Monster Server Build

B

BioHazard.89

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 25, 2004
Messages
229
I've taken on the task of building a monster server for my company. They moved sunday from their old office with a DSL line into a bigger facility and a T1 line. They want a semi-future proof server and it needs to be able to take something of a beating.... The current list of things this computer's going to do is something to the effect of:

- Web server
- FTP
- Email
- Database-ing of some sort
- Company-wide backups - 16 pc's in the building total, 5 of which have important backups
- Routing software for the network
- Some other minor stuff - basicly this is it though

They wish to accomplish this in one super server... my budget is basicly anything - I just need to get some recomendations on hardware as well as some software....

What I'm thinking hardware wise is 200+gb of hard drive space on a SATA RAID 1 i believe... where there's a duplicate of the hard drive being made.... 64bit / intel similar processor, 4+gb of ram.... They're basicly asking me to build a dream machine.... I need to know what to get and from what companys (I'm buying from NewEgg).....

For Software and O/S, I'm looking into Windows 2k3 server unless anyone else has a better option. I also need something that will be a software router to be put in behind the T1 Nuvox box (Adrian)...... I have webhosting down with Apache and other stuff but what about Email and FTP? and Finaly, is there anything that could automaticly at the end of the day, grab a specific directory from each computer and back it up to the server? The database will come in the future so I'm not to worried about that.....

I appreciate and thank you guys and gals for helping me in advanced

=//= John-Michael =//= WaveWerx
 
Though I may get shot for this but I would go Dell actually. Get the uber warranty and someone can be out there to replace dead components within 4 hours. Newegg could take days to send replacements. Just a thought.
 
why not a raid 5 setup.. a raid 10 setup...

how about 2 hard drives in a raid 1 for the os/apps
with 3 in a raid 5 for the data..

and what's the budget?

based on 16 people you are a PRIME candidate for small business server
 
BioHazard.89 said:
Finaly, is there anything that could automaticly at the end of the day, grab a specific directory from each computer and back it up to the server?
Click to expand...

Quick and dirty solution? BAT file with a lot of xcopy commands, triggered by the freeware scheduling software of your choice.
 
mac_cnc said:
Though I may get shot for this but I would go Dell actually. Get the uber warranty and someone can be out there to replace dead components within 4 hours.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I was going to post. :p

It would be nice if you could have the webserver crap on one system, and have another set up to be a PDC + fileserver.
 
ashmedai said:
Exactly what I was going to post. :p

It would be nice if you could have the webserver crap on one system, and have another set up to be a PDC + fileserver.
Click to expand...

yeah, buy a low end server for the web stuff and super mega server for the rest.

Also, it's nice to be able to blame Dell for use bad parts rather than someone blaming you.
 
Thanks for the responses fellahs, but I would actually like to take control of the whole build. In all honestly, I'm working in my dad's business and I'm on pretty good terms with all the employees. I'll be here the whole summer as well as most of the school year (weekends / afternoons / holidays by choice of course) and will have immediate access to the computer and anything I may need to upgrade it / troubleshoot it.

Another reason we're going with a server built by me is that when something does go wrong, I know whats in it and what to do and have a great forum to get any aid I may need ;) On more than one occasion, they've sent in a crappy eMachines or Dell laptop to the shop for something easy to fix and have it come back with the data wiped out.

There really isn't a budget, I told these guys that if you want to max it out and biggie size this server 2000+USD is certainly within the realm of the possibility. They were cool with that and told me I had much more room to move with.

What are the immediate flaws and sideffects of having the webserver on with the rest of the stuff I'm doing? Even if we make this server pretty über, couldn't we put it all on one?

why not a raid 5 setup.. a raid 10 setup...

how about 2 hard drives in a raid 1 for the os/apps
with 3 in a raid 5 for the data..

and what's the budget?

based on 16 people you are a PRIME candidate for small business server
Click to expand...

Could you explain the raid setups? Since this is going to hold important files for the company, there needs to be at least one duplicate. The budget is pretty loose, like I said, I told them $2000+......

Quick and dirty solution? BAT file with a lot of xcopy commands, triggered by the freeware scheduling software of your choice.
Click to expand...

A little bit more of an explination please?

Finally, a PDC?

