[mdlug] Time to build a new server

[thomas at redhat.com]

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On 08/15/2011 07:43 AM, Robert Adkins II wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: mdlug-bounces at mdlug.org 
>> [mailto:mdlug-bounces at mdlug.org] On Behalf Of Mark Thuemmel
>> Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 9:47 PM
>> To: MDLUG's Main discussion list
>> Subject: Re: [mdlug] Time to build a new server
>>
>>
>> You might want to detail a few more goals;
>>
>> Is "here" at your business, or personal home use?
>>
> 
> 	Business Server.
> 
> 	Total of 30 users simultaneously hitting multiple sized files and
> low-end crap applications that run their own database and can share access
> to the file over a network on a shared disk.
> 
> 	I have been running such a setup for almost 12 years now, using
> desktop hardware. The initial "server", which replaced a more powerful, in
> absolute hardware terms, Windows NT 4.0 server, provided file access
> considerably faster. That was almost 12 years ago.
> 
> 	That server is long since dead.
> 
> 	I attempt to replace the "server" hardware every 3 or so years, to
> avoid suffering catastrophic hardware failures that bring the whole network
> down, direct me to focus singly on build a new server while being pestered
> every 5 minutes about whether or not it is done yet. On those days, if I had
> a taser with enough juice to hit 65 people, it would be drained within
> minutes.
> 
>> what is a "actual server" exactly?  Listed for sale in the "server" 
>> section of Dell or HP?  Like built to run 24x7, "server class"?
>>
> 
> 	Nothing over the top.
> 
>> why do you need hotplug drives?  is your uptime requirement 
>> so much that you can't power down and remove a few screws?
>>
> 
> 	I want my weekends.
> 
> 	I would rather leave the server up and running, have it scripted to
> duplicate the important data over night and then when I am in the next day,
> unmount a disk, take it out and put a different disk in. Then take a disk
> home every day and back every day.
> 
>> How are you plugging the drives in, and what kind are they?  
>> You need super fast 15000 rpm scsi drives, or going cheap 
>> with 5400 rpm drives?
>>
> 
> 	7200 to 10000rpm drives will be perfectly fine.
> 
>> Are you thinking ESATA or USB3 or what?
>>
> 
> 	I am thinking SATA.
> 
>> What is the capacity you need total?  Is this one or two 
>> terabytes, or enough to store your whole porn collection in HD?
>>
> 	
> 	1 TB will be plenty of storage capacity.
> 
>> Is this rack mounted?
>>
> 
> 	There's not really room for a rack mount setup in the closet. 
> 
>> How are you planning to backup?
> 
> 	Copying to a drive every night and swapping the drive out in the
> morning.
> 
>>
>> How often are you going to change the configuration of the drives?
>>
> 
> 	Every few days for the back-up drives, almost never for the data
> serving drives.
> 
>> Overall, consider getting a used "server" box with lots of 
>> drive bays that had Linux support from the manufacturer when 
>> they were originally sold.  IBM, HP, Dell have made lots of 
>> boxes that came with Linux a couple of years ago that can be 
>> found cheap and have lots of connectors for hard drives.
>>
> 
> 	I would rather not go with used, old hardware. Granted, special
> built server hardware is significantly better than tasking desktop
> mainboards to act as a server.
> 
>> Me, being the dangerous type, might look at a good Linux 
>> compatable esata card with the raid and number of drives I 
>> wanted, and a usb 3.0 card  for backup external drives.  Then 
>> build my own box with a 8 or 16 HD enclosure 4U case for SATA 
>> drives.  I'd buy a nice NIC or two and any old 
>> motherboard/cpu.  Probably jack the memory up to 8 gig just becuse. 
>>   I don't need dual power supplies, but a nice UPS is required.
> 
> 	It really doesn't need all that much memory, I have been running the
> servers on about 1GB of RAM since the beginning here and I never see the
> systems straining for memory resources.
> 
> 	My goal is to get more potential out of the server in a way that
> lets me stay home more often. I would like to have more free time on the
> weekends instead of being forced to come in at 3pm on a Saturday or 3pm on a
> Sunday, because that just happpens to be the time that nobody is using the
> server.

A coworker and I had a long talk just yesterday about this.

He had the opportunity to go with a very expensive ($3500) low-end
PowerEdge server that had ~ 8GB memory and an i7 processor with 1TB SAS
storage.

Instead, he went with a beefed-up Optiplex workstation with the same
CPU, double the RAM and 4X 1TB SATA drives for about $1500. Same
processing horsepower, more memory and more storage. He set up RAID 0+1
or 1+0 (I don't remember which right now) and got a screaming fast box
with fault tolerance for a pittance. He was able to buy a spare PSU at
the same time. The rest of the stuff prone to fail - CPU and memory - is
COTS stuff he can get locally in a pinch.

The Optiplexes are pretty good boxes, and make excellent small business
servers.

I've also built three white box hypervisors for my home office with
6-core AMD processors, 16GB memory and 500GB drives for ~ $510 each.
Upgrade to a 2TB drive in each and you could literally mirror your
servers instead of your drives. If any component on production failed,
just failover to the standby and repair the production machine at your
leisure.

Of course, with unlimited budget, I'd always go with a "real" server.
It's a risk/reward exercise.
- -- 
Thomas Cameron, RHCA, RHCSS, RHCDS, RHCVA, RHCX, CNE, MCSE, MCT
Managing Solutions Architect
512-241-0774 office / 512-585-5631 cell
http://people.redhat.com/tcameron/
IRC: choirboy / AIM: rhelguy / Yahoo: rhce_guy /Google+ http://ongpl.us/tdc
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