zimbali: Our New custom-built 6c/24GB/4Gbps Streaming Server
Half the price of a comparable server from HP, Dell or IBM
I built a new streaming server recently. It is amazing how much computing power one can buy these days with a modest amount of cash. We are expecting throughput in the 4Gbps region with this machine, and initial benchmarks support this figure.
Hardware
- Intel Core i7 990X 6-core, 12-thread 3.4GHz (burst to 3.73GHz)
- 24GB (6x4GB) DDR3-1066 memory
- ASRock x58 Extreme 3 mobo
- (2) Intel PRO/1000 PT Dual Gigabit network adapters
- (2) 160GB 2.5" 5400-7200 RPM drives in a RAID-1 software mirror
- SuperMicro 2U SuperChassis 523L-410B
- Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps, green
- Low end, passively cooled, half-height PCI video card
Software
- Debian 6 Squeeze
- Sun Java 6
- Wowza 2.3
One pesky little problem that came up was the size of the heat sink. It did not fit into the 2U rack mount chassis, as did a similar previous build with a lower end LGA1156 4-core i7. It kind looks like a hotrod from the sixties! After some shopping around I sourced a lower profile fan that fit into the case. With such a "hot" processor (135 watts) there is a bit of concern about heating. Some CPU load testing with openSSL (all 12 threads running ~100% for an hour) with no problems indicates that all should be good. Time will tell.
Last week I installed zimbali into the rack at our data center. These past few days I've been finalizing the configuration and benchmarking it. We hope to have it in production next week.
Yes, those are CCF (Cold Cathode Fluorescent) lamps in the chassis. Beside just looking cool, they do serve a purpose. Since zimbali is built with mostly consumer-grade hardware, outside of the chassis and NICs, there is poor monitoring of the physical system. E.g.: temperature, fans, etc. With the CCF lamps installed I can eyeball the state of the fans on my visits to the data center. Unconventional, but oh-so efficient and economical.