Thanks once again for everything - John-Michael
 
Hah - Them suckers are mighty price-y.... Is that honesty the best way to go? Dual 64-bit processors? lol I find that insanely funny :-p Cheapest one is 969 USD on Newegg - Ontop of that is the Newegg suggested MSI Master3-FS Dual Socket 940 AMD 8131 SSI EEB 3.0 Server Motherboard for 502 USD ;) Is this just a bit of an overkill? and would 1.8 / 2 ghz (dualed) be enough processing power for everything (I still think im going to put the webserver on with everything else)? What's a RAID 5? and would the HDD be SCSI?
 
Raid 1 creates a duplicate, but if both drives go out at the same time, (seen it happen), you are fucked. It's also one of the least cost-effective of the common methods of redundancy. In other words, you buy 2 drives to get 1 drive's worth of storage.

Raid 5 splits the data up between disks, using an N-1 formula. That is, if you have 4 disks, you have data size equivalent to 3 disks, and if any 1 drive goes, you can rebuild it using the other drives. Each drive has some of the data from the other drives compressed onto it, to allow for rebuilding. Still, if 2 disks go at close to the same time, you may lose everything.

Raid 5+1 or 1+5 is even more expensive, as it basically is 2 raid 5 arrays, one of which is simply a backup. In other words, you buy 8 disks, and get 3 disks worth of storage, but a hell of a lot of redundancy.

I'm not even going to get into the more exotic ones. What you need to ask yourself is how critical this data is, and how bad you would be hurt if you lost one day's data. If you can suck up one day's loss of data, go with a simple raid 1 or raid 5 (scsi, not sata. IDE drives are not as reliable as scsi, by a long shot), and do a nightly backup. If one day's loss would screw you over, go for a 5+1 array with redundant power supplies from a reputable company.

DON'T buy bargain parts here. Go for expensive power supplies, fans, motherboard and ram, especially. Drives should also be of high quality. Think Seagate SCSI, not maxtor SATA.

And yes, you CAN run all of that on the same machine, but typically email and web serving is ram intensive, but a simple raid 1 with small drives would be fine. You could put together a box for web/mail serving for probably about $500-600 that would do just fine for a small web server. Better to have a seperate box. Think rackmount and a 1u for the webserver and a 3u or 4u for the rest, maybe with a disk farm.

edited to add: That nightly/weekly backup should be on magnetic tape! Don't forget to have a tape drive(autoloader?) and a backup procedure.
 
I would caution against "home-brew" machines for production servers...but that's just me. I like to know if there's an issue, I can make a phone call and have someone get me a part i 4 hours or fix my software issues for free.
 
BioHazard.89 Hah - Them suckers are mighty price-y.... Is that honesty the best way to go? Dual 64-bit processors? lol I find that insanely funny :-p Cheapest one is 969 USD on Newegg - Ontop of that is the Newegg suggested MSI Master3-FS Dual Socket 940 AMD 8131 SSI EEB 3.0 Server Motherboard for 502 USD Is this just a bit of an overkill? and would 1.8 / 2 ghz (dualed) be enough processing power for everything (I still think im going to put the webserver on with everything else)? What's a RAID 5? and would the HDD be SCSI?
Click to expand...

Dual 2ghz would be just fine, assuming you aren't trying to serve the entire California online porn business from the one box. For raid 5 see above. Raid arrays can be PATA/SATA/SCSI based upon the controller/drives you buy. Some motherboards have onboard sata raid these days. Don't trust it. If the motherboard goes, you will likely lose your data(correct me if I am wrong here guys, never lost a mobo with raid yet). Also, pata/sata drives are consumer drives, not commercial drives. SCSI has much better failure rates(less frequent).

Consider this, though: If your web server goes down, do you want your company backups to still work? Especially if you are experiencing a DOS attack, but even if it's simply a mechanical problem, you don't want to have everything go down at once. Also, if your backup system gets nailed for some reason, doesn't your company still want it's web presence up?

When you are building servers, you want to think in terms of redundancy. Power supplies, drives, yes, even boxes. Can a dual opteron system handle everything? Sure, but if even one major component goes down, or if someone starts fucking with your web presence, do you want the whole thing to go down? Probably better to go with two single processor systems, just for redundancy's sake.

A cheap Athlon XP or Celeron box could probably handle your web/email presence as long as you aren't serving large video files (porn) or the like, and you don't have huge traffic numbers. A beefier dual processor or even just a P4 w/ HT system could probably handle your database/backup needs just fine. Just be sure to have lots of ram.

