On Wednesday 19 October 2005 2:37 am, Clayton wrote:
I'd love to get more RAM... but this is a work PC, and getting the approval for more RAM (even though a low cost item) is a pain.
I am doing a lot of swapping some days.... minimum of one Oracle database running 24x7 (sometimes 2 dBs), various Java based apps, VMWare, multiple files open in OpenOffice... I really do need more than 1GB RAM, but.. you know how it is trying to get sign off on IT purchases. :-P
That's good advice though about the usability... I'm going to use it as an argument for the hardware signoff :-)
C.
I saw that you mentioned using /dev/sda. For a system like this with all that you are doing I'd recommend multiple SCSI drives and a good high performance SCSI controller with as many channels on it as you can get. Along with the maximum main RAM this system will hold of course. A single hard drive is not enough; split that disk I/O out over multiple hard drives and multiple channels. IT justification: How much revenue is this system generating or maintaining for the company? This is one system where a hardware RAID controller may make more sense than software RAID. Due to the overhead of all the applications, having a separate processor to offload disk I/O might be more efficient. Either way (hardware versus software RAID) the SCSI drives would offer a huge improvement. A quad dual-core AMD 64-bit system may change my mind along with the 16-32GB memory support you'd probably get on the mainboard. Ah well, as long as you're wishing for more RAM you may as well help out that swap space too! Stan