I'm going to be building a server for my school, and I have no idea what to get, dual processors, single, AMD or Intel. Ecc ram or regular, scsi, serial or ide. I have about 1000 bucks to play with. I'm going to be using it as a linux terminal server with about twenty virtual clients running x and open office and mozilla. I figure I need at least a gig of ram. Any thoughts?
Server for school
- Thread starter atomstryker
- Start date
TheToOTaLL
Platinum Member
- Oct 7, 2001
- 2,246
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There's nobody else who knows anything beyond building a computer with a Pentium Intel 4, and I do have some idea what I'm doing. I'm just posing an unbiased question to illicit complete responses. So, can anybody help me? What do you reccomend?
hey dude, as much as I like to build computers....and Im betting you do too.....I have found out that when it comes to servers your best bet is actually to just buy a used one thats been phased out of a classy buisness enviroment. Get on Ebay and search for Compaq Proliant or HP net server. These things are engineered to extreems inorder to be the most reliable, powerful, upgradable, servicable systems they can be. you WILL get alot more for your money than if you build it yourself.
I have a compaq proliant 6500 at my parents house that acts as an internet connection server, file server, and web server.
Specs: quad p3 500mhz xeon -- 2gb ECC Ram -- 7 hotswap 9.1gb SCSI drives -- hot swap 64bit pci -- scsi raid -- dual tape drives
$1100 $26,900 new in 2000 when sold to AT&T
I have a compaq proliant 1600 at school as a half life game server, and web server
Specs: dual P2 450mhz --- 640 MB ECC ram -- 5 hotswap 9.1 scsi -- scsi raid --
$300
I have two proliant 2500's with dual pentium PRO 200mhz/512kb and a gig of ram each
and another 2500 just like the one above that are sitting im my parents basement.
Where I used to work i was able to get 4 proliant 1600's fully loaded on a pallet for 200 dollars. that was 50 dollars each!!
I sold two for 300 dollars, kept one to use for myself...and still have one extra. I sold one 2500 for 200 dollars and still have 2 that i dont use. the 6500 is left over from a deal i worked out over the summer.....i got it for free
I have a compaq proliant 6500 at my parents house that acts as an internet connection server, file server, and web server.
Specs: quad p3 500mhz xeon -- 2gb ECC Ram -- 7 hotswap 9.1gb SCSI drives -- hot swap 64bit pci -- scsi raid -- dual tape drives
$1100 $26,900 new in 2000 when sold to AT&T
I have a compaq proliant 1600 at school as a half life game server, and web server
Specs: dual P2 450mhz --- 640 MB ECC ram -- 5 hotswap 9.1 scsi -- scsi raid --
$300
I have two proliant 2500's with dual pentium PRO 200mhz/512kb and a gig of ram each
and another 2500 just like the one above that are sitting im my parents basement.
Where I used to work i was able to get 4 proliant 1600's fully loaded on a pallet for 200 dollars. that was 50 dollars each!!
I sold two for 300 dollars, kept one to use for myself...and still have one extra. I sold one 2500 for 200 dollars and still have 2 that i dont use. the 6500 is left over from a deal i worked out over the summer.....i got it for free
well it all depends on what you're going to use it for. Things like Oracle can use dual processors. Other wise it'll be cheaper to go with one. Also, depending one the functionality and who will be maintaining the server later on, I would probably stick with windows. Granted you may hate windows, but it will be easier to transfer knowledge later on.
narzy
Elite Member
- Feb 26, 2000
- 7,006
- 1
- 81
ok, now that I've gotten that out of my system.
servers generally don't require huge throughput, as most of the time they are going to be serving data from their hard drive to the nic, the fastest that link is going to take place is probably 100mbps, most schools don't have gigabit in the schools yet.
redundency and stability are a MUST, this isn't like your home PC where somthing can break and you can live with it for a few days wile a replacement part is aqquired. if this is a server that is relied on, ANY down time is unacceptible from a users point of view.
<warning> this is the section where narzy starts a flame war and is tould how many ways from sunday he is wrong</warning>
before I go any further, and after heading the above warning, I will tell you my background when it comes to educational computing. I've just gotten out of highschool for my exit project I built, set up, and maintained a linux thin client network of 40 concurrent machines that scaled to every computer in the school to try and take the system down. unfortunatly we didn't succeed and the server kept on ticking (this is around 400 clients BTW). I am now a consultant for the school district and one of 2 district wide system tech support folk. and thats my part-time job.
