm curious about the cheapest way to speed it up. Faster CPU, multiple CPU's or a better way to handle the 6 PATA drives?

The current config is:

- ABIT BX 133 raid (highpoint 370)
- P3 1Ghz, 133mhz FSB
- 768MB PC133 ram
- CDRW installed on IDE-0
- Seagate 400GB boot drive on Highpoint controller
- Seagate 500GB data drive on Highpoint controller
- (2) 250 GB drives on a Promise Ultra 100 PCI Card
- (2) 250 GB drives on a Promise Ultra 133 PCI Card

All the drives are 7200 rpm, there is only on drive per IDE channel, all set to master. I'm guessing the PCI bus is the bottleneck.

Any changes i make need to be relatively cheap. Some options:

- Upgrade to Dual Socket 370 mobo and run 2 - 1Ghz P3's
- Upgrade to P4 motherboard and CPU
- Split the mail server off to a separate machine.

Thanks,

David

 

[doan]

Also, The OS is WinXP

 

[doan]

anybody?

 

[OSX]

PIO mode?

 

[doan]

No, All the drives are running at ATA-100 or 133.

 

[doan]

Disk to disk copy runs at about 25 MB/s for large files

 

[MichaelD]

Even though you have a lot of hard drives, you're not running any kind of RAID, so you're not maxxing-out the PCI bus.

Theoretically, the standard 33MHz PCI bus has a transfer rate of 133MB/s. Realisitically, it's more like 110-120 or so. A single IDE typically has about 40MB/s transfer speed. (They've never gotten CLOSE to that ATA100 spec, let alone ATA133!)

You only access one movie at a time, right, and performance is OK...it just gets bad when you're trying to do ANOTHER task simultaneously? Hmm.

It sounds like an I/O problem at the southbridge; the motherboard is doing something with one drive (serving a file), then you ask it to do another task with another hard drive (serve an email) and it bottle necks there.

A server motherboard (dual P3's) would have a chipset with much better I/O, but that might not be such a cheap upgrade unless you got it on EBay, complete (board, CPUs, heatsinks and memory). But remember this: most dual P3 server MB's are EATX size and will require an EATX case, which you probably don't have.

There are big (8-channel) IDE controller cards from 3Ware, but they typically require a 64-bit PCI-X slot for best performance.

Know what I'd do? Check EBay for an older dual P3 server. You'd have your dual CPUs, plus the 64-bit slots, and in servers, typically, the PCI slots are broken up into different channels, so maxxing one doesn't affect the others.

ps
How much is "relatively cheap?" Have you but a budget cap on this project?

pps
I just realized that even if you buy a used server, it probably won't be able to house your HDs. Any old P3 server will use SCSI hot swap drives.

You've got quite a quandry here, my friend. Cheapest and easiest way? P4 system with 1GB of memory and newer Intel chipset

 

[doan]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Know what I'd do? Check EBay for an older dual P3 server. You'd have your dual CPUs, plus the 64-bit slots, and in servers, typically, the PCI slots are broken up into different channels, so maxxing one doesn't affect the others.

This is what I was thinking. I've seen mobo/cpu combos for around $100 (my budget). But, most of those boards require ECC ram. I may be better off to try and get the whole used sever with some small SCSI drives for the OS and email, then add my big PATA drives for movies.

 

[MichaelD]

Originally posted by: doan

Originally posted by: MichaelD
Know what I'd do? Check EBay for an older dual P3 server. You'd have your dual CPUs, plus the 64-bit slots, and in servers, typically, the PCI slots are broken up into different channels, so maxxing one doesn't affect the others.

This is what I was thinking. I've seen mobo/cpu combos for around $100 (my budget). But, most of those boards require ECC ram. I may be better off to try and get the whole used sever with some small SCSI drives for the OS and email, then add my big PATA drives for movies.

As I said in my edited reply, you'll have to make sure you can FIT/USE your IDE drives. There may be nowhere to put them. Remember; they make 5.25"->3.5" conversion kits for putting HDs in CDRom spaces.

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: doan
Disk to disk copy runs at about 25 MB/s for large files

Haha! Samething has happened to me, can't figure it out. Run HDTach on one of the drives and report back your score.

I got a good score in HDTach but file transfers from drive to drive are slow as ******..

 

[doan]

Average read rate for all the drives was about 50 MB/sec.

 

[RanDum72]

How are the other PC's hooked up to the server? Wireless, 100Mb ethernet? I recently upgraded my home network wiring, routers, switches to gigabit ethernet and it made quite a difference in video streaming quality.

 

[RanDum72]

And my server is a Duron 1.3ghz, Gigabyte Nforce2 mobo, 1 gig of DDR2100 memory, 2 x 500gig Seagtes in a RAID 0 array of the Silicon Image SATA controller plus another seagate PATA 250gig as the boot drive.

 

[doan]

Originally posted by: RanDum72
How are the other PC's hooked up to the server? Wireless, 100Mb ethernet? I recently upgraded my home network wiring, routers, switches to gigabit ethernet and it made quite a difference in video streaming quality.

It's all 100Mb wired, video is not the problem....mail server response is slow while video is playing. Serving DVD video only uses about 1MB/s (usually 700 - 900 KB/sec)

 

[willtriv]

upgrade to opteron, dual opty. If your movies are fine and mail server is slow that is an indicator that IO is fine (if the movies never get choppy) and CPU power is lacking. Maybe you have to reprioritize your system to give webserver more cputime.