Server Specs

[betabillbig]

Hi all,

I'm setting up a webserver in my office, I thought that before I do I should get some advice from some people with knowledge...

Server load... at least for the forseable future will be low so I've decided to go for a 1mbs/256kbps cable modem. 256kbps upstream should be ok? How much do you reckon that should be able to handle?

Which should I go for: Athlon, Duron or P3? I was thinking somewhere around 500-mhz should do the trick I'm just not sure which out of Athlon and P3 would be best for serving. Duron would be the budget option right?

HD just an x-gigs ATA?
64, 128 or 256 ram?
I was thinking apache on redhat. Any reasons to go for win2k? (I don't think I can be bothered with the extra cost)

Thanks

 

[Cable God]

with 256K upstream, you would be maxed out with 4 simultaneous 56K surfers. You may wanna look at DSL or even a Frame Relay. I went from open cable (1-5mbps down and 1-2mbps up) to Frame Relay (1.544mbps) for my corporate site (not the one in my profile) and saved a ton over going to a "real" PPP T-1. Cable was just too unreliable and was down too much. With DSL or Frame Relay, you will (or should) get a block of public IP addresses from your data circuit provider as well. Most of these providers will do free DNS hosting for you if you don't know much about DNS as well if you have a circuit from them like DSL or Frame Relay. ANy other questions, feel free to email me: noel@noelucas.com

As far as the hardware, I am a Intel fan, but I think this WHOLE site runs off AMD if I am not mistaken. I saw that in an article somewhere here a while back. As far as hard disks, go SCSI. I learned quick IDE was way too ineffecient for a "business" web server. 128-256 mb RAM should keep you going for quite a while and handle quite a few users.

 

[betabillbig]

I looked at frame relay and damn is it expensive, out of my budget untill early next year anyways, when that time comes I'll upgrade to either that or probably a wireless radio link which is much cheaper and I can scale easily from 512kbps right up to 25mbps (not that I'll ever need to!).

Oh yea. Is wireless reliable enough?

But in the mean time the next 3 months or so the simple cable connection will be able to do the job while I get everything else set up?

I will go for SCSI then.

Thanks!

 

[Cable God]

Cable would work for a while probably, but I would shy away from wireless. Equipment is big $$$ from what I hear. Oh, if your cable provider uses DHCP and your IP changes, you're up the proverbial creek without a paddle Maybe you could use dynamic dns or something to that effect. Maybe qireless would work for you, but not for me

 

[Damaged]

Hmmm, for serving up web pages. I dunno. Depends on what type of content and what type of user really.

Serving up web pages is a fairly bursty type of serving. Think about it. User clicks on link, it downloads like mad, they read, then they do it again. This opposed to, for example, serving files via ftp.

However, this also depends on the content of the page. Are you doing db stuff, java, flash, something graphically intensive? This will require more bandwidth as well.

I have setup people with 128k frac DS-1 and they serve up some pretty minor content to some very niche groups and that's enough for them...for now.

Oh yeah...also if it's mission critical...I would NOT rely on cable modem or DSL. Too iffy right now. DS-1 or frame is the only way to go for mission critical stuff. Frame should be less because it's shared bandwidth. DS-1 will be more because it's dedicated.

 

[dirtboy]

Anand had an article awhile back and they are running their web servers on AMD Thunderbird's with Win2k and Western Digital ATA/66 hard drives. Read more about it here.

 

[andri]

Putting IDE hard drives in servers is really dumb. Anands boxes probably have lotsa RAM and don't access the hard drive so much (they have a separate database server).

It really hits performance. IDE vs SCSI problems don't show up so much in destktop computers, but servers should run all SCSI - the extra speed is worth the money.