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OEM servers - toughy

A

apropos

Junior Member
I'm looking to buy several severs soon to start up a company. They will be for DNS/http/email/ftp/irc/etc.

I was looking at the Dell PE 1750 because of the SCSI Raid 5 (Perc-4 DI). The problem with buying Dell stuff is that I hate Dell. I've had many bad experiences with their customer service in the past. I looked at HP though and it looks like they aren't using SCSI for the most part. Most of their Proliant DL series seems to use ATA hdd.

There's other things that I also have found between the two that confict.

Basically these will be Unix/Linux servers so I do have to watch out for hardware support. I'm hoping to use FreeBSD or OpenBSD on the servers... possibly NetBSD. I'll use Linux mainly as a worst case scenario if I can't get support from the BSD"s. It's not that I don't like Linux... I'm just more familiar with the BSD's.

Anyways, I've been trying to make a decision on what to buy and it's tough. I figure that I need at least 2 DNS servers... a mail server... an http server... and a mySQL server. On top of that, if I buy rackmount servers, I'll need a rack.. I have no idea where to get racks that don't cost a grand (that seems steep for a hunk of particle board and steel). I also need to get the switches ( I was assuming Cisco, but I'm open to suggestions).

Anyways, any insight that people could offer would help. It's one of those decisions that's like buying a car... it's big investment, so I don't want to screw it up. lol. To boot, this is my first "real" server purchase. So, any help is appreciated. Thanks. 🙂
 
Would it be possible to build them yourself? Are you going to have a network admin? What is your budget? How much power are you expecting to need?
 
Only the very bottom of the HP line uses ATA. All of the DL360's on up have SCSI.

When I need cheap, I've been using these Supermicro servers from ASA Computers. I use the single processor 1U SATA raid systems - $1600 for twin 250GB drives in a RAID1. They fly, and run FreeBSD very nicely. Something to consider...
 
I was hoping not to build them myself as I'd like the pretested stability, and the hardware warranties....

I will be the network admin for this system.

My budget I was anticipating would not exceed 10k
 
Do yourself a favor. You might want to check out Compaq's server offerings. I'm not a fan of their desktop, but the servers they make are of great quality and they're a step above most others.
 
Originally posted by: warcrow
Do yourself a favor. You might want to check out Compaq's server offerings. I'm not a fan of their desktop, but the servers they make are of great quality and they're a step above most others.
Click to expand...
I agree. I've been extremely happy with the Compaq Proliant servers I've administered in the past. Running Compaq servers 24/7 for 3-4 years straight (without as much as hiccup) has been the norm for me.
 
How many employees are there? What kind of storage needs do they have? Is there a current backup plan in place or is that part of the $10K as well?
 
I use Dell 1750s, 2600s and a handful of 2500s at work. They haven't been that bad, but some of my coworkers used Compaq servers in the past (now HP) and they liked them more than the Dells. Support from Dell has been spotty. Sometimes you get a good, experienced tech, and sometimes you get a noob that doesn't know how to mount a tape drive or connect a power cable and you end up calling back...

Unlike most of Dell's home user support, all of the corporate and govt support reps speak perfect English.

Edit: the Dell cases are a dream to work in if your servers are local and you do your own hardware replacements.
 
I work with both Dell and HP every day. Both are fine, but the HP's are a notch above in most all respects. I prefer and purchase the HP's when buying tier 1 servers.

With a budget of 10k, though, you need to think about second tier. See my post on Supermicro's via ASA computers above. Those are nice boxes!
 
Basically anything from HPaq with a Xeon in it has SCSI disks.
The only exception in the DL range are the DL140/145's, those are their cheapo cluster offerings.

Unfortunately OpenBSD doesn't support the 5i integrated RAID adapter that HPaq uses for all of their boxes.
 
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