[sclug] Linux friendly rack mountable server suppliers

[James Fidell]

Quoting Tim Sutton (t.sutton at reading.ac.uk):

> We are on the point of buying a couple of servers. We are looking for the most 
> 'bang for the buck' we can get with a price cap of ?1500 per machine. They 
> must be rack mountable. They must be linux friendly. AMD chips are 
> preferable. Dual processors are preferrable. They dont need to be brand name 
> machines provided they are backued up with a good guarantee. They must 
> (obviously) be fully linux (Debian!) compatible.

I build rackmount kit for clients reasonably regularly and I'd not
100% recommend dual-processor AMD configurations.  I haven't found a
combination yet that doesn't fail at some point unless you disable
APIC in the kernel (ie. it locks the machine hard).  It may take a
month or two before it fails which makes testing for it even more
irritating.  Whilst researching I've found a lot of people who have the
same problem, but not yet found anyone who has it fixed.

(If anyone does have references on how to make dual-processor AMD systems
work reliably without disabling APIC, I'd be pleased to see them.)

James