Mining with Opteron Servers

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eLc4pitan

New Member
May 20, 2017
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Hi all,

i've posted this initially on bitcointalk and got redirected here so i guess you guys are the experts for monero...

I have received 2 of these machines,

CPU: 2x AMD Opteron 6174 12-Core 2.2 GHz (2x 6 MB Cache, 6.4 GT/s, AMD-V)
RAM: 16 GB RAM
HDD: 2x 146 GB SAS Hot Swap 2.5" 10.000 rpm

I have them up and running ( atm iddling ) , and i will have for the next 5 months ( until the end of october ) , free electricity and free internet, in other words the machines are in a server rack atm in a properly ventilated server room..

So my question is, Monero is apparently the best thing i can mine with these machines and i kinda need some tips and advice in case anyone has used amd server based machines to mine..
 

OBasel

Active Member
Dec 28, 2010
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What OS are they running? If you can get CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu or the like then you can use the STH Docker image. It'll take you 2 minutes to get running from there.
 

eLc4pitan

New Member
May 20, 2017
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What OS are they running? If you can get CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu or the like then you can use the STH Docker image. It'll take you 2 minutes to get running from there.
Atm nothing fancy.. windows server 2012 they came with 2 licenses that i could keep for myself ( or better said i had to licenses that instead of going in the bin i could get them for 50€ both ) but i can switch to linux ( i just have to get used to linux again but no big issue )
 

OBasel

Active Member
Dec 28, 2010
494
62
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Atm nothing fancy.. windows server 2012 they came with 2 licenses that i could keep for myself ( or better said i had to licenses that instead of going in the bin i could get them for 50€ both ) but i can switch to linux ( i just have to get used to linux again but no big issue )
Linux has better performance which is why I'd go for that.

Here's the outline of what you can do:
  • Install Ubuntu 16.04 or CentOS 7.3
  • Install docker (curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh)
  • usermod -aG docker $USER
  • Sign up for a MyMonero account to get a Monero address --- can be done while installing
  • I'm using the dwarfpool image and I think @Patrick is as well. Here is the command to run New Dwarfpool Monero Mining Docker Image --- I think with the Opteron 6100 you can just use latest.
  • You can access the image by using docker attach <containername>. ctrl+p ctrl+q to detach
The one area where you might run into issues is that the 6100 series didn't have AES acceleration. That's a big one for CPU crypto mining.

Once it's up and running let us know fast the hashrate is.

I'd also like to see what your lscpu output is.
 

eLc4pitan

New Member
May 20, 2017
3
1
1
42
Linux has better performance which is why I'd go for that.

Here's the outline of what you can do:
  • Install Ubuntu 16.04 or CentOS 7.3
  • Install docker (curl -sSL https://get.docker.com/ | sh)
  • usermod -aG docker $USER
  • Sign up for a MyMonero account to get a Monero address --- can be done while installing
  • I'm using the dwarfpool image and I think @Patrick is as well. Here is the command to run New Dwarfpool Monero Mining Docker Image --- I think with the Opteron 6100 you can just use latest.
  • You can access the image by using docker attach <containername>. ctrl+p ctrl+q to detach
The one area where you might run into issues is that the 6100 series didn't have AES acceleration. That's a big one for CPU crypto mining.

Once it's up and running let us know fast the hashrate is.

I'd also like to see what your lscpu output is.
Thanks for the info.
Ill get ubuntu distro and get the machines running during monday.

Ill post the results as soon as i get the system running.
 
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spfoo

Member
May 23, 2017
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Atm nothing fancy.. windows server 2012 they came with 2 licenses that i could keep for myself ( or better said i had to licenses that instead of going in the bin i could get them for 50€ both ) but i can switch to linux ( i just have to get used to linux again but no big issue )
I'm in the Linux/Opteron boat as well. You can run a miner with about 9 threads per CPU. The 6174 is no rocket in mining due to the lack of AES-support, but has a good amount of cache. I'm interested to see what you can pump out of those h/s wise.

My miner is a Dell C6105 with 4 nodes. Each node has 2x Opteron 4332 HEs 6-core CPUs. So 8 CPus and 48 cores in total. 14 MB of L2/L3 cache and a nice TDP of 65W on those CPUs. I'm running it with 10 threads per node e.g. 40 threads total - 14 would be optimal per node performance wise, but I don't have a cooled environment. With the 40 threads I get around 1800 h/s (450 h/s per node) while at full tilt I could get around 2100 h/s. It stays relatively quiet as well with the 40 threads. All in all a reasonable result for a 300$ box from ebay.

I did get pretty good improvements done on the software side by tuning compilation parameters. Well I'm still on it. Most miners are optimized for Intel CPUs.