But really, don't try to stuff all of that on one box, especially if you aren't going to be available 24/7 for support. Otherwise, one major component failure could paralyze the entire company.
 
I appreciate the lengthy response Sunborder. The data is very crucial. The daily backups will be basicly the whole computer the bookkeeper / accountant uses. The file server portion of it will be engineering files and templates and contracts and so on and so forth, basicly to have no clutter on the personal and other desktop / laptops as well as a central location for all of the information.... Some of the stuff needs to be accessed by specific parties and no one else so protection and permissions need to be given out to specific directories and so forth - I have yet to figure out how to do that.....

After typing this paragiraffe I realized the file server / backup - should stay within the building, it and shouldnt be on a computer with people accessing it everyday - IE the webserver / ftp / email server..... Now they are soon to intergrate a database into the company - of what I'm not sure of yet but I know its its going to be purdy big..... Where should it be introduced in the future? Onto the webserver or the file server? My original plans for the Über-Server was to have 4+GB of the best ram, 400+ GB of hard drive space on the raid that makes a duplicate copy with 2 hard drives, and a mighty powerful processor........

Do I really need Dual Dual-Core Opterons? :D
 
BioHazard.89 said:
Do I really need Dual Dual-Core Opterons? :D
Click to expand...
As per the link one Dual core would be fine.

Make sure to encrypt those back ups as well, it doesn't really help security when the back ups are just "hanging around" out in the open without any sort of protection, alittle PGP can go along way in this respect.
 
I appreciate the links Crim - I'll have to take a peek at them shortly.....

edited to add: That nightly/weekly backup should be on magnetic tape! Don't forget to have a tape drive(autoloader?) and a backup procedure.
Click to expand...

I thought about that but arn't tapes _way_ outdated? Right now they're alternating between 2 Maxtor 120GB external drives as a backup, if one dies they are only one day behind.... they're kept in a safe at night...... There isnt a better way than tape??
 
The data is very crucial. The daily backups will be basicly the whole computer the bookkeeper / accountant uses. The file server portion of it will be engineering files and templates and contracts and so on and so forth, basicly to have no clutter on the personal and other desktop / laptops as well as a central location for all of the information.... Some of the stuff needs to be accessed by specific parties and no one else so protection and permissions need to be given out to specific directories and so forth - I have yet to figure out how to do that.....

After typing this paragiraffe I realized the file server / backup - should stay within the building, it and shouldnt be on a computer with people accessing it everyday - IE the webserver / ftp / email server..... Now they are soon to intergrate a database into the company - of what I'm not sure of yet but I know its its going to be purdy big..... Where should it be introduced in the future? Onto the webserver or the file server? My original plans for the Über-Server was to have 4+GB of the best ram, 400+ GB of hard drive space on the raid that makes a duplicate copy with 2 hard drives, and a mighty powerful processor........
Click to expand...

OK, the data is crucial, so you need to be real careful with it. Seriously, does your database even need to be accessible outside of your LAN? I doubt it. What you really need here are a couple of lower powered boxes. I'd spring for the rackmount and look at a $2500-3000 budget. Get a low-end celeron for your web/email presence unless you have high traffic. That won't cost much. Put a gig of ram in it and forget it. Repurpose an old P3 or uber-low end celeron for your software router (or even beef up the web server with a decent celeron and load it there). Put your backups/database on the same system. Any dual core or HT solution here would be fine. You need at least 2 machines here. Maybe 3. Rackmount it for futureproofing. If you know anything about linux, you may want to run linux for your web server/router, and use the win3k server for the database/backups. That will help keep your costs down.

Your database machine should have the best ram/drives/PS you can afford. You can always upgrade the mobo/processor later if you need to. The ram and drives can be retained when you upgrade, and the old mobo/proc can be used when your webserver needs more power.
 
External drives are likely to be consumer-grade (unreliable). Tapes, however, if you buy archival quality, can last 20 years. The beauty of tape, also, is that you can do sequential backups, if you are alternating every other night, then you discover that you got a major virus that corrupted your data 3 weeks ago, you don't have an uninfected image of your data. If you use those HDs for nightly backups, then at least use the tapes for weekly or monthly backup. Or buy a third drive and label it accordingly. Also, think of those 5.25 detachable SCSI bays for your backups as opposed to consumer external drives. Just make sure it's hot-swapable. (firewire/USB2.0 cables have a way of being unplugged or not adaquately seated in the slot....so if nobody is monitoring the backup.....it may not back up at all.....a detachable bay eliminates this worry, and can be locked into the cage while mounted. An external drive might walk away at night.......)
 
