Building a server....need speed

[MainFramed]

<MainFramed>

I'm going to be building a server for my dad's office, he needs serious speed (never built a computer for the purpose of a server) I was wondering what kind of CPU I will need, to many to choose from, maybe some of you fellow AT'ers could help me out in deciding which parts to pick out for this thing...

I was also considering water cooling (heard that it helps with speed, and the server will be running 24/7)

</MainFramed>

 

[DarkTXKnight]

Hey there, if you are building a server for his business, you need to avoid watercooling. This is only useful for overclocking and on something as important as a business machine you should not overclock as this can threaten reliability. You have not stated what he will be doing with this server at his job, but for general fileserverving you can build any nice stable box out of any of the higher end AMD's ( XP Athlon 64 etc) or Intel 2.4 ghz and above. I would go AMD of course since the money you save can go towards something else. If this is a fileserver you do not need a fancy graphics card either.... you will be concentrating on disk and RAM. if this is going to be a heavy use 24x7 (i.e. Oracle SQL)box you should go SCSI disks since that is what they are designed for . If not databse work then go with some large IDE drives.

Really you will do very well with :

more that 2 Ghz processor ( for databases Id go with a dual )
a lot of disk
1-2 GB of ram

no fancy graphics needed - it will be a total waste

Why don't you elaborate on what he wishes to do with it???

You should define "serious" speed. If he is like many people I come across they always say their servers are too slow, but once you find out what their sitation is it's not always appropriate to "blame the box"
Your Dad should tell yo what he needs to be able to do with this machine, how many people will use it etc... and we can give you a better idea of what to look for. Servers are not all that different in hardware from a machine that you build at home - in fact often what you would have at home is overkill. you just want something that will be responsive to heavy use by multiple people. That is as much Software and Networking reliant as building the ultimate box.

 

[MainFramed]

Originally posted by: DarkTXKnight




Why don't you elaborate on what he wishes to do with it???

You should define "serious" speed. If he is like many people I come across they always say their servers are too slow, but once you find out what their sitation is it's not always appropriate to "blame the box"
Your Dad should tell yo what he needs to be able to do with this machine, how many people will use it etc... and we can give you a better idea of what to look for. Servers are not all that different in hardware from a machine that you build at home - in fact often what you would have at home is overkill. you just want something that will be responsive to heavy use by multiple people. That is as much Software and Networking reliant as building the ultimate box.

He is one of the many who say his server is two slow. He'll be running programs like CAD , Quick Books, Intuit Master Builder, and probably Norton Internet Security (still debating). It will aslo be used majorly for filesharing. (Were going to use Server 2003 Standered Edt. as he has been)


Sorry for not clairifyng the above in my first post.


SCSI Hard Drives, do I have to get a certain motherboard for them, or anything differnt than usual, (I was planning on using SCSI) ?

 

[mechBgon]

They don't run those programs on the server itself, do they? You can build the fastest, quickest server in the world and it still won't get data to go anyplace faster than the network will carry it. And for 100Mbit, that would be about 8-10 megabytes per second. So don't neglect that angle. That said, look at a Tyan Thunder K8S and some Fujitsu MAS-series 15k SCSI drives maybe

 

[MainFramed]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
They don't run those programs on the server itself, do they? You can build the fastest, quickest server in the world and it still won't get data to go anyplace faster than the network will carry it. And for 100Mbit, that would be about 8-10 megabytes per second. So don't neglect that angle. That said, look at a Tyan Thunder K8S and some Fujitsu MAS-series 15k SCSI drives maybe

As you can see this just illustrates my knowledge with servers and networking.... (So why do 'they' say you put the program on the server...why.... now im confused. {maybe i should just save questions like these for another fourm})

 

