4U server for storage

[qhead]

I'm looking to build few cheap 4U coloservers. It's for a startup so unfortunately they don't have lots of cash laying around. Later when cashflow gets better these will become dev servers and they will buy so called real servers for production.

Servers will be mainly used for webserver with in-memory database and as file storage.

I'm currently divided between i3 build and Xeon build. I'm not sure if Xeon is actually worth it yet.

Here are the components I have gathered so far. I'm very open to all suggestions but if you are going to recommend something, please write why also. I need to be able to explain my choices

Motherboard should have at least 6x SATA and 4x ECC RAM spots.

€155.37 ASUS P8B WS
€175.42 Intel Xeon E3-1230
------------ OR ----------------------
€89.90 Intel DP67BA
€90.90 Intel Core i3-2100, 2x 3.10GHz

€153.24 Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 4GB PC3-10667E ECC CL9 (DDR3-1333) x 4
€59.04 Codegen 4U-500
€329.70 Samsung EcoGreen F4 2000GB x 6
€112.93 Seasonic X-Series X-560 560W

* prices are from http://geizhals.at/ - I live in EU so Germany looks like the cheapest place to get IT components.

 

[mfenn]

Please don't buy consumer-grade parts for co-located servers. You'll cause yourselves a ton of headaches. If you can't afford servers up front (and that's fine) use a cloud provider like Amazon AWS, Rackspace, etc. to get your operations up and running. Then once you have some cashflow, you can jump to real servers of your own.

 

[qhead]

Please don't buy consumer-grade parts for co-located servers. You'll cause yourselves a ton of headaches. If you can't afford servers up front (and that's fine) use a cloud provider like Amazon AWS, Rackspace, etc. to get your operations up and running. Then once you have some cashflow, you can jump to real servers of your own.

Can you explain more specifically why consumer-grade parts are so bad? What I have read about servers, it isn't so much about components but the support you get if something breaks. Of course you don't want to buy the cheapest motherboard you can find but I fail to see the difference if you get components where build quality is good. According Google's study, there's no difference in failure rates between server and consumer grade harddrives, it's just marketing hype.

 

[RaiderJ]

Can you explain more specifically why consumer-grade parts are so bad? What I have read about servers, it isn't so much about components but the support you get if something breaks. Of course you don't want to buy the cheapest motherboard you can find but I fail to see the difference if you get components where build quality is good. According Google's study, there's no difference in failure rates between server and consumer grade harddrives, it's just marketing hype.

I'm inclined to agree - ECC RAM I'd say is important (which you have anyway), and certain motherboard components, such as Japanese capacitors are important as well. If you don't mind doing research on part compatibility and doing your own testing once you have things built you're probably fine.

A tricky thing can be OS compatibility, in my case I'm finding some quirky issues with OpenIndiana on my own storage server, but that's a definite corner case.

 

[qhead]

I'm inclined to agree - ECC RAM I'd say is important (which you have anyway), and certain motherboard components, such as Japanese capacitors are important as well. If you don't mind doing research on part compatibility and doing your own testing once you have things built you're probably fine.

A tricky thing can be OS compatibility, in my case I'm finding some quirky issues with OpenIndiana on my own storage server, but that's a definite corner case.

Yes, you are right about ECC. Especially when these servers will also have small portion dedicated to run Redis which is in-memory database and bitrot would be very, very unwanted.

We are going with Ubuntu Server just because it's one of the most popular Linux distros out there, it's maintained and has very good support for hardware.

 

[theevilsharpie]

Can you explain more specifically why consumer-grade parts are so bad?

Enterprise grade equipment like a Dell PowerEdge or an HP ProLiant has the following features that would be of interest to you (among others):
- Fault tolerance (hard disks, cooling fans, power supplies, memory, etc.)
- Sensors that monitor equipment throughout the server for signs of failure before they happen
- Onboard management computers that allow you to remotely connect to the server's console, load disk images remotely, and diagnose server failures even if the main server isn't functioning or powered off

Considering the fact that your servers will be co-located, you will want to consider how you will access the server if there is a problem with it. If you're using enterprise-grade equipment, you'll pretty much always have access to the system as long as you have power and an Internet connection. With consumer-grade hardware, if the system has a problem that prevents normal server access, you'll probably have to schedule an on-site visit.

 

[mfenn]

Enterprise grade equipment like a Dell PowerEdge or an HP ProLiant has the following features that would be of interest to you (among others):
- Fault tolerance (hard disks, cooling fans, power supplies, memory, etc.)
- Sensors that monitor equipment throughout the server for signs of failure before they happen
- Onboard management computers that allow you to remotely connect to the server's console, load disk images remotely, and diagnose server failures even if the main server isn't functioning or powered off

Considering the fact that your servers will be co-located, you will want to consider how you will access the server if there is a problem with it. If you're using enterprise-grade equipment, you'll pretty much always have access to the system as long as you have power and an Internet connection. With consumer-grade hardware, if the system has a problem that prevents normal server access, you'll probably have to schedule an on-site visit.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

Additionally, Dell, HP, IBM, etc. spend millions and millions of dollars on testing and validation. You do not want to be debugging some weird compatibility issues on a colo'd server.

 

[dclive]

Agreed. Buy Dell/HP/IBM/etc. hardware, don't do whitebox. Imagine in 2 years if the MB dies - what, are you going to wait a week (or even 2 days) for the vendor to get a replacement to you, and hope it works, and hope that was the problem? Seriously, get Dell in there, get a 5 year warranty, and do it right.