I am a collage student, I also work for comcast on the security team. I'm not trying to flaunt anyone here with my credentials, I am only trying to justify my answer based on my knowlage and avoid getting called nasty names.
what narzy reccomends for hardware:
tho I have faith in the Opteron line of AMD products they are from any industry stand-point un-tested. intel chips have dominated the market for years and have proven to be reliable hardware. if you want to use that logic, then Intel is the way to go. however.
from my personal experiance, AMD 32bit Athlon CPU's have an unfortunate tendancy to burn themselves up. I've run amd systems, they preformed up to par in my opinion however if somthing goes wrong, or the ambiant air gets to hot, the CPU, with stock cooling, unoverclocked will burn. I have not seen (and have not looked) any data on the heat disapation of the opteron line of processors or the thermal protection that is on them. We do run Opteron servers at work, and they work very well. but I want to give you as much info as I can.
tho if you do go with a 64 bit chip from AMD you'd probably want to accompany it with a 64bit OS, and if you plan on running windows 2003 server that can cost a considerable amount more.
CPU: its a draw
memory: the more the better and ECC on a server is a must 2GB is a good starting number for a file server go up as needed.
HD: SCSI Raid 5 array 4 drives minimum one drive set as a hot fail over. aim for 36gb scsi drives
video: most server boards have it onboard if not a cheapo s3 based vc will be fine
sound: not needed
case: up to you, I prefer rackmounts because their versitile, but a chemming design server chassie would be fine as well
PSU: redundant, hotswappable. find one you like.
and on that note, we built a very similar system from dell last year for about 3 grand.
goodluck on your project
.
servers generally don't require huge throughput, as most of the time they are going to be serving data from their hard drive to the nic, the fastest that link is going to take place is probably 100mbps, most schools don't have gigabit in the schools yet.
redundency and stability are a MUST, this isn't like your home PC where somthing can break and you can live with it for a few days wile a replacement part is aqquired. if this is a server that is relied on, ANY down time is unacceptible from a users point of view.
<warning> this is the section where narzy starts a flame war and is tould how many ways from sunday he is wrong</warning>
before I go any further, and after heading the above warning, I will tell you my background when it comes to educational computing. I've just gotten out of highschool for my exit project I built, set up, and maintained a linux thin client network of 40 concurrent machines that scaled to every computer in the school to try and take the system down. unfortunatly we didn't succeed and the server kept on ticking (this is around 400 clients BTW). I am now a consultant for the school district and one of 2 district wide system tech support folk. and thats my part-time job.
I am a collage student, I also work for comcast on the security team. I'm not trying to flaunt anyone here with my credentials, I am only trying to justify my answer based on my knowlage and avoid getting called nasty names.
what narzy reccomends for hardware:
tho I have faith in the Opteron line of AMD products they are from any industry stand-point un-tested. intel chips have dominated the market for years and have proven to be reliable hardware. if you want to use that logic, then Intel is the way to go. however.
from my personal experiance, AMD 32bit Athlon CPU's have an unfortunate tendancy to burn themselves up. I've run amd systems, they preformed up to par in my opinion however if somthing goes wrong, or the ambiant air gets to hot, the CPU, with stock cooling, unoverclocked will burn. I have not seen (and have not looked) any data on the heat disapation of the opteron line of processors or the thermal protection that is on them. We do run Opteron servers at work, and they work very well. but I want to give you as much info as I can.
tho if you do go with a 64 bit chip from AMD you'd probably want to accompany it with a 64bit OS, and if you plan on running windows 2003 server that can cost a considerable amount more.
CPU: its a draw
memory: the more the better and ECC on a server is a must 2GB is a good starting number for a file server go up as needed.
HD: SCSI Raid 5 array 4 drives minimum one drive set as a hot fail over. aim for 36gb scsi drives
video: most server boards have it onboard if not a cheapo s3 based vc will be fine
sound: not needed
case: up to you, I prefer rackmounts because their versitile, but a chemming design server chassie would be fine as well
PSU: redundant, hotswappable. find one you like.
and on that note, we built a very similar system from dell last year for about 3 grand.
goodluck on your project
.excellent post narzy, but your ideas won't fit in a $1k budget. I agree with those who said to get to get a second-hand Proliant or something similar.
yea narzy, thats great.....but I wouldnt touch a single processor server with a 10ft pole.
Its not about just running multi-threaded applications better....which most GOOD server apps are, its also about being able to run lots of single threaded software also.
I have a great example....my Proliant 1600 <called cascades> dns cascades.ath.cx
Cascades runs HLDS(half life dedicated server) hosting Firearms mod for half life to a max of 24 players. With 24/24 in the server, the 10MB connection to the inet is pushing 10% usage of the nic to INTERNET traffic.
HLDS is single threaded and keeps CPU-0 (P2 450) about 90% busy on large maps.