Oh, forgot to mention - I'm running CentOS 7 on it.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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I think I just found a 2P Opteron 6200 series motherboard with CPUs and copper heatsinks.

The board has 6-7 PCIe slots as well.
 

spfoo

Member
May 23, 2017
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I think I just found a 2P Opteron 6200 series motherboard with CPUs and copper heatsinks.

The board has 6-7 PCIe slots as well.
62xx-series is probably quite good at mining. Most models have 2MB of cache per core. I learned the importance of the cache size on this site by the way. As well as many other important things.

Here's a comprehensive list of AMD CPUs that I've been using while researching suitable mining hardware:
List of AMD Opteron microprocessors - Wikipedia
 

Pato

New Member
Jul 26, 2017
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Evening All or Morning depending on which part of the globe you are in..
Any more updates on this thread re. Mining on Server Hardware?
I have access to quite a bit of HP Server hardware and am quite interested to see how this pans out.
 

MiniKnight

Well-Known Member
Mar 30, 2012
3,072
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NYC
Evening All or Morning depending on which part of the globe you are in..
Any more updates on this thread re. Mining on Server Hardware?
I have access to quite a bit of HP Server hardware and am quite interested to see how this pans out.
Um, everyone's doing it on here?
 

Pato

New Member
Jul 26, 2017
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Um, everyone's doing it on here?
Thanks for the reply.
Was looking for some specifics. ie. Type of processors that work more favorably, potential hash rates, which OS is best and what types of crypto is being mined.

I mainly have access to AMD Opteron Servers from 6174 upto 6380's.
So just trying to gauge whether or not its worthwhile holding onto this hardware and re purposing it.
 

MiniKnight

Well-Known Member
Mar 30, 2012
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NYC
Thanks for the reply.
Was looking for some specifics. ie. Type of processors that work more favorably, potential hash rates, which OS is best and what types of crypto is being mined.

I mainly have access to AMD Opteron Servers from 6174 upto 6380's.
So just trying to gauge whether or not its worthwhile holding onto this hardware and re purposing it.
Easy Monero Mining Performance
 
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modder man

Active Member
Jan 19, 2015
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I'm in the Linux/Opteron boat as well. You can run a miner with about 9 threads per CPU. The 6174 is no rocket in mining due to the lack of AES-support, but has a good amount of cache. I'm interested to see what you can pump out of those h/s wise.

My miner is a Dell C6105 with 4 nodes. Each node has 2x Opteron 4332 HEs 6-core CPUs. So 8 CPus and 48 cores in total. 14 MB of L2/L3 cache and a nice TDP of 65W on those CPUs. I'm running it with 10 threads per node e.g. 40 threads total - 14 would be optimal per node performance wise, but I don't have a cooled environment. With the 40 threads I get around 1800 h/s (450 h/s per node) while at full tilt I could get around 2100 h/s. It stays relatively quiet as well with the 40 threads. All in all a reasonable result for a 300$ box from ebay.

I did get pretty good improvements done on the software side by tuning compilation parameters. Well I'm still on it. Most miners are optimized for Intel CPUs.

Oh, forgot to mention - I'm running CentOS 7 on it.

Isn't this a DDR2 server with high power consumption?
 

psddp

New Member
Aug 6, 2017
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I'm in the Linux/Opteron boat as well. You can run a miner with about 9 threads per CPU. The 6174 is no rocket in mining due to the lack of AES-support, but has a good amount of cache. I'm interested to see what you can pump out of those h/s wise.

My miner is a Dell C6105 with 4 nodes. Each node has 2x Opteron 4332 HEs 6-core CPUs. So 8 CPus and 48 cores in total. 14 MB of L2/L3 cache and a nice TDP of 65W on those CPUs. I'm running it with 10 threads per node e.g. 40 threads total - 14 would be optimal per node performance wise, but I don't have a cooled environment. With the 40 threads I get around 1800 h/s (450 h/s per node) while at full tilt I could get around 2100 h/s. It stays relatively quiet as well with the 40 threads. All in all a reasonable result for a 300$ box from ebay.

I did get pretty good improvements done on the software side by tuning compilation parameters. Well I'm still on it. Most miners are optimized for Intel CPUs.

Oh, forgot to mention - I'm running CentOS 7 on it.
Where can I get that 300$ box too? :)
 

spfoo

Member
May 23, 2017
102
16
18
Isn't this a DDR2 server with high power consumption?
If I remember right about 600-620 W if mining with 56 threads which was the maximum throughput. It's not the best, but not too bad either for 4 motherboards.
 

razvanhades

New Member
Nov 7, 2017
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Hello there...

I am interested to check some Opteron results as well. I want to invest in a couple of CPU's instead of video cards and I hope you can share some results over here for others to see.

Be inspiration :)

Thanks!