Sunborder said:
OK, the data is crucial, so you need to be real careful with it. Seriously, does your database even need to be accessible outside of your LAN? I doubt it. What you really need here are a couple of lower powered boxes. I'd spring for the rackmount and look at a $2500-3000 budget. Get a low-end celeron for your web/email presence unless you have high traffic. That won't cost much. Put a gig of ram in it and forget it. Repurpose an old P3 or uber-low end celeron for your software router (or even beef up the web server with a decent celeron and load it there). Put your backups/database on the same system. Any dual core or HT solution here would be fine. You need at least 2 machines here. Maybe 3. Rackmount it for futureproofing. If you know anything about linux, you may want to run linux for your web server/router, and use the win3k server for the database/backups. That will help keep your costs down.

Your database machine should have the best ram/drives/PS you can afford. You can always upgrade the mobo/processor later if you need to. The ram and drives can be retained when you upgrade, and the old mobo/proc can be used when your webserver needs more power.
Click to expand...

That's Phenominal my man - It sounds like a great plan and sounds like where I want to be heading..... My knowledge of linux is very limited at the moment..... but once i get enought cash to upgrade my few computers and the home network I'm going to make a *nix test box with the leftover parts..... I now think 2 servers are the way to go.....

After I run this through with everyone I'll be looking into the parts - Is it safe or better to base these 2 or 3 systems of AMD processors? Or would Intel be more effective?
 
BioHazard.89 said:
Hah - Them suckers are mighty price-y.... Is that honesty the best way to go? Dual 64-bit processors? lol I find that insanely funny :-p Cheapest one is 969 USD on Newegg - Ontop of that is the Newegg suggested MSI Master3-FS Dual Socket 940 AMD 8131 SSI EEB 3.0 Server Motherboard for 502 USD ;) Is this just a bit of an overkill? and would 1.8 / 2 ghz (dualed) be enough processing power for everything (I still think im going to put the webserver on with everything else)? What's a RAID 5? and would the HDD be SCSI?
Click to expand...
1 - You didn't specify a budget
2 - What did you expect to pay for server products? :p
3 - Tyan is the only way to go for server boards
4 - AMD does more work with less "MHz". A 2GHz AMD can actually compete with a 3GHz+ Intel.
5 - SCSI is the fastest data transferr on the market right now. ATA runs at 133, SATA at 150, SATA2 at 300, and SCSI at 320 (all in Mb/sec).
 
sac_tagg said:
1 - You didn't specify a budget
2 - What did you expect to pay for server products? :p
3 - Tyan is the only way to go for server boards
4 - AMD does more work with less "MHz". A 2GHz AMD can actually compete with a 3GHz+ Intel.
5 - SCSI is the fastest data transferr on the market right now. ATA runs at 133, SATA at 150, SATA2 at 300, and SCSI at 320 (all in Mb/sec).
Click to expand...

Thanks pal - I didnt mean to be insulting ;) I know I didn't give a budget because I didnt have much of one, and I didnt really know how much I was going to realisticly be spending. :D I appreciate it none the less. I've always favored AMD to Intel because of gaming and thanks for the info on the transfer rates - That'll be something i keep in mind with a few of my new computers....
 
One system for all that? I wouldn't recommend it, but if your company insists...

Quad Processor, Opteron or Xeon
4gb or more of memory
SCSI raid, raid 10 or 50.
Ultra320 drives, lots of them, big ones.
Gigabit network card.
 
acascianelli said:
One system for all that? I wouldn't recommend it, but if your company insists...

Quad Processor, Opteron or Xeon
4gb or more of memory
SCSI raid, raid 10 or 50.
Ultra320 drives, lots of them, big ones.
Gigabit network card.
Click to expand...


