As most of you all know, iMountain.com mostly utilizes Opteron processors for their energy efficiency and high performance.

Well we’re psyched up for AMD’s newest offering of 6 core processors code-named “Istanbul”.  Based on their latest 45 nanometer design, these processors promise to be fast and most importantly, energy-efficient.   These new 6 core chips promise to increase performance by 35% per watt consumption compared to previous generation chips.

Another performance enhancing feature will be “HT Assist” which sort of indexes the contents of the various CPU’s so that data can be interchanged quickly and efficiently.

Cray, famous for its supercomputers, has also announced that the Cray XT5m will be using these new Opteron 6 Core chips at the core of its supercomputing platform.

Although we won’t be using any Cray Supercomputers, we can’t wait to get our hands on some of these 6-cores to build a 48 Core server.

We’ve been buying the Opteron Quad Core Barcelona 8350’s for quite some time now…they are the foundation for our 32 CPU Core Servers.  These are the AMD 2nd Generation Opteron chips and are based on Socket F (aka Socket 1207).  We recently got in a bunch of Opteron 8350’s in an OEM bulk package without Heatsinks and fans.

We were about to go and purchase specific Socket F/1207 heatsinks and fans when we noticed the AMD Opteron 1st Generation Socket 940 Opteron heatsink mounting patterns looked extremely similar.

We did some precise measurements on the heatsink/backplates and lo and behold, the mounting pitches are exactly identical at “3.5″.   The other consideration is the thermal envelope of the new chips versus the old socket 940 chips and that isn’t an issue.    Socket F also came out with a 4.1″ mounting pitch (which is NOT compatible with Socket 940 heatsinks) but it is pretty rare…only motherboard we know of that uses the odd 4.1″ mounting pitch is the Tyan S2912G2NR.

So, YES, you can use most of the Socket 940 CPU’s with the newer Opteron Socket F/Socket 1207 as their mounting, thermal envelope and pitch are virtually identical.  Just make sure you use a high quality fan, as this is usually the PC component that breaks down first.

By re-using these high quality copper heatsinks instead of throwing them out, we’ll be recycling a ton of copper!

We’re rolling out a whole new line of dedicated servers to fit the economy.   Super reliable, deployed within 24 hours and powerful enough to serve the most demanding web pages.  Dual Core and Quad Core servers are available, just choose the one that’s right for you.

Email sales .@.iMountain.com for more information and pricing.

• NEBULA CLASS DEDICATED SERVER
• Dual Opteron 252 2.6 Ghz CPU
• 2000 GB Bandwith/month - test file: http://www.imountain.com/10meg.zip
• 160 GB SATA Drive
• 2 Gigabytes RAM (2048 MB)
• 3 IP Addresses
• Servers are un-managed, ask about server management
• cPanel/DirectAdmin available directly from iMountain or purchase your own licenses
• Special Discounts for 6 months/1 year/2 Year payment terms

If you have a VPS or Linux server running Apache the goold old fashioned way without fancy control panels, you’ll quickly have to learn some Apache tweaks.

One of the main issues we commonly run into is a non-working .htaccess file.  Apache doesn’t come with .htaccess support automatically turned on.  You’ll have to turn it on in order for .htaccess files to have an effect.  Here’s what you do:

There are two ways,

1. Edit your httpd.conf manually using a text editor like vim, nano, vi, joe whatever you like.
2. Edit your httpd.conf through Webmin

Since the Webmin version is more graphical, we’ll show you how to do it through Webmin.  If you’re using a text editor, just skip to the portion with the AllowOveride command.

1. Login to your Webmin
2. Servers>Apache
3. Go to the Global Configuration tab
4. Click on EDIT CONFIG FILES
5. 
6. Search for AllowOveride and .htaccess and remove the # sign in front or type “AllowOveride All”.

This should fix it permanently and allow your .htaccess files to override pretty much and directive needed.