[ILUG] Dell Poweredge dual p2 450 vs Athlon 800

[Vincent Cunniffe]

Pearse Stokes wrote:
> I've been offered a Dell Poweredge with Dual P2 450 and 500 meg RAM, 4 
> SCSI 9GB drives, tape backup. (Forklift and hearing defenders included). 
> My current 'server' is a generic Athlon 800 with 128 megs RAM. I've only 
> got half a dozen 'puters to serve to, doing general office stuff.
> With RH 7.0 and Samba on the Athlon, I'm happy enough. However, I'd like 
> the facility of the Tape back-up, and the presumed reliability advantage 
> of the Dell.
> Question is:
> 1. Will the lower speed dual processor be noticeably faster or slower 
> (or no different) in terms of file server performance, compared with the 
> Athlon 800?

A generic server (file, print, network) will do better with two slower
CPU's than one fast one. In this case, I would choose the slower dual
box over a single faster one. Also, on a server, memory is king. 500MB
of memory should vastly improve IO caching over 128MB.

> 2. Is RH 7.0 or Mandrake 8.0 installation complex in a dual processor, 
> RAID, multi-drive server, and can a newbie like me do it without 
> cracking up?

Dead simple, out of the box. It'll detect that you have two CPU's and
you won't even have to click anything ;-)

Vin