Help on building a 2U server

[youph]

Hello all. I'm new to the forums, but not to Anandtech.

I have years of experience building PCs, but none building any type of server. I need to build a server for an nonprofit organization and would like any suggestions from the community. This server would mainly be running apache, hosting a 2000 user message board and some static web data, SMTP and POP daemons, a shoutcast server and finally an IRCD.

The budget is around $1000, but we'd like to keep it well below that number.

The server will need to run 24/7 with minimal downtime of course. It will be housed at a colocation datacenter. I'm definatly going to run a flavor of UNIX, still not sure if I want to go with FreeBSD or linux, but I'm leaning heavily towards SuSe linux. I do have a bias for AMD, so unless its of great advantage, Intel is out.

My real problem is what rack case to get. I really have no clue what manufacturers are good in this area and would like suggestions.

Second, in the 2U space, what mobos are avilable to me? Will a regular miniATX mobo work? Does it depend on the rack case? Are there low profile concerns I need to take into consideration? I don't want to get a mobo and find out it doesn't fit.

As far as the rest of the hardware goes, I'm pretty confident I can choose and install it (its the same hardware as PCs after all.) But if anyone has any suggestions on what mobos, RAM and HDDs are good for a server enviornment, by all means please suggest away.

The basic hardware I'm considering is:
AMD 939 based Athlon 64 (possibly a 940 Opteron) and appropriate motherboard
2x 512 MB RAM (possibly 2x 1 GB RAM if the budget allows)
2x 120+ GB SATA HDD

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bassyhead]

Does it have to be rackmount? If not you would save money, could just get a plain old case and use standard ATX boards and not have to worry about card profiles. If you like AMD, pick out an Athlon 64, an ATX (server maybe?) board and some ECC RAM.

 

[youph]

I wish it could be a regular case, but yes, its going in a colo, and has to be a 2U rack mount.

 

[Bassyhead]

About the concerns of card profile height, many 2U server chassis come with a riser card that plugs into a PCI slot and provides 3 PCI slots at a right angle so the PCI cards mount parallel to the board. You can probably find a chassis with a 400W power supply and a riser card for under $200. You might not need any cards anyways if the board provides everything you need, like ethernet and SATA.

Double check to make sure the board you purchase will fit in the chassis even though most accept standard ATX boards, they will have a maximum size listed somewhere.