The server also has a player statistics program that scans the game log files and generates HTML pages with player ranks, specs, and all sorts of other info. After a week there are about 50 text log files and around 2000 individual players. After the pearl programed program runs......there are about 2500 new HTML and image files on the hosted drive. This application is also single threaded.
Apache then hosts the stats pages to the world via a dedicated 7200RPM scsi 9.1. Apache is multithreaded
What happens is that the server is sitting with 90% usage on CPU-0.....then every hour the stats application does its thing. Based on the nature of the task it has...and the aplication, it uses 100% cpu usage no matter what untill its done. It takes about 10 minutes on cascades. All the while, apache is taxing both CPUS when it gets page requests from the internet.
HLDS is set for affinity on only CPU-0 and the pearl app is set for affinity on CPU-1(which is pegs to 100%) that leaves 10% power for apache to do its thing. This has been working great!
With one CPU the pearl app would steal the entire processing power of the server and cause all 24 players to eventually drop and create huge delays for web site page requests.
sure i could lower the priority of the pearl process.....but it nearly doubles the time to complete
Its not about just running multi-threaded applications better....which most GOOD server apps are, its also about being able to run lots of single threaded software also.
I have a great example....my Proliant 1600 <called cascades> dns cascades.ath.cx
Cascades runs HLDS(half life dedicated server) hosting Firearms mod for half life to a max of 24 players. With 24/24 in the server, the 10MB connection to the inet is pushing 10% usage of the nic to INTERNET traffic.
HLDS is single threaded and keeps CPU-0 (P2 450) about 90% busy on large maps.
The server also has a player statistics program that scans the game log files and generates HTML pages with player ranks, specs, and all sorts of other info. After a week there are about 50 text log files and around 2000 individual players. After the pearl programed program runs......there are about 2500 new HTML and image files on the hosted drive. This application is also single threaded.
Apache then hosts the stats pages to the world via a dedicated 7200RPM scsi 9.1. Apache is multithreaded
What happens is that the server is sitting with 90% usage on CPU-0.....then every hour the stats application does its thing. Based on the nature of the task it has...and the aplication, it uses 100% cpu usage no matter what untill its done. It takes about 10 minutes on cascades. All the while, apache is taxing both CPUS when it gets page requests from the internet.
HLDS is set for affinity on only CPU-0 and the pearl app is set for affinity on CPU-1(which is pegs to 100%) that leaves 10% power for apache to do its thing. This has been working great!
With one CPU the pearl app would steal the entire processing power of the server and cause all 24 players to eventually drop and create huge delays for web site page requests.
sure i could lower the priority of the pearl process.....but it nearly doubles the time to complete
slag
Lifer
- Dec 14, 2000
- 10,473
- 81
- 101
I just gave away 3 such beasts at work recently.. They were data general boxes with 18 gig scsi drives--5 of them per server, quad xeon 500's, 4 gb of ecc ram, etc. Actually, i think one of the machines had 9.1 gb scsi drives in it.
They are pretty much worthless unfortunately unless you plan on heating your computer room with them. Unless you are looking for raw file access times, a much cheaper xp 1700 or p4 system with fast ide will run circles around it.
EDIT. Just went back and reread the criteria. Terminal server will run fine on a single or dual processor box for the load you want to put on it. SCSI is a must as is 2 gb of ram or more.. 4 gb seems to be standard anymore it seems.
AgaBoogaBoo
Lifer
- Feb 16, 2003
- 26,108
- 5
- 81
How does this sound:
2 AMD Athlon MP 2600+, 266MHz FSB, 256K L2 Cache Processor - OEM
1 Allied 400W Power Supply ATX400P4 w/ Two Fans ***AMD APPROVED*** UL, CSA, FCC Approved
GIGABYTE AMD 760 MPX Chipset Server Motherboard for Dual AMD Socket A CPU, Model "GA-7DPXDW-P" -RETAIL
Kingston ValueRAM 184 Pin 1GB ECC Registered DDR PC-2100 - Retail
SAMSUNG 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model SP1213N, OEM Drive Only
2 Thermaltake Volcano 11+ Xaser Edition,Opti-fin technology, made of All Copper.
Will this meet the needs of 20+ linux thin clients?
2 AMD Athlon MP 2600+, 266MHz FSB, 256K L2 Cache Processor - OEM
1 Allied 400W Power Supply ATX400P4 w/ Two Fans ***AMD APPROVED*** UL, CSA, FCC Approved
GIGABYTE AMD 760 MPX Chipset Server Motherboard for Dual AMD Socket A CPU, Model "GA-7DPXDW-P" -RETAIL
Kingston ValueRAM 184 Pin 1GB ECC Registered DDR PC-2100 - Retail
SAMSUNG 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model SP1213N, OEM Drive Only
2 Thermaltake Volcano 11+ Xaser Edition,Opti-fin technology, made of All Copper.
Will this meet the needs of 20+ linux thin clients?
