Can anyone recommend a decent/inexpensive server?

[ChrichtonsGirl]

I posted this in OT, but I think it was OT there.

Keep in mind I'm a beginner and speak in small words - I am an Admin of a bulletin board that gets about 250K hits per month. We've been hosted by a free BB site for the last 9 months, but we've finally decided to get our act together and make it an actual revenue-producing forum. We're having trouble deciding on which server to go with though, and since I don't even know where to look, I thought I'd ask for opinions.

We want to keep it as inexpensive as possible to begin with (we can always upgrade after we make our first million), and we're going to be running WindowsNT (we think) with wwwthreads forum software.

Any suggestions?

 

[Chatterjee]

Are you willing to build your own or buy from Dell or something?

-S

 

[Russ]

<< 250K hits per month. >>



How are you defining hits? Hits (anything pulled off the server), page views or visitors? This makes an enormous difference in the level of hardware you'll need.

If you're defining it as most do, anything; html files, graphics, etc., etc., then it's actually pretty low volume.

If, OTOH, that is VISITORS, you need a pretty beefy piece of iron.

Let me use this thread as an example. Each time someone pulls it up, that would be one page view. But, it's probably 40 hits because of all the little graphics files.

Russ, NCNE

 

[spidey07]

I agree with CHATTERJEE. Building your own from scratch involves a good knowledge of the application and what kind of hardware will do the job for the least cost. If you are not comfortable with building then dell or compaq (yes, i'm a compaq server bigot) can sell you whatever server you need to fit the job.

I don't know anything about wwwthreads software but it should be some sort of database application. In that case you main concerns are I/O, disk, processor, memory (did I leave any part of a server out! ...oh yeah, network.

I'm sure some of the guys here can help out for a &quot;least bang for the buck&quot; server built from scratch. Otherwise spend a little bit more and get a compaq or dell. Check the minimum requirements from the application and call their tech support on what is recommneded for your load. Servers are meant to serve up applications or services. Don't spec out a server for a single app and then wind up running three others on it. But if it is possible that you would grow beyond this app then by all means WAY over spec the server.

hope this helps.

spidey

ps - come on guys, I know I'm a compaq MAN but his requirments are LOW COST. You have got to be able to help him out?

 

[Russ]

spidey07,

WWWThreads has a couple versions: PHP and Perl.

Russ, NCNE

 

[blstriker]

Actually, if you're looking for a very decent server, you can buy the Dell Poweredge 300. It's normally $1000, but now it's 300 off (expires today!) so it's $700. Add some more ram and a larger HD (not from Dell, it's too pricey) and you have a really sweet server that can handle most things.

I would love to get this server for my website, but it's out of my range... for now.

Check it out: Dell Servers

 

[ChrichtonsGirl]

Russ, I didn't even think about &quot;hits&quot; having more than one definition - we get about 250K page views per month according to our current host, but definitely NOT that many unique visitors, if that makes any difference (I suspect not).

I am most definitely not comfortable with building my own, I'm actually going to let someone else handle all the server issues, including maintenance. We were never really expecting the forum to turn into anything, and I am barely competent on my own PC, never mind a server, so I'm really lost here. It took us months to figure out which software we could manage with which OS.

Thanks for the suggestions, Chatterjee, spidey07, Russ and blstriker. Even just what's suggested here so far gives me some ideas of who to call today.

 

[Xanathar]

I would like to second Spidey's recomendation for a dell or compaq server. If you plan on having somone else handle the maintence, would you rather them have to troubleshoot it, then deal with the RMA pollicy (or the money out of your pocket while crossshipping a product, overnighted) from an online or local distributer, or would you rather make one phonecall, and have a new product shipped to you overnight, with only you having to stick the old stuff into the box and put it on your doorstep?

A website being down for more then 8 hours more then twice in a week has been shown to loose visitors permamently. If you plan on making a living, how much downtime can you really afford?

 

[ChrichtonsGirl]

Thanks for the suggestions and opinion, Xanathar!

I should probably add that the person who will be handling the server is one of my co-Admins and a friend who has some limited experience with databases and servers through work. Our worst problem is that he's in Tennessee and I'm in Wisconsin, so we're trying to figure all of this out on each of our ends and then meet in the middle to make a decision.

*Edited to clarify which Admin - not an Anandtech Admin.

Another edit: from the guy who'll be running it when I asked him which version of WWWTHREADS we'd be using:

&quot;We're using the Perl version, it runs on windows NT and Unix. We are using
NT. Don't worry about feeling lost, it's almost a daily occurrence for me.
If you have any questions I can try to answer them. I'm trying to figure
out how to set up the software remotely on pennyhost for now so we can play with it. We may need to go to our own server, can you forward me any of the specs they suggested? We already have dsl on the Mac, but I'm not sure if that will be enough bandwidth for the traffic you're getting. I have a 600mHz PIII pc at home
right now with 128 megs of RAM. We'll definitely need something beefier but that
might be a start. I can also get most of the software from work that we
would need.&quot;

 

[wyvrn]

I know that Anandtech has added some Thunderbird machines to their arsenal of web servers and are happy with them. Let me go find that article...

Here it is

I do not know if that will help, but it might give you an idea of what to expect when you build one.

 

[Russ]

ChrichtonsGirl,

250K page requests per month is actually some pretty good traffic. Much better then the average web site. You are probably in the neighborhood of 15K to 20K visitors per month. Also, since the BBS software is creating the html &quot;on the fly&quot; you would need a bit of heft in your server.

If I were building one for a similar site, and it's just one server, not a cluster or farm, I'd look at dual 700's to 750's (you could make due with less, but CPU's have gotten pretty cheap), and at least 256MB RAM. SCSI disk system would be nice because the I/O is so much better, and some sort of backup is a must.

Russ, NCNE

 

[ChrichtonsGirl]

Thanks, Russ, that actually helps me quite a bit along with the other reasearch I've been doing today. It's pretty sad that we've been getting hits like that for the last five or six months and have been sitting on a free host, not bothering with ad revenue or affiliate programs. Good thing I don't do this for a living.