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Opty based server

J

Juic3

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 22, 2004
Messages
1,458
Hello all, Im pretty new to server based machines and was wondering what would be a good setup for a small company, it will be used as an internal comunity server, with apache, mysql, perl, php with about 200 users.

I initially thought about an nforce4 and a skt 939 dual core opteron(175),couple of gigs of kingston value RAM and a 250GB SATA hdd. But Im not so sure about that, would it be ok ? Or would socket 940 be a better choice ? What about Intel systems with Xeon ?

Im looking for a best bang for the buck deal that will work out great according to what I need.
 
How much do you want to spend? Is the first thing. But first off I just wanna say no-no on value ram.
 
Couple more questions.

How many people will be using the server at any given time? I know you said 200 but more a more time specific number would be useful. Just a handful every now and then or a sustained rate of say 20+ users?

How important is the data that's going to be on the server? Is it something you don't want to lose or have the server go down and not be able to get running quickly? A basic RAID-1 setup might be worthwhile here. Really depends on how much concurrent disk access is going to be done. You might be needing more drives as well as faster SCSI drives depending on how heavily it will be used for certain tasks.

You might even want to look into a pair of dual cores. The price might go up a bit but it would do considerably better when you started to put a load on it.
 
It really depends on what you are going to be doing with the machine. The amount of users doesn't matter as much as what they will be doing.

Is this for a network with a domain, or without? How critical is the operation of this machine?

If it's mission critical and needs to be highly redundant, an HP, Sun or other unit with a service contract with onsite service is the better choice than something you'd build yourself.

It really depends.
 
Thanx for the replies guys.

It should be an amount of 20+ users at the same time, I still need to check if they want to have all the data safe, but Im guessing it will be.

If I was willing to get an opteron 175, which motherboard and ECC RAM would you guys recommend ? I guess I need a really good PSU too.

All I have available in companies that can provide servers where I live is probably DELL and IBM, and theyre quite on the expensive side.
 
Juic3 said:
Thanx for the replies guys.

It should be an amount of 20+ users at the same time, I still need to check if they want to have all the data safe, but Im guessing it will be.

If I was willing to get an opteron 175, which motherboard and ECC RAM would you guys recommend ? I guess I need a really good PSU too.

All I have available in companies that can provide servers where I live is probably DELL and IBM, and theyre quite on the expensive side.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure there are no Motherboards that support Opteron 100 series AND ECC Ram?
Correct me if I'm wrong. You will probably want to go socket 940 opteron 200 series.
 
Oh so something like this wouldnt be helpful ?
Opteron 170
Tyan K8E
2GB Kingston ECC DDR400
2x250GB Seagate SATA2
FSP 550w PSU EPS12V
 
ribs1 said:
I'm pretty sure there are no Motherboards that support Opteron 100 series AND ECC Ram?
Correct me if I'm wrong. You will probably want to go socket 940 opteron 200 series.
Click to expand...


Any K8 based cpu including Athlon64, Sempron, and Opterons will support ECC. Only the socket 940 Opterons support registered ram. The myth stems from the fact that unbuffered ECC ram is quite rare and non ECC registered is even rarer. So people think that Athlon can't use ECC and the Opterons require ECC neither of which is true.
 
draksia said:
Any K8 based cpu including Athlon64, Sempron, and Opterons will support ECC. Only the socket 940 Opterons support registered ram. The myth stems from the fact that unbuffered ECC ram is quite rare and non ECC registered is even rarer. So people think that Athlon can't use ECC and the Opterons require ECC neither of which is true.
Click to expand...

Well said. If you look in the BIOS's for the A8N32-SLI Deluxe, and the A8R-MVP, they both have ECC settings in their BIOS.

My Opteron system requires the use of Registered ECC ram and will not use any other type of memory.
 
Juic3 said:
Oh so something like this wouldnt be helpful ?
Opteron 170
Tyan K8E
2GB Kingston ECC DDR400
2x250GB Seagate SATA2
FSP 550w PSU EPS12V
Click to expand...


Am I way off ? :p
 
Maybe you're way off, or maybe you're right on. We can't tell you.

I think you're crazy to build a machine by yourself as a server for professional use by a large group of people. Your lack of experience is showing, and it strongly suggests that, when you are ready to buy, you should get a machine from an OEM.

Even before you buy the OEM machine, you need to do some capacity planning. 20 users nailing MySQL with difficult adhoc queries against a terabyte database is far different than 20 users doing web requests against Apache with very simple MySQL queries generating mosty-static content.

Are you replacing an existing computer system, or implementing a new server for a new application?
 
mikeblas said:
Maybe you're way off, or maybe you're right on. We can't tell you.

I think you're crazy to build a machine by yourself as a server for professional use by a large group of people. Your lack of experience is showing, and it strongly suggests that, when you are ready to buy, you should get a machine from an OEM.

Even before you buy the OEM machine, you need to do some capacity planning. 20 users nailing MySQL with difficult adhoc queries against a terabyte database is far different than 20 users doing web requests against Apache with very simple MySQL queries generating mosty-static content.

Are you replacing an existing computer system, or implementing a new server for a new application?
Click to expand...

Yeah its a new application, Ive been told it will be used as an internal community site, with news, and to check up on prices of the stuff they sell, packages ... etc.

The developer says hes using an old p3 system just to test it and that they dont wanna spend a whole lot of money on OEMs so thats why I ask if a s939 opteron would do the work ? Or if he should go straight to OEMs. They were initially thinking about something like a 3.2 P4 and 1 GB of RAM.
 
Juic3 said:
The developer says hes using an old p3 system just to test it and that they dont wanna spend a whole lot of money on OEMs so thats why I ask if a s939 opteron would do the work ? Or if he should go straight to OEMs. They were initially thinking about something like a 3.2 P4 and 1 GB of RAM.
Click to expand...
Nobody knows. When you have more information about the load pattern of the application, you can start working towards a better answer.
 
mikeblas said:
Nobody knows. When you have more information about the load pattern of the application, you can start working towards a better answer.
Click to expand...

K thanks.
 
ribs1 said:
I'm pretty sure there are no Motherboards that support Opteron 100 series AND ECC Ram?
Correct me if I'm wrong. You will probably want to go socket 940 opteron 200 series.
Click to expand...

There are opteron 1xx series in socket 940. They existed waaaay before 939 opterons.
 
Robstar said:
There are opteron 1xx series in socket 940. They existed waaaay before 939 opterons.
Click to expand...

Yep, those also were designed for the Athlon FX. Back then those were the gaming/workstation boards to have if you went uni-processor and AMD.
 
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