Benchmarking: CERN System Configuration

BIOS revision and settings

As BIOS revisions and settings depend on the chosen motherboard, no precise instructions can be given in a generic way. However, make sure to follow these guidelines:

Choose the latest stable public BIOS revision level available at the time of setting up the systems.

Start from the default parameters (optimised settings). Then make sure the following settings are chosen:

• Hyperthreading/symmetric multi-threading enabled
• Turbo mode (where applicable) enabled
• Console redirection enabled with the following parameters: port B, 9600 baud, no flow control, Terminal type VT100 8-bit, continue after POST enabled
• Quick boot disabled, quiet boot disabled, summary screen enabled
• After power failure: stay off
• Plug and Play O/S: enabled
• ECC event logging, PCI event logging enabled; NMI on these error types enabled
• Boot device priority: removable, CD-ROM, NICs via PXE, hard disk

Operating System

The standard operating system used for CERN benchmarking is 'Scientific Linux CERN 6.2 downloadable from:
http://linuxsoft.cern.ch/cern/slc6X/iso/SLC_6.2_x86_64_dvd.iso
or is available on 10.0.0.220 at /iso/SLC_6.2_x86_64_dvd.iso

File System Layout

The filesystem layout should be as such:

Filesystem	Mounted On	Filesystem Type	RAID level	Size
/dev/md0	/boot	Software RAID-1	ext3	512MB
/dev/md1	/	Software RAID-1	ext3	20GB (may want to make this bigger)
/dev/md2	/tmp	Software RAID-1	ext3	5G
/dev/md3	/var	Software RAID-1	ext3	10GB
/dev/md4	/usr/vice/cache	Software RAID-1	ext3	5GB
/dev/md5	/swap	Software RAID-1	swap	same size as RAM in the system
/dev/md6	/pool	Software RAID-0	ext3	all remaning available space on all available drives