I've been moving away from an Über-System after Sun's enlightenment upon me ;)
 
BioHazard.89 said:
- Web server
- FTP
- Email
- Database-ing of some sort
- Company-wide backups - 16 pc's in the building total, 5 of which have important backups
- Routing software for the network
- Some other minor stuff - basicly this is it though
Click to expand...
A) You need SCSI hard drives for any multi user server work. This means 10K, although possibly 15K if you are expecting high loads, for the Web, FTP, E-mail, and Database work. You will probably want one array for the web presence and another for the database. You will want to use RAID 0+1 for any multi user server type loads. That's eight SCSI drives - $$$$ - although you could get by with four in a pinch. Also, you will be able to get by with four at first, as you said the database is coming later. Ideally, have the arrays mirrored across channels on a dual channel SCSI HBA to make sure a cable coming loose doesn't take your system down.
B) Mid-line grade ATA drives (such as the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 or Maxtor MaxLineIII) will be fine for the backups of the systems in the office. Probably RAID-5 here, as capacity is more important than throughput.
C) You will probably also be able to get by with high quality ATA drives in RAID-1 to boot the system. I would use software RAID-1 here, so that the drives can be moved to a different host/motherboard without having to worry about being able to read the metadata off the drives. SCSI drives will be a better choice if you need the page file on the disk to be at all responsive, if fast boot time is a priority, or if you will be doing file serving from this array. On the flip side, using SATA is cheaper and allows the SCSI subsystem to be used exclusively for servicing your users and web clients.
D) Get your hard drives at ZipZoomFly. Usually cheaper, better SCSI selection, and they do a much better job of packing and shipping hard drives than Newegg does.
E) The only thing that will be processor heavy is the database work. The other tasks are more dependent on having plenty of RAM and high disk throughput. A pair of mid range Opterons or Xeons will be plenty of power for the web presence. However, a databse under high load can use every CPU core and megahertz you can throw at it. Who all will be accessing this database at any given time? I agree that 4GB of RAM is a good idea.
F) Please, don't buy a server board from a consumer maker like MSI. Tyan and Iwill are great names in Opteron boards, while Intel, Tyan, and SuperMicro make great Xeon boards. You will be glad you went with an enterprise mobo maker.

Some closing comments: You will be a slave to this system if you build it yourself. Go with a mainstream server supplier unless you want to learn a lot about keeping a server running. Post back here or in Disk Storage if you want to learn more about the reasoning behind my hard drive recommendations. Also, sac_tagg has slightly over simplified hard drive throughput - interface transfer rates mean little, and U320 is not the fastest interconnect available if you're using more than one drive. SATA-II's 300MB/sec is a point to point link where each drive gets a 300MB/sec channel, while all of the devices on a U320 SCSI chain share the 320MB/sec. However, SCSI, owing to faster drives designed from the ground up for server work, is still the only way to fly for multi user performance.
 
Sorry for the inactivity but I went on vacation....

I've decided to go the route of 3 computers, 1 Backup/Database Box, 1 Software Router Box, 1 Web Box

The software router box isn't of immediate importance, we have one but we can't get to it, only our ISP can.....

For the BU/DB box, Here's what I'm thinking though this is just a preliminary scan of hardware....

Tyan Tomcat K8S S2850 AMD-8111 AMD Opteron DDR ATX Server Board w/Video, Dual Gigabit LAN Retail - The other Tyan board at ZZF is a dual proc board, I don't think I should go that route (?)

AMD Opteron 248 2.2GHz Processor Retail - Will this be enough for the box or should I invest in more or something different?

I was taking a peak at memory and realized I don't honestly know what to get for the board. All I really know is that I need at least 4GB of very good ram but what exactly is that?

And I still havent decided or know what to do with all the hard drives and raids.... I'll have to do some mondo research on RAIDs very soon.....

and I'll probably be getting a big rackmount case and shelf for all this ;)

For the Web box, I don't need anything more than a regular box right?

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor Skt 754 & MSI K8N Neo Platinum nForce3 250Gb Athlon 64 Skt754 Motherboard Retail Bundle

Kingston KVR400X64C3AK2/1G 1GB Kit DDR400 PC3200 Memory Retail

Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB Serial ATA 10,000RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer x2 for use with the onboard raid

Have I forgotten anything obvious? I'd love some critique on this setup as I bet it's quite flawed ;) I appreciate the help everyone's left so far

-- John-Michael
 
BioHazard.89 said:
For the BU/DB box, Here's what I'm thinking though this is just a preliminary scan of hardware.... [...]
Will this be enough for the box or should I invest in more or something different?
[...] All I really know is that I need at least 4GB of very good ram but what exactly is that?
[...] For the Web box, I don't need anything more than a regular box right?