[DarkTXKnight]

actually aside from the CAD software what youre goignt o be running isnt all that intensive. How many people will be connecting to the system when it is installed??? Now you do not have to buy a special motherboard in fact I would shy away from MB's that use onboard SCSI and get a seperate card -you'll thank me for it later yes a 15K SCSI will be great but he could get away with 10 K as well. I would definately look at your networking. Make sure you are on a 100MB switch, and if you do have many folks connecting at the same time get a switch with 2 1000 MB connections for the server and stick a gigabit card in it. It will help your bandwidth a lot

 

[DarkTXKnight]

some programs are server based, while others are client based. some ar desigend for multiple users on one server while others are meant for individual installs. It all boils down to where the best performance is. If you have great workstations, then there is no reason to tax your server with CAD stuff., it would be better to run that on your desktop and have a shared are on the server for data. Business use quickbooks should probablu run on the account's machine only with data on the server. If you search the software forumyou wil find many better replacements for Norton internet security. I would only use Nortonn corporate for antivirus and then something else for the firewal -= less issues.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: MainFramed

Originally posted by: mechBgon
They don't run those programs on the server itself, do they? You can build the fastest, quickest server in the world and it still won't get data to go anyplace faster than the network will carry it. And for 100Mbit, that would be about 8-10 megabytes per second. So don't neglect that angle. That said, look at a Tyan Thunder K8S and some Fujitsu MAS-series 15k SCSI drives maybe

As you can see this just illustrates my knowledge with servers and networking.... (So why do 'they' say you put the program on the server...why.... now im confused. {maybe i should just save questions like these for another fourm})

No offense, but I think you should wave off on this project. Peoples' jobs will be relying on that server. If you'd started by asking for recommendations on the best tape-backup software, fault-tolerant disk setups and a top-notch UPS, instead of ...watercooling? Yeah.

 

[Zambien]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: MainFramed

Originally posted by: mechBgon
They don't run those programs on the server itself, do they? You can build the fastest, quickest server in the world and it still won't get data to go anyplace faster than the network will carry it. And for 100Mbit, that would be about 8-10 megabytes per second. So don't neglect that angle. That said, look at a Tyan Thunder K8S and some Fujitsu MAS-series 15k SCSI drives maybe

As you can see this just illustrates my knowledge with servers and networking.... (So why do 'they' say you put the program on the server...why.... now im confused. {maybe i should just save questions like these for another fourm})

No offense, but I think you should wave off on this project. Peoples' jobs will be relying on that server. If you'd started by asking for recommendations on the best tape-backup software, fault-tolerant disk setups and a top-notch UPS, instead of ...watercooling? Yeah.

I agree. The fact that you can o/c a computer doesn't mean you can run/setup a server and the network to support it. :thumbsdown: Leave the professional jobs to the pros.

Maybe you should just get one of those dell server boxes and call it a day.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Maybe you should just get one of those dell server boxes and call it a day.

IIRC the biz tech support is till here in the U.S. and with the awesome hot deals on the poweredge series of late, this could be very good advice

 

[DarkTXKnight]

That was going to be my next suggestion.... whenever I get a business contract I have them buy Dell or HP server and then I charge for local support. I really try not to build a system for a business as youre asking for trouble. and extra phonecalls

 

[whorush]

how many people are using this? are they all on the same network? they all have 100 NICs? how much storage space do you need? how much do you want to spend?

are you guys really gonna be killing this thing? ie many people running huge files off it at once?

 

[mamisano]

Just get a Dell... and be done with it. I don't like the company personally, but you can not go wrong with one of their low end servers.

 

[uOpt]

Yeah, what kind of server?

Fileserver? Webserver? Database server? Quake server?

How many people?

What kind of backup?

What kind of reliability requirements?

What OS?

For starters, you want gazlllions of RAM, and ECC RAM at that, you probably want RAID-5 unless they want to trade speed for more effort in the backups. If it is a fileserver or other high-throughput network server you want a gigabit ethernet interface which is not on the PCI bus such as Intels CSA or NVidia's integrated chipset solution (didn't test the latter yet).