On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 05:52:37AM -0700, Oliver Westermann wrote:

Hey,

We're currently using a VM on Windows and it's a lot slower than the native linux build (which is expected).
We're looking into getting a dedicated build server for our team (basically a self-build tower PC). Any suggestions what to put in that build to get the most out of it?

Currently we're looking at a big Ryzen, 64G of RAM and one or multiple SSDs on a "consumer grade" board like the X570.

Drop all virtualization and go for Linux on bare metal. Then make sure there
is enough(tm) physical RAM for each CPU thread. For a "big Ryzen" the 64G of RAM sounds
too little. I'd go higher there, but it all depends what kind of project
is being compiled.

I would also setup CPU, RAM, disk IO and network IO monitoring on the build machines
and review and monitor the build times and results when the project evolves. There are
times when most CPUs will be idling and there will be times when IO to disk is
happening even when RAM is available. Linux kernel can be tuned to avoid disk IO if
RAM is still available for example.

Hope this helps,

-Mikko