[...]
Have I forgotten anything obvious? I'd love some critique on this setup as I bet it's quite flawed ;) I appreciate the help everyone's left so far
Click to expand...

I think you're asking yourself all the right questions. What seems obvious to me is the lack of any capacity planning.

How did you arrive at the conclusion that you need four gigs of RAM, for example? Is your database server really that busy? How many simultaneous users do you expect? With what type of transactions? What transaction load per second? And so on. Your answers to these questions are vastly different if you're using the database for content management on your website than for a heavily transactional distributed application in use by hundreds of people.

Similarly, what's driving your guesses at processor count, architecture, and speed? I haven't seen information here about what your website is doing: user load, throughput, static or dynamic pages, and so on. Same for the data requirements; what is it that you're storing, how much of it, and how is it accessed?

What disaster recovery plan do you have in place? You mention realizing that the data doesn't need to leave the building. Why is that? If the building burns to the ground in a fire, is your company just going to go out of business because it lost all of its data, completely?

Why are you sticking with self-built hardware? How do you plan on providing spares for these mission-critical systems? Just buy a completely new machine from NewEgg when one of the production rigs goes down?

Anyway, my point is that if "all you really know" about the application is that you need four gigs of RAM, you need to do lots more requirements gathering before you start choosing specific parts if you want a winning platform.
 
also for your daily backups. if anybody hasn't said it yet, you need to keep one copy on site and one copy off site for a backup if you have a fire or something.

Brandon
 
I would deffinatly get Multiple 15K RPM USCSI 320 Fujitsu MAU's and run them in a Raid 5.

Super Drools
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
I would deffinatly get Multiple 15K RPM USCSI 320 Fujitsu MAU's and run them in a Raid 5.
Click to expand...

Did I miss the requirements? Why is such an expensive disk subsystem justified? What makes you so certain that it is the right way to go?
 
Note the super drools...I'm guessing that's more of hardware lust and endorsement of their uberness, than an actual spec recommendation.
 
I read the title... "Moster Server Build" - Not from that SERVER and MONSTER

Then i read into it and read "my budget is basicly anything" Note BUDGET and Basicaly anything


LSI PCIe 8x U320 SCSI RAID CARD (Can have up to 512MB ECC RAM ON IT CACHE)
512MB ECC RAM
7x 147GB 15K RPM Fujitsu MAUs

:cool: Fast disk access
 
Sorry; I don't know what "Super Drools" is.

USMC2Hard4U said:
I read the title... "Moster Server Build" - Not from that SERVER and MONSTER

Then i read into it and read "my budget is basicly anything" Note BUDGET and Basicaly anything
Click to expand...



Yep. But, in the rest of the thread, more details are revealed: "The budget is pretty loose, like I said, I told them $2000+......" which to me would mean between two and three grand. The single "monster machine was split into at least three machines, which I think is very appropriate.

Without more details about what the system really needs to do, isn't suggesting specific parts inappropriate?

On the other hand, if the goal is to just sit around and try to name impressive hardware that can be had on a truly uliminted budget, isn't that LSI card small potatoes? If I had the opportunity to buy "basically anything", I would look at truly high-end solutions, like one of EMC's high-end storage appliances. Or a massively parallel system, such as one of the HP Integrity Superdome machines.

Products like that represent budget-unlimited enterprise hardware worth drooling over, if you ask me. Maybe they're not appropriate for BioHazard.89's project; but we can't know that, since I don't think we have any requirements parameters yet.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
I would deffinatly get Multiple 15K RPM USCSI 320 Fujitsu MAU's and run them in a Raid 5.

Super Drools
Click to expand...
RAID-5 != Performance tool. RAID-5 is a capacity tool. For a database server, the system is required to complete numerous small requests, often over the vast majority of the area of physical disk(s). On the other hand, RAID-5 is designed to increase capacity and linear read performance. Typically, databases are not very large, and the only time a linear transfer of any length occurs from one is when you're backing it up. Having all of the disks striped together and a penalty on writes is an extremely poor choice in storage model for a database server. One of the hybrid RAID levels (10 or 0+1) is a MUCH better choice for increasing database transaction rates. Also, while the MAU is an absolute monster on the desktop, it falls behind the Maxtor Atlas 15K II in server performance with a mix of reads and writes, and it also falls behind its predecessor MAS in read-only server work (although short-stroking a 147GB MAU to the 73GB maximum of the MAS would likely erase this deficit)
 
