What would you put in this rig if money wasn't an issue?

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

I want to build a server. I am very familiar with regular rig components, but I am not as familiar with servers. If you din't care about money what components would you put in a serer rig. I would like this server to be as multitasking as possible. What components would I need for a server to be a file, http, gaming, printing and so on. In other words what would a server that could act as various types of server need.

Thanks,
pitupepito

P.S.: I did some research but most of what I got was how to set up the software in a server.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

John knows

 

[BurnItDwn]

SCSI raid card and a big raid0+1 array of 15K RPM drives

 

[mechBgon]

Quantum DLT1 tape backup
APC SmartUPS Pro 750XL
Intel dual-port 10/100/1000 server NIC
SCSI RAID5 w/hot spare
Gigabit switch for your network's backbone
Windows2000 Server operating system

If you can afford that much, then I will bother listing some more goodies

 

[BG4533]

How heavy of a load is expected? Definately SCSI. Dual Processors, MPs or Xeons. Read reviews for the boards. A simple 8mb or so graphics card. A good, solid PSU, if you want even more reliability go with a redundant one. A good UPS unit. Server grade network card, depending on the internet connection and number of them, you may want 2 load balancing ones.

Brian

 

[pitupepito2000]

Thanks for all the input. This is for a project for school. I am suppossed to come with the set up of my ideal server system, and answer questions on why I picked it, and why this set up would be the ideal rather than another one. The problem is that I don't know very much about servers. I am trying to read as much as I can. Again what would be the parts that you would pick if money wasn't an issue. Could you guys also post a link on how to build a server.

Thanks for the info,
pitupepito

P.S.: Keep it coming

 

[glugglug]

If money is no object, why are all those things going in ONE server?

If money is truly no object, skip RAID. disk subsystem

Get a PCI video card, not AGP (unless your playing games on the server ). The AGP aperture eats part of your system virtual memory space, which is limited to 976MB even if your system has 36GB.

Also, with the exception possibly of the file server application, none of what you mentioned would make use of more than 1 or 2GB. Taking advantage of the 36-bit addressing extensions to have more than 4GB memory actually slows an x86 system down by up to 30%. (at least until Hammer comes out).

 

[mechBgon]

Uptime, backup and fault-tolerance should probably be your #1 concerns. A fast server is good but the #1 thing is that it's always up, right?

Oh, and disclaimer: I'm a retired bicycle mechanic, not a server-design guru so this is nothing more than MHO.

 

[paralazarguer]

What would you put in this rig if money wasn't an issue?

All the best parts.

 

[paralazarguer]

Thanks for all the input. This is for a project for school. I am suppossed to come with the set up of my ideal server system, and answer questions on why I picked it, and why this set up would be the ideal rather than another one. The problem is that I don't know very much about servers. I am trying to read as much as I can. Again what would be the parts that you would pick if money wasn't an issue. Could you guys also post a link on how to build a server.

Oh. It's for school.

Alright, well you're going to want a redundant power supply and a UPS. You're also going to want hot swapability and the ability to run the server while replacing broken parts. I'm not familiar with the details of the assignment but you could try a huge 1U rack fill with redundant nodes. Each with 4 2.4Ghz P4s ala Nvidia engine room video tour. You would have a seperate unit for data store filled with redundant raid arrays. Actually, the nvidia engine room tour would be a good model for you to follow.

 

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

The specs of the project are to build a computer, money not being an issue, explain why I chose the system design, and compare the system setup that I chose to other pre-built server setups.

Thanks for all the help keep it coming,
pitupepito2000

 

[mechBgon]

I suggest studying this

 

[pitupepito2000]

Hi thanks for the linky mechBgon, but now I know that I either want raid 10 or raid 50, but I can't decide which one is the best for a server. The raid 50 has a lot of speed which is a plus, but on the other hand raid 10 provides great high performance and stability.

Thanks for all the input please keep it coming,
pitupepito2000

P.S.: please post more links

 

[paralazarguer]

nm

 

[pitupepito2000]

please help!!

 

[glugglug]

For large scale sequential access, i.e. video editing, Raid 5+0 is faster than raid 1+0.

However, for random access (far more typical for most server applications), raid 1+0 is a lot better.

To write a small piece of data to raid 5+0, you wait for ALL disks in one of the raid 5 sets to seek and spin to the right spot. With raid 1+0 you wait for only the slowest of 2 drives.

Read access time is also faster with Raid 1 then even with raid 5 because raid 5 there is only one disk that has the small piece of data you want (besides rebuilding it from parity), while raid 1 read access time is based on whichever of the 2 drives with the data finds it first.

1+0 is also a lot more common and will be supported by more controllers.

 

[pitupepito2000]

How about the other components? So far what I have learned is that you want to have as much redundancy as possible in order to have good uptime. I am thinking about a redundant power supply, nic cards, and more. What type of things do you look in a motherboard for a server. What are the big manufacturers for server components. Thanks for the help!!

 

[mechBgon]

Tyan and Supermicro are two of the biggies for motherboards. I'm not an expert on RAID but my impression was that RAID5 would be easy to expand by adding more drives at will, and not necessarily in multiples of two. Is that correct or am I just ?

Another factor to consider is the form factor and size of the case. For instance, a big chassis with lots of expansion room might sound great until you find out that your customer pays more for the additional rackspace it occupies. Over the lifespan of the server, this could add up.

 

[GoSharks]

get a dell. serious - for a server you are going to want somebody to fall back on for your 3am hardware failures.

 

[pitupepito2000]

This is a project for school, I am not really going to buy the components. I just need to present the specs for a server that I would build, and explain why I chose those components over others. I don't know very much about servers, and that's why I thought about asking you guys in this forum.

Please help me,
pitupepito

 

[mechBgon]

Maybe reading some of these articles will help make things click: AnandTech IT Computing articles Also, rummage around Dell's site and scope out their server configurator, here's a good place to start scoping out your "competition:" Dell rackmount servers