Cerb
Elite Member
- Aug 26, 2000
- 17,484
- 33
- 86
For $1000, see if you can find a used PowerEdge or Proliant that can handle lots of memory (you'll probably want 2GB ECC) and preferably newer u320 SCSI HDs (or if you feel safe with it or need lots of room, IDE).
Narzy has a great post there, but you can't follow it and stay within $1000...at least not keeping a stable system.
If you're thinking about going with Opterons, don't worry about it...they do fine. You won't be able to be in the same room with the retail cooler, but it won't overheat.
If you want to build one, since you main bottleneck will be the network, don't worry so much about speed, but rather, capacity. A single Opteron 240 w/ 2GB or more of RAM (and go ahead and get ECC, and even PC2100 will likely be fine, but PC2700 or PC3200 might help) or single P4C w/ the same will likely be plenty. Using IDE drives, go straight for a RAID 1...no fancy RAID 0+1 or anything. IDE drives might not fail a lot, but you're dealing with the school, and they will likely hate you anyway. SCSI RAID 5 would be best, with the OS itself on its own RAID 1 (IMO), but you don't have that kind of budget.
I was going to price a basic system out, but even w/ cookies full-out enabled, Newegg is being a pain.
Narzy has a great post there, but you can't follow it and stay within $1000...at least not keeping a stable system.
If you're thinking about going with Opterons, don't worry about it...they do fine. You won't be able to be in the same room with the retail cooler, but it won't overheat.
If you want to build one, since you main bottleneck will be the network, don't worry so much about speed, but rather, capacity. A single Opteron 240 w/ 2GB or more of RAM (and go ahead and get ECC, and even PC2100 will likely be fine, but PC2700 or PC3200 might help) or single P4C w/ the same will likely be plenty. Using IDE drives, go straight for a RAID 1...no fancy RAID 0+1 or anything. IDE drives might not fail a lot, but you're dealing with the school, and they will likely hate you anyway
. SCSI RAID 5 would be best, with the OS itself on its own RAID 1 (IMO), but you don't have that kind of budget.I was going to price a basic system out, but even w/ cookies full-out enabled, Newegg is being a pain.
Cerb
Elite Member
- Aug 26, 2000
- 17,484
- 33
- 86
Probably not. Gut feeling and simple google research clearly indicate that SCSI is what you need. A dual PIII w/ SCSI drives should do the trick--find an old one somewhere, and get lots of RAM and bigger HDs for it.
Quite seriously, $1000 is hardly a decent budget for anything more than a web/file/print/mail or very light DB server.
$2000 might be able to do it just fine, assuming it doesn't need to be rackmount.
ultimatebob
Lifer
- Jul 1, 2001
- 25,134
- 2,450
- 126
If you want this server to be totally reliable, $1,000 probably isn't enough. If you have 20+ users relying on this server all the time, it needs to have RAID, ECC memory, and redundant power supplies and cooling. At least you're using Linux, however, so you don't have to worry paying for a Windows 200x Server license on top of the hardware costs.
Also, choose STABLE hardware. That means an Intel processor, Intel motherboard, and reliable hard drives with a 3 year warranty. You're not going to be doing anything silly like overclocking or tweaking the core voltage on this thing, so make sure to choose hardware that is rock solid.
Also, choose STABLE hardware. That means an Intel processor, Intel motherboard, and reliable hard drives with a 3 year warranty. You're not going to be doing anything silly like overclocking or tweaking the core voltage on this thing, so make sure to choose hardware that is rock solid.
narzy
Elite Member
- Feb 26, 2000
- 7,006
- 1
- 81
ahh man! you mean I have to budget too! cripes. make my job difficult tonight guys.
http://secure.newegg.com/app/WishR.asp?ID=578246
+ 2x512 PC3200 RAM from Crucial = $170
____________________________________
grand total: $1000 + shipping
http://secure.newegg.com/app/WishR.asp?ID=578246
+ 2x512 PC3200 RAM from Crucial = $170
____________________________________
grand total: $1000 + shipping
What is the concensus on Narzy's system?
If nobody thinks that anything is wrong with it, I'll go ahead and get it.
Again, thanks everyone.
If nobody thinks that anything is wrong with it, I'll go ahead and get it.
Again, thanks everyone.
ultimatebob
Lifer
- Jul 1, 2001
- 25,134
- 2,450
- 126
Narzy laid out some good guidelines, and came up with a good shopping list. You might want to add some more memory, though, and get a cheaper video card. Since this is just a server, a basic Radeon 7000 or even an Intel motherboard with integrated video would work.
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