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Questions tagged [hardware]

Computer hardware is the collection of physical elements that comprise a computer system.

There are multiple, physical components that are required for a computer to function. This is collectively referred to as the "hardware". The most notable components inside of a computer system is the RAM, Hard Disk (or hard drive), CPU, and Power Supply.

Outside of the case, however, hardware exists as well. Some of these components include the keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

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Consumer (or prosumer) SSD's vs. fast HDD in a server environment

What are the pro's and con's of consumer SSDs vs. fast 10-15k spinning drives in a server environment? We cannot use enterprise SSDs in our case as they are prohibitively expensive. Here's some notes about our particular use case: Hypervisor with…
David Budiac
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Do I need to RAID Fusion-io cards?

Can I run reliably with a single Fusion-io card installed in a server, or do I need to deploy two cards in a software RAID setup? Fusion-io isn't very clear (almost misleading) on the topic when reviewing their marketing materials Given the cost of…
ewwhite
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What is the difference between a HBA card and a RAID card?

I thought I knew the difference between HBA and RAID. In my mind, HBA is offloading from the main motherboard/CPU and is simply JBOD... usually has an external SAS ports, whilst a RAID card does the same job as HBA but adds all the nice RAID levels…
William Hilsum
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What to look for in a datacentre ethernet switch

This is a Canonical Question about choosing a network switch for a datacentre When shopping for a networking switch that's going to be going into the top of a datacentre rack, what specific things should I be looking for? i.e. What makes a $3,000…
Mark Henderson
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Is anyone else using OpenBSD as a router in the enterprise? What hardware are you running it on?

We have an OpenBSD router at each of our locations, currently running on generic "homebrew" PC hardware in a 4U server case. Due to reliability concerns and space considerations we're looking at upgrading them to some proper server-grade hardware…
Kamil Kisiel
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Anti-static wrist straps: are they worth it?

Do you use an antistatic wrist strap when working on hardware? Do they really work? Have you ever fried some hardware that would have been saved if you had been wearing one? I know some people who wear them religiously and others who say they are a…
Charles Roper
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Can I detect hardware RAID infromation from inside Linux?

When I'm inside of Linux, I can get the following information from lsblk (irrelevant drives removed from output): NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT sda 8:0 0 298G 0 disk sdb 8:16 0 2.7T 0 disk When I manually pull the…
IQAndreas
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High Failure Rate of Large Drives?

I recently deployed a server with 5x 1TB drives (I won't mention their brand, but it was one of the big two). I was initially warned against getting large capacity drives, as a friend advised me that they have a very low MTBF, and I would be better…
Mark Henderson
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Protecting Servers from Dust

I have a single server rack (31 of the 42U occupied) in a small (about 10'x10') basement room in a building that is seeing some light renovation... nothing huge, but some non-load-bearing-walls going up in what used to be a cafeteria to create a…
Joel Coel
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How exactly does a SAS SFF-8087 breakout cable work? + RAID/connection questions

Please let me know if my question does not makes any sense as I am not sure if I am interpreting it correctly from my thoughts due to my lack of technical knowledge on this. If I am using a motherboard which has a connection for a SFF-8087 to 4x…
Damainman
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SSD head / cylinder / cluster details

A customer of ours makes industrial robots that run on very old, but stable, hardware and software. The only bottleneck has always been the hard drive in these moving machines. Due to constant movement (shocks etc.) HDDs normally don't survive…
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Hosting a ZFS server as a virtual guest

I'm still new to ZFS. I've been using Nexenta but I'm thinking of switching to OpenIndiana or Solaris 11 Express. Right now, I'm at a point of considering virtualizing the ZFS server as a guest within either ESXi, Hyper-V or XenServer (I haven't…
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What's the bandwidth and form factor for PCIe x1 x4 x8 and x16?

What speed, number of pins (physical size) are PCIe x1 x4 x8 and x16? Normally I would google to find a photo showing the various types of PCI Express cards and their max bandwidth. Now that serverfault exists, I thought I'd lazily check if anyone…
username
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Can "enterprise" drives be safely replaced by near/midline in some situations?

When specifying servers, like (I would assume) many engineers who aren't experts in storage, I'll generally play it safe (and perhaps be a slave to marketing) by standardising on a minimum of 10k SAS drives (and therefore are "enterprise"-grade with…
dbr
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What is this wiring panel and what are these Ethernet "ports?"

In my office's building there is a stone-age LAN rack with some Ethernet ports I've never seen before. I need to find the name of this ports, if they have one, and then buy some cables or adapters. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to dismount the…
Alessandro Cappello
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