Forum OpenACS Q&A: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box

1: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box

Posted by Roberto Mello on 01/15/03 08:00 AM

Hi all,

The openacs.org machine is currently housing 4 AOLserver instances, with 3 of them being OpenACS instances. As you may know, OpenForce paid for the machine (a P3 1 GHz) and pays for the bandwidth usage.

The machine only has 512 MiB of RAM, and it's swapping quite a bit.

Given how cheap RAM is these days, maybe one of the companies/projects that work with OpenACS and benefit from these forums could fork about a few bucks to purchase maybe another 512 MiB or 1 GiB of RAM?

Thanks,

-Roberto

2: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 1)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 01/15/03 09:25 AM

What kind of RAM is needed and where to ship it to?

3: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 01/15/03 07:06 PM

We raised this point with Ben Adida about a week ago and he said they'd already looked at prices. He was going to get back to myself and a couple of others who'd asked - maybe he'll see this post and just respond here. When we raised the point I offered to chip in personally if necessary. I don't think we'll have any problem getting money for another 512MB anyway (not sure how many spare slots there are, Ben said there were some but that was part of the information he was going to retrieve and forward to us).

4: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 1)

Posted by Roberto Mello on 01/15/03 11:03 PM

Malte,

I don't know what kind of RAM. Since it's a non-recent P3 machine, I'd imagine it uses 168 pin PC 100 DIMMs, but that's just a guess. Someone at OpenForce will have to say.

I'd imagine another 512 MiB of RAM should cost around US$ 100. You'd have to ship to OpenForce, I imagine.

-Roberto

5: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 1)

Posted by Jon Griffin on 01/15/03 11:07 PM

If it isn't ECC then 512 is around $35, I might even have some sitting around.

Many rack mounted servers use ECC though and that will be more money.

6: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 01/16/03 03:25 AM

Well, I always build/buy my servers with ECC memory, I'd kinda hope Dell would do the same with its rack-mount servers. So I suspect that's the case.

We'll also have to see if it's RDRAM or SDRAM ... remember the i840 and i850 chipsets supported RDRAM directly and that the RDRAM->SDRAM conversion chip was recalled by Intel due to bugs and that chip didn't support ECC, either. So there's a good chance that we're looking at ECC RDRAM ...

But until Ben gets back to us ... who knows?

It might be PC 66 :)

7: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 1)

Posted by Brian Fenton on 01/16/03 11:27 AM

We (Quest Computing) might be able to help out with this. I'd love to be able to help - need to ask the powers that be here first.

8: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 1)

Posted by Andrew Piskorski on 01/16/03 04:43 PM

Heck, just find out exactly what flavor of RAM the box takes, how many total slots it has, largest card it can handle per slot, etc., and we'll max it out. It can't be that expensive, ECC or not. (I don't remember what it cost, but I put 512 MB DDR-2100 ECC RAM into the machine I built for myself last spring, and it didn't break the budget.) If I knew what it needed I'd probably just ship OpenForce some RAM right now.

Incidentally, while I've never used the Linux version, the non-free sysinfo program seems very useful for spitting out hardware and configuration info. But, it doesn't actually seem to report any info about the type of RAM in the system, so oh well.

9: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 1)

Posted by Mike Sisk on 01/16/03 09:22 PM

If it's a Dell rackmount like the ones we use not only is it ECC SDRAM, it's registered, too.

Still, it's only $94 for a 512-MB stick from crucial.com. We get all our memory from these folks and have never had a problem.

10: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 01/17/03 03:39 AM

Damn, I forgot about the registered/non-registered option! Too many choices ...

Ben and I exchanged e-mail and it looks like Open Force will just order the memory and install it. If we ever decide we need something like a Sun E450 then we can all pitch in :)

11: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 10)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 01/17/03 09:00 AM

Thanks to Open Force !

12: Re: [OT] Request: More RAM for the openacs.org box (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 01/20/03 08:36 PM

Ben's ordered another 512MB which will bring us up to 1GB. This leaves a slot open for more, if it is needed. He says it should arrive in a couple of weeks.

And, yes, "thanks!", Open Force ....