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@BizTalk wrote:

What is the highest specs. you have heard of on a poweredge 2300 ?

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Not heard of. Been there Done that.

Is it worth upgrading vs getting a new power edge 750 series instead.  Probably Not IMHO.

SPEC.

WINDOWS 2003 SERVER ENTERPRISE EDITION.

A15 BIOS.
A41CUST.EXE ESM AND BACKPLANE FIRMWARE 5.22

GX MOTHERBOARD WITH 2.0 GIGS OF dell specific RAM.

DUAL 1.4GHZ TUALTIN PENTIUM3'S RUNNING AT 1.1GHZ with Powerleap SMP KIT.
PL-P3/SMP 1400P-S

http://www.cdwg.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=505243

Perc2 Raid Controller with U84 firmware, WIN2000 drivers F6 installed.
6 146 GIG SCSI drives as RAID 5 with 16 Diag, 12 gig boot partition and 700 gig data partition.
Installed as win2000 and updated to 2003 server after install with Server Assistant CD 6.4

These are the drive kit numbers.

340-9303, 18GB, U320, SCSI, 1IN, 15K, 80pin
340-7884, 36GB, U320, SCSI, 1IN, 10K, 80pin
340-9302, 36GB, U320, SCSI, 1IN, 15K, 80pin
340-7897, 73GB, U320, SCSI, 1IN, 10K, 80pin
340-8481, 73GB, U320, SCSI, 1IN, 15K, 80pin
340-7916, 146GB, U320, SCSI, 1IN, 10K, 80pin

If you obtain the hard drives from an aftermarket vendor, the part number for the Hard Drive Carrier is 4649C. You will also need 4 screws, 1213C for each hard drive added.

The drives say ultra 320 on them but I think they only run at 160 speed or perhaps 80 speed.
The perc2 is an OEM AMI MEGARAID Enterprise 1200 RAID card.

USB 2.0 cards cannot be added to the system if you have a perc card. They interfere.
PCI 2.2 card only work in the GX motherboard. The BX Motherboard needs PCI 2.1 Cards or it doesnt boot.

2 GIGS ram is only available on the GX motherboard. The BX Motherboard holds 1 GIG of 256 meg 16 x 8 chipset LOW DENSITY RAM.

2 GIG ram is only possible on the 7849P GX motherboard using DELL 6084D Ram or equivalent.
Most 3rd party Ram only works 1.5 gigs and does not post when 4 modules are used.

Dell SECC2 cpus require 2053C SECC2 retaining clips. Non Dell Cpu heatsinks fit but will not lock in.

Most of the CPUS are no longer available. 133mhz parts work but they run at reduced speed.
533mhz cpus run at 400mhz on the system. Update of the bios and setting the jumper to 333mhz is all that is required.

Message Edited by SpeedStep on 08-24-2005 03:34 PM

The highest speed processor that Dell supports in the PE2300 with the GX motherboard (which you have) is 700 MHz.

(no tualitin, only Katmai or coppermine processers tested and supported by dell)

A bare PE2600 can go to 3.06GHz, and with a change of drive carriers can use the same drives and controller you have in the PE2300, and these can be bought in the used market for cheap, and run either a 400 FSB or a 533 FSB compared to the 100 FSB on the PE2300. only the memory would have to be replaced.

warwizard DCSP

Hi Biz Talk,

  It depends on which bottleneck is causing the most pain... use the performance monitor MMC to determine. Read the performance tuning kb articles on the M/S knowledge base.

 Usually memory is the first upgrade, the more memory you have the less you have to use the page file (1000 times slower than main memory). Memory leaks (where program fails to release control of memory it no longer needs), will cause system performance slow to a virtual standstill as everything has to go thru the page file. The drives will show LOTS of I/O in a memory bound windows O/S.

The rest of the items, are largely depending on what you have and what you can upgrade to. If you have a 350 MHz proc and can double the proc speed, or go from 1 proc to two at 350, the one at 700 is the better upgrade, due to the second proc only buys you about half of a proc worth of performance.

Hard drives:  The SCSI BP on the PE2300 is an item on the bus and will likely cause the fast drives and controller to slow to 80 MB/s

  Hi, Biz Talk,

  RAID 1 and RAID 5 are equally fault tolerant, 1 drive can fail and the data will still be accessible. However neither is to be concidered as a backup of the data. If you have a business, at least setup a second system and copy the files to it every day, so that if something kills both drives (lighting strike perhaps), you'll be able to recover the web site in minimal time.

 warwizard DCSP

Hi Biz Talk,

   With RAID 1 you assign pairs of drives to "mirror" each other, you can create two RAID 1 volumes with a total of 18 GB between them. If you need all the space in a single volume you could do a RAID 10 using all 4 drives (same space and nearly same speed).

warwizard