Re: Server specs for a continuous integration system

[Christian Gagneraud <chgans@gna.org>]

On 03/09/13 00:35, Burton, Ross wrote:

Hi Ross,

> On 2 September 2013 06:05, Christian Gagneraud <chgans@gna.org> wrote:
>> So right now, I'm thinking about:
>> - CPU: Xeon E5, maybe 2 x E5-2670/90, for a total of 16 cores (32 threads)
>> - Hard drives: 500GB, 1 TB or 2 TB (ideally with RAID if it can speed up the
>> builds)

RAID-5 seems to be what i am after.

>> - RAM: i don't really know, maybe 8 or 16 GB or more?
>
> At least 16GB of RAM for the vast amount of disk cache that will give
> you.  32GB or more will mean you can easily put the TMPDIR or WORKDIR
> into a tmpfs (there's been discussion about this a few weeks ago).

Yes, I remember that one now, well spotted!

> I've 16GB of RAM and a 8GB tmpfs with rm_work was sufficient for
> WORKDIR which gave a 10% speedup (and massive reduction on disk wear).

I'm a bit surprise to see only a 10% speedup.

>   Others have machines with 64GB RAM and use it for all of TMPDIR, at
> which point you'll be almost entirely CPU-bound.

OK, so 16GB sounds like a minimum, 32GB or 64GB being even better, at 
that size, this is not that cheap...

Thanks,

Chris

>
> Ross
>