bye bye Xen
Well it looks like it’s time to plan a replacement server. My trusty Ideq Biostar which I’ve had since 2004/2005 is still fine, however there are some bugs for which I need to upgrade the kernel and it’s stuck at 2.6.18 since Xen hasn’t been ported to a newer kernel. I’ve backported a few fixes, but really it’s getting a drag. Furthermore the fan in the PSU has been dodgy for ages and I’m sure it chews a fair amount of power.
New server will be small and support KVM virtualisation. Current contenders are:
- Atom CPU based machine - 1.6GHz but not that fast
- [Intel Core 2 duo http://www.mini-itx.com/2008/03/06/intels-eaglelake-mini-itx-boards] DQ45EK or DG45FC with E8200 (£90)
The Atom is much lower power (4W), but also lower performance - the E8200 is about 40-50% faster than my current E6300 desktop. On PC Mark 2005 we have:
- current desktop: 4794
- E8200: 6833
- Atom230@1.5GHz: 1406
I think the Atom may well be too slow unfortunately. It’d be nice to have the laptop T9300/T9500 processor - 2.5/2.6GHz rather than the 2.67GHz of the E8200, but the TDP is 35W rather than 65W (although mostly it’ll be idle). In fact the T8100/T8300 would do nicely - not as quick, but cheaper. As usual wikipedia is the best source of information.
There also seems to be confusion as to which Atom CPUs have VT (virtualisation extensions).
I’ll also need a new case for the current two IDE disks (and no doubt a slimline DVD drive).
Update: Jetway Mini-ITX look tempting too. Case suggstions welcome.
Posted: June 24th, 2008 under My setup.
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