On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 16:49, Mark Gardner wrote: > DISCLAIMER *** I do not intend to start any holy wars or nit picking*** > > I'm getting ready to build an entry level serve class machine. I've > build dozens and doezens of workstations and VERY low grade servers. > Since all of you have some expertise in this field i was wondering > what you consider most important. What would you recomend as types > of hardware requirements. > > This list is NON inclusive (please add more if you feel it warrents) > - White box vs. Dell, HP, etc...
3 year overnight parts replacement is one good reason to buy a brand name like Dell or HP. I've heard that HP or Compaq's server management tools are way nice and much better than Dell's. If this server has any kind of business purpose, I'd definitely go with a real server-grade box (redundant power supplies, cooling fans, rack mount, etc). > - Dual Processor vs. Single > - SDRAM vs RAMBUS (is 1 GIG ok or should it be more) I avoid Rambus on out of ethical principle, although I really have no idea about this. I don't believe any of my recent servers have come with Ramus. > - EIDE raid You mean hardware SATA raid? Sure. See below. > - SCSI or SATA raid SCSI disks still edge out sata in terms of performance. Although conventional wisdom dictates that if price is no object, go with SCSI, I am having a harder and harder time justifying SCSI on my servers. Especially when the new dell poweredges come with real hardware sata raid controllers. Plus if you buy drives from Quantum or Seagate, they are now pretty much the same drive (same cache even). In fact I think the Seagate SATA drives still have 3 year warranties, which makes me more comfortable about using SATA in a server vs say Maxtor or Western Digital. If you can afford it, Raid 5 is always a good idea, although statistics indicate that Raid 1 would give quite a bit of failure protection. Bear in mind also that low-end ATA raid controllers are often software raid. > - AMD 64 vs. AMD vs. PENTIUM > I've heard good things about the AMD 64 in servers (from HP I think). On the other hand going with a good, proven server platform like the Pentium III Xeon or the Pentium 4 isn't bad either. > > I guess this would be helpful too. The machine i'm building will be > for Novell Netware demo. But later will be SUSE ENTERPRISE both > Operating systems will be VERY network heavy. I am on a budget of > about $800 Given your budget, I'd say you won't be able to afford real server hardware. Servers start about $1500 with Dell and go up to over $10,000. You'll have to go whitebox, say AMD64, SDRAM, SATA Raid. Basically you'll have a glorified consumer quality workstation running as a server. I think you'll be fine. Michael > > thanks > _\ | /_ > (@ @) > -----oOOo-(_)-oOOo----- > ~Mark > ~Gardner > > ____________________ > BYU Unix Users Group > http://uug.byu.edu/ > ___________________________________________________________________ > List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list -- Michael Torrie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
