Cpu reqs

[Gremlin]

It's that lovely time of year where I get to go window shopping for servers. Currently we are using a Xeon x3220 with 16Gb RAM with ~800-1200 users behind it and it's getting hammered on a daily bases (CPU Limited). It was speced for a 10Mb pipe, it handled a 20Mb pipe, but we now have a 100Mbit pipe.

Looking at the wiki the cpu reqs don't seem to add up and cover such a large range of performance that they don't mean much. I'm looking for a good benchmark to judge performance in UT before I start pricing options.

Given that we are a larger site sizing a server is a bit difficult without some sort of benchmark as we already are running a beefier box then most.

[jcoehoorn]

I'm handling about 450 users on an x3430 and 20Mbit pipe just fine as per my sig. That's a little less than half your load. Our CPU peaks at about 60-70%.

Given that you have enough RAM and everything else for your existing box is already in place, maybe you could drop an x3380 in your existing box? That's the fastest processor I saw that's made for your existing lga775 socket. Just one is probably still cutting it pretty thin, but if your motherboard supports it, a pair of them should handle things pretty well. I couldn't find the 3380 on passmark, but it's slower cousin the x3360 already scores a full 1/3 above your existing 3220.

[Gremlin]

x3380 would work but currently people aren't using the internet as much as they could be due to some unpleasant experiences at peak times. That and the total number of machines on our network can get over 2300 computers at times due to being a 1to1 school. I've seen the box load up to 10 during those times. Support gave me 1 guideline dual quads but there is quite a range of performance options.

The other part of this is I need pretty graphs and wiz bang diagrams to get this in my budget. Benchmarks make great diagrams, i just need to find one that is accurate for the type of load UT faces.

[Mathiau]

what modules do you have loaded?

can you offload stuff to bypass rules that dont need to be scanned//

[Gremlin]

We have enabled:
esoft
IPS
Protocol Control
Firewall
OpenVPN
Config Backup
Reports

We already have a significant amount of traffic bypassed as support recommended.

There are some modules we would like to enable eventually like bandwidth control so I don't need to go track down "Joe filesharer" and will be able to control how much bandwidth personal devices take on the network. At this time I black list them on our wirless controller, but it is a pain to keep track of

Judging for the webinar held about 8.0 we need a fairly beefy cpu to handle the bandwidth control module. That and since we have a 100mbit pipe I'd like to build a box that can fully utilize it.

[hescominsoon]

does your mobo have a second socket? if so you can drop in a second cpu. If not then the new i7 based xeons are what you need to hunt for. What's your budget?

[Gremlin]

We currently have a single socket mobo with a x3220. Our budget is as small as possible to get the job done. The my proposed budget gets voted on by a board and the board doesn't like large numbers. That being said I need to deliver something that will do the job. I am hoping to deliver something in the $3000 range, I realize how much of a tall order that is.

Since I'm basically on a shoestring budget I'm looking to see if going dual quad is necessary with the i7 base xeons. As far as i7 xeons based chips go I can get a dual e5530 from HP with 12GB RAM for close to my initial price point. I hope this is enough grunt for a 100Mbit pipe.

Anyone else with a big pipe have advice?

[sky-knight]

The user count you have, on the hardware you have, is enough.

I have a quad xeon 3000 2.4ghz, with 4gb of ram and 6 interfaces in service. The unit runs 6 racks, and is maintaining a docsis 3.0 10/100 connection, and will be adding a 100mbit fiber point to point this week.

I keep that box running at no more than 1-2 CPU load. If you're overloaded on CPU, I suggest you start analyzing your traffic. You need to get your bypass rules tuned.

That is unless you've got Untangle processing a silly amount of spam. At which point you may look into creating a second Untangle server to do nothing but the SPAM work. That with shift the load dramatically.

[hescominsoon]

have you talked to jim @ untangle appliances? he's got machines that'll fit into your performance/price envelope..and it iwll be a supported box as well..

Someting like this:
http://www.untangleappliances.com/st...appliance.html
http://www.untangleappliances.com/ne...2000-plus.html

You have to remember the i7's are HT so 4 cores becomes 8 threads so a single i7 quad should suffice. If you truly need more processing power there's always the 6 core(12 thread w HT) gulftown xeons but i don't think they'll fit into your cost ceiling.

[jcoehoorn]

Looking at this again, I'm getting suspicious that you might be using protocol control to try and filter bittorrent traffic. That is unlikely to work.