On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:19:21 +0800, Rafael 'Dido' Sevilla <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Our mail server just recently kicked the bucket, as did a few other bits > of crucial infrastructure vital to our business, because of broken power > supplies and video card fans. It's beginning to become frustrating. We > haven't got the budget to purchase something like a Proliant with a > quarter of a million price tag, but am wondering what other alternatives > might be present for off the shelf DIY hardware built to provide > reasonably high reliability.
Dido, First, one thing i have observed in the IT industry, you can build a DIY hardware with the reliability of compaq/hp/sun. How? check the replacement parts from their respective websites and use it as parts or reference for your DIY hardware. These companies have poured millions for test and evaluations on off the shelf components for integration on their products, and it's yours for your free use. :) Example, I used to have a toshiba cd-rom from a Sun machine. Quality was so good, it's the only cdrom that can read badly scratched cd's. > First off, any video card that has to have its own onboard fan is out of > the question for such an application. We have already had three such > cards destroyed in recent days from excessively high uptime. Apparently > nobody sells non-AGP or even fanless video cards anymore (no suggestions > about surplus shops here; getting them is hit and miss in such places). > Onboard video chipsets may be viable (but some of these have their own > fans too!), but they can't do anything for the otherwise viable > motherboards we already have. I've already considered running them > without video cards on deployment, but if the system crashes for some > other reason, I'd like to have an escape valve that allows me to see > what might have gone wrong. Are there still commonly available fanless > video cards of any kind? You know this is coming, but pci cards are hard to get by, so i'm suggesting the AGP ones below. AGP fanless video cards: ATI radeon 7000 or NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. If you can't get those, you can use passive cooling oversize heatpipe coolers. I'm using the ZM80D-HP (www.zalman.co.kr) and it works quite well, No cooling fans required on my ATI 9800SE almost crap video card. > The other thing is power supplies. About half of the long running > servers we have had their uptimes cut short because of power supply > failure. Any recommendations on where we could buy good, reliable power > supplies? Since power supplies are a well understood technology, even an average PS(Power Supply) would be fine. Have seen 386 clones still running for 10 years till now with same power supplies for production purposes humming in the data center. Dust killed it? in my experience, dust is the #1 killer of PS and fans too. #2 is surge spikes. I'm assuming you have surge protectors though. regards, Andre -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
