ANST - server thoughts - hardware concerns

[j'lynn yeates]

note: while i am on record as believing that building a server at this point in 
the process as being premature ... some tech comments from someone who has been 
in those trenches  

warning: to the weak of constitution, relevent technical issues ahead, please 
exit now if such are not to your taste in things

On 28 Apr 99, at 17:48, Keith Hood wrote:

> My point is, it is possible to supply the Kingdom's Web needs now and in
> the forseeable future, for less money.  With a Dell system, drive size is
> not a really big factor.  

correct, at todays prices a "server" capable drive (in the 10+gb at *least* ... 
last i put together was a redundant RAID5 at 40+gb per tower ... g) cost is not 
really different in the larger sizes ... so get as large as possible.  it will 
be used.  

do not remember, but i hope these are specified as SCSI disk as they work much 
better in a multitasking server environment than the cheaper EIDE (plus SCSI in 
much of the the disk overhead is taken off the primary processor ... and in a  
server, the more load you can take off the processor the better)

> For example, for a Dell Dimension system, depending on the exact model,
> going with the default RAM installation (which is never less than 64MB)
> instead of 256MB, would save anywhere from $299 to over $500.  

in a server, and the OS and server software installed the more RAM the better.  
from my perspective, 256MB would be on the minimal side (my current multiboot 
development system NT4&5beta / Solaris / Linux / Netware 4/5beta) has 256MB and 
it often bogs done significantly under moderate load testing.  

> ... And while
> it may be nice to have all the drive space in the world, two or three
> gigabytes of drive space would most likely give plenty of space for at
> least a couple of years, and we could always upgrade later.

2-3gbs is hardly space for OS and server software will possibly not even boot 
at that size ... add email server software, spools,  user space, ... the 14gb 
is adequate to start.  i would council adding a *second* drive and mirroring 
them, this being the lowest level of fault tolerance necessary in a server 
environment.  if i were building it, would have a matched drive and SCSI 
adapter to allow mirroring & duplexing (about best you can do before going to 
full blown RAID systems that offer superior operational fault tolerance)
 
> I won't bother talking about the cost of peripherals like sound cards or
> speakers.  The figures I saw aren't significant either way (a difference i
> the range of only $20 - $30).

sound cards are nice in a server, but not at all necessary.  most times they 
stay in the shipping box.  i'm more concerned about relevent peripherals, like 
UPS systems (that Pug answered privately), correctly sized tape backup units 
(wrestling with that one for my home network environment), network adapters, 
...
 
> In any case, going with less RAM would significantly lower the front-end
> cost, which means the server could be in hand and the Kingdom could have
> its new and improved Web sites up and running that much sooner.  The lower
> the initial cost, the easier it is to raise the money.  If we can find a
> system configuration that brings the price really far down and still does
> the job, I'll kick in a couple hundred myself.

cutting RAM in *any* server configuration is false economy (seen it many times) 
... especially in the days of cheap memory.  128mb is the real-world bare 
minimum to get things operational, but performace will be abyssmal.  at about 
$150'ish per 128MB DIMM there is zero reason to cut back when server operations 
will be so drastically impacted.

my take on the $2000 price, how can anyone some up with a real, production 
grade server for that little  servers have to be judged on server terms, not 
workstation terms, and theer are a lot of "gotcha's" not apparant to those who 
don't build servers for operational environments ....

'wolf


... When we hunt, we all function with one mind
... - Boingo, Pedestrian Wolves
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