BioHazard.89 said:
I've taken on the task of building a monster server for my company. They moved sunday from their old office with a DSL line into a bigger facility and a T1 line. They want a semi-future proof server and it needs to be able to take something of a beating.... The current list of things this computer's going to do is something to the effect of:

- Web server
- FTP
- Email
- Database-ing of some sort
- Company-wide backups - 16 pc's in the building total, 5 of which have important backups
- Routing software for the network
- Some other minor stuff - basicly this is it though

They wish to accomplish this in one super server... my budget is basicly anything - I just need to get some recomendations on hardware as well as some software....

What I'm thinking hardware wise is 200+gb of hard drive space on a SATA RAID 1 i believe... where there's a duplicate of the hard drive being made.... 64bit / intel similar processor, 4+gb of ram.... They're basicly asking me to build a dream machine.... I need to know what to get and from what companys (I'm buying from NewEgg).....

For Software and O/S, I'm looking into Windows 2k3 server unless anyone else has a better option. I also need something that will be a software router to be put in behind the T1 Nuvox box (Adrian)...... I have webhosting down with Apache and other stuff but what about Email and FTP? and Finaly, is there anything that could automaticly at the end of the day, grab a specific directory from each computer and back it up to the server? The database will come in the future so I'm not to worried about that.....

I appreciate and thank you guys and gals for helping me in advanced

=//= John-Michael =//= WaveWerx
Click to expand...


Concurring with what some others have said, the best way to future proof this is not have it be "one" machine. Let it be a "server cluster" with some tasks running on a different computer. Really is the smarter way to go.

I'd recommend Web + FTP on one.
Email on another, the "minor" stuff on the email server.. and if the database is small enough, put it on this machine too, otherwise, run that to another box.
Routing& Backups on another.


Possibly Web/Ftp/Email on one.
with the "misc + Database on 2nd"
and the Routing/Warehousing on 3rd.

If you have to take the web server down because of some sort of "issue" it'd be really bad to also have to take the ENTIRE NETWORK DOWN, because of it.

A 20-30 minute outage because of some emergency on the web-server (DDOS, anyone?) should not "put the company out of business in the interim"

It's a foolhardy plan to have it "all on one box". If your boss thinks it's a good idea, that's why he's not the IT head.
If you think it's a good idea, that's why you shouldn't BE the IT head.

It's all a moot point, because after reading some of your responses, it seems evident that you really shouldn't be undertaking this project unless your dad really doesn't care about the integrity of his data in the first place, because .. it's GOING to fail.

2k is not an unlimited budget. It's also not an appropriate budget for the work you want to do on it. 2k3 is ~$700. Leaving you $1300 for a "monster computer" hardware.
 
IMHO There is NO way to do this properly with one server. If it's for a business they need to understand that if they want their data secure and have reliable uptime this is the kinda of thing that should be on multiple servers.

My advice.. buy a few Dell poweredge 750 servers. Then put the stuff that needs to be on the outside.. on the outside (such as the webserver, ftp server). Database, backups, and of that stuff should be kept separate from the outside.

Then.. buy a dedicated firewall appliance. You can get things from http://www.watchguard.com/ that handle various jobs and do a good job of it.

For mail... if you're not running exchange and just want pop3.. get a dedicated device for it too. I've learned to not really trust windows servers for certain things where dedicated applicances can do a better job.

Just my 2 cents or so...
 
Dell is always a good option to consider for servers, especially if you're not sure what you're doing.
 
Oh.. and if you're looking at backup software. I'd recommend Veritas over Brighstor's arcserve. The cost for multiple servers is better and having just implemented it.. the setup was easier with veritas backupExec than it was with Arcserv.

Since you seem to have decided on multiple servers.. I'd say you could probably get away with maybe 2-3 beefier servers such as 1850s from dell. Then get 2 smaller servers (750s are cheap). Run backup software on one of the 750s (it doesnt take much).. and keep th eother as a spare server with a bare windows install. Now if one of the main servers goes down.. you can install whatever app it was using to the 750, restore the data, and have a backup server ready to go within a couple hours at most. Then you've got next day replacement from dell on the 1850s and you're good to go.
 
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