HELP - Operating system choice required for DL140 math servers.

[Surat_1]

Dear All,

We have purchased 10 x ProLiant DL140 G3 E5335 2 GHz Quad - Core Xeon processor.

Each server will have 4 GB of RAM and dual processors (I guess that makes it 8 core?).

These machines are solely to be dedicated for mathematical processing.

The math software which will run on these servers is developed in VC++. Around 1000 threads will be started by the software, we can configure the thread count for optimal performance.

Around 2 to 3 GB of RAM will be used by the VC++ for math data storage.

The servers will not be internet facing.

We want an operating system which is as "light" as possible. Any suggestions welcome.

Regards,

Surat.

[Joshua Small_2]

This is really not the right way to ask the question.

You seem to have a specific application in mind. What OS does its vendor recommend?

Does it use a database? What are the supported OSs for this database service?

[Surat_1]

Dear Joshua,

Thank you for the reply.

We developed the VC++ application in house. What I am trying to emphasise is that there is little to none network IO, not much hard disk IO.

I guess what I am asking is that which is the operating system (Windows based) we can install where we are unlikely to face issues with drivers available from HP.

We can very well try and install Windows 2003 but would happily settle for Windows 2000 Professional or even XP professional.

For arguments sake if we were to install XP professional, has anyone had any experience with this?

I know that installing XP on a server is "not good" but what are the arguments against this?

Kind regards,

Surat.

[Joshua Small_2]

Hi,

From your reply you seem to have already chosen Windows as an OS. Can you confirm this- because we're really taking a stab in the dark if you're asking us to choose between win xp/win 2003/hp-ux/linux/netbsd/aix and every other OS ever created for an application you wrote yourselves.

If your question is about workstation vs server OS, you CAN get Windows XP to install and run on these servers. However you will run into driver issues, and find a lot of what you do to get things up and running is a dirty hack at best.

The real reason to run Windows 2003 on these servers is that HP will refuse to talk to you when you have a power supply fail and want to get a replacement, because they WILL find a way to blame the unsupported software.

[Víctor Cespón]

The drivers available for this server are for Windows 2003, you can try to download them individually and install them manually in XP.
You can also try Windows 2000 server drivers on Windows 2000 Pro.

[Joshua Small_2]

Hi,

From your reply you seem to have already chosen Windows as an OS. Can you confirm this- because we're really taking a stab in the dark if you're asking us to choose between win xp/win 2003/hpux/linux/netbsd/aix and every other OS ever created for an application you wrote yourselves.

If your question is about workstation vs server OS, you CAN get Windows XP to install and run on these servers. However you will run into driver issues, and find a lot of what you do to get things up and running is a dirty hack at best.

The real reason to run Windows 2003 on these servers is that HP will refuse to talk to you when you have a power supply fail and want to get a replacement, because they WILL find a way to blame the unsupported software.

[Richard Jones_11]

Good morn:
I have a DL380 runing dual 1.4gig prossers and 6 gig of ram with an os of XP pro.This install was easy using 2000 server drivers.She has raid and all.I run the seti program 24 7 and cpus at 100% comp time.I have had NO problems running this set up. Just bare bones runing, I say use the XP pro.

[Surat_1]

Dear Joshua,

Thank you.

Yes, the OS needs to be Windows based as the program we have written will run on Windows only.

I guess "Windows 2003" is a safe choice.

Regards,

Surat.

[Surat_1]

Dear Richard,

Thank you for your response.

Good to know that XP Prof. is running stable in your setup.

Did you have any installation problems relating to driver availability etc.?

Regards,

Surat.

[Richard Jones_11 · Accepted solution]

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1184249&admit=109447627+1199323056089+28353475

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1183311

Take a look at these links to see what I did with help of others. I had to load the raid driver at time of install and then loaded XP.

Also see this link I found it most helpfull.
http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1020010

For the fan speed you will need to load the Advanced System Management Controller Driver for Windows 2000. I ran the raid card software with no problems. I hope this helps.

[Surat_1]

Dear All,

Thank you for the time to reply to my question. Having received the servers we have started installing Windows 2003 Server Standard. We will try an XP install in about 2 weeks.

Kind Regards,

Surat.

[Surat_1]

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