I have looked at www.qsol.com and www.apache.com anyone have any experience with them?

I have bought 1 raq3i from cobalt with 512Mb of ram for about $3000 which is quit expensive for the kind of power I got. I can get a server with double or tripple the power of a raq for the same price at one of the websites I listed above.

I am planning on starting a freehost so I will need quite a bit of power. Has anyone dealt with qsol.com or apache.com? Or can anyone recommend anyone thats better?

I am getting 3-4 servers and going to cluster them. I am trying to get the most power for the money but reliabilty is very important. I could build one myself and save a few hundred but reliabilty a major factor since I am colocating.

Thanks

Check http://www.rackable.com they have some good equipment

Rackable looks nice as well. I can't find any prices on their website. I need to find the place with the best quality and price as possible. Once I buy 3-4 servers from a company I will stay with them and keep buying for many years as long as my company will keep growing. Good tech supports a major issue too. Any have good experience with any good rack server providers? Thanks for your replys. Most people are willing to read but lazy to give input =(

Check out the Dell PowerEdge 1550 server. They are really inexpensive and their support is top notch.

We have several :) of them, no problems what so ever!

Hope that helps,

I priced out a Power Edge 1550

Dual 1 GHz
2 GB Ram
73 GB Harddrive

$5,682.00

Woah!!! Bit out of my price limit per server. I know Dells reliable. But quite pricy compared to other places I checked. I need tons of power cause I am planning on starting a freehost. Thanks for input.

Ebay, Ebay, Ebay!!!

http://listings.ebay.com/aw/plistings/list/all/category11211/index.html

$5,682.00 Well, here is how you do it. Buy the base model DELL:

Dell PowerEdge 1550
Dual Pentium 933 Mhz
256 MB RAM
18 GB Hard Drive

$1,700.00

Then you buy the memory and hard drive else where, that will bring your price down substantially.

Dell's servers are nicely prices but they are very high on individual components. You can get the exact same components, for 1/3 - 1/4 the cost elsewhere.

Hope that helps,

www.penguincomputing.com try them. I think they can offer a group of 3 servers already configured to be clustered. They affer beowolf and a load balancing cluster. :-) And prices are decent.

Originally posted by RackMy.com
Well, here is how you do it. Buy the base model DELL:

Dell PowerEdge 1550
Dual Pentium 933 Mhz
256 MB RAM
18 GB Hard Drive

$1,700.00

Then you buy the memory and hard drive else where, that will bring your price down substantially.



To get to that price you also need to change their 'Silver' support option to the 'Bronze' one which is free. The Silver option costs about a gazillion dollars and you probably won't need it.

JoseQ

I don't feel too good about ebay. If the server hardware fails it would be a pain to return it to the guy who sold it to you or would have to worry about even receiving a working one.

I have checked out penguin computing but they only offer linux server. I was hoping for FreeBSD since they can handle more traffic.

So not many of you guys have experiences with qsol.com or apache.com? They seem to offer pretty fair prices.

Originally posted by ClusterMania
I have checked out penguin computing but they only offer linux server. I was hoping for FreeBSD since they can handle more traffic.

Side note: When you purchase a server, you can install any linux flavor you'd like on it. They may ship it with RH, but that shouldn't stop you from buying the server if you like it.

Thanks for telling me about Rackable Systems. Their sales is great, they are very detailed in helping me get the right server for my needs. They gave me a quote. Great price. I hope their tech support is good. Anyone have experience with them? I read google is using them. Heres a quote I got them. They recommended me to use Tualatin over P3.

Does this look good to you guys?

FreeBSD Server

1U Cabinet Mount System Chassis
with front to rear flow through
air cooling.
Tyan 2518 SCSI motherboard for dual Tualatin 1.2GHz Processor.
133Mhz system bus with 4 25 degree slanted
DIMM slots for a maximum of 4 GB of DRAM.
Ultra160 disk support, 2 PCI, 64 bit/66MHz
expansion slots.
Dual on-board 10/100 Thernet LAN
2 x Intel Tualatin FC-PGA 1.2GHz CPU with copper
heatsink/fan for maximum cooling
efficiency.
4 x 512MB PC133 DRAM (ECC)
2 x 36GB 10,000 RPM Seagate SCSI HDD
Micro CDROM & Micro FDD integrated into
this 1U chassis.

Price ea: $3145/ea.

why do you need 2 CPU? As far as I know thats just good for big databases, but for normal webhosting not really necessary.

well, I have looked at qsol. In my eyes RAM is little expencive, better you add more on your own. (->pricewatch.com $28 - PC133 512MB )


Q10.Ds 1U - SCSI 250W PS
Tyan Dual CPU SCSI Dual NIC (4GB)
Pentium III 1GHz/133MHz x 2
256MB REG ECC RAM x 1
HD 1: 36GB SCSI 10K RPM x 1
HD 2: 36GB SCSI 10K RPM x 1
PCI 1: Empty PCI Slot
Slim Line Teac 24X CD-ROM
Sony 3.5 Inch Floppy Drive
Red Hat Linux 7.1
Standard 3 Year Warranty
West Coast FedEx 3rd Day

Purchase price: $2,695.00
48 Month lease: $80.85



also interesting: with 2x 74 GB SCSI HD:

Purchase price: $3,085.00
48 Month lease: $92.55


I do not know about their service or anything, perhaps you try to search this forum ...

Personally raqs are underpowered. Their Os hack is .. well let's say short of the full feature set and in most times is misleading and confusing to setup applications for. Sometimes applications wont' even work :o

It's up to you :rolleyes:

Originally posted by quazi
Personally raqs are underpowered. Their Os hack is .. well let's say short of the full feature set and in most times is misleading and confusing to setup applications for. Sometimes applications wont' even work :o

It's up to you :rolleyes:
This has been established already, we're looking for alternatives at this point.
Originally posted by ClusterMania
I have bought 1 raq3i from cobalt with 512Mb of ram for about $3000 which is quit expensive for the kind of power I got. I can get a server with double or tripple the power of a raq for the same price at one of the websites I listed above.

Hi,

We have a qsol.com server:

2 - 1ghz cpu's
4gb ram
36 gb 15k scsi raid

Its working very well so far, and they had the fastest turnaround on my order of any place we've ever dealt with. They will most likely be getting more business from us in the future.

-Brendan

i've been window shopping for servers as well and www.qsol.com is on my list so are www.penguincomputing.com and www.racksaver.com

but i came across 2 others

www.aberdeeninc.com
and
www.eracks.com

some have 1 yr warrantys and some have 2 or 3 yr warrantys

i'm just doing my research now

How about this?

Antec RackMount Case w/ 300 Watt Power Supply
SuperMicro S2DL3 DUAL SCSI Motherboard
1024 Mb SDRAM, PC-133 8ns Registered ECC CL3
Seagate 18.4 Gb UW SCSI Hard Drive, 15,000 RPM
8 Mb AGP Video Card
Creative Labs 52X CD ROM Drive
Mitsumi 3.5" 1.44 Mb Floppy Drive
DUAL Genuine Intel XEON 1.0 Ghz., 256 kb Cache
Keyboard & Mouse
3 COM 3C905C 10/100 LAN Card
$3,250.00

Or this?

Antec RackMount Case w/ 300 Watt Power Supply
Abit VP6 DUAL RAID Array Motherboard
512 Mb SDRAM, PC-133 8ns
3 - Western Digital 40 Gb 7,200 RPM Hard Drive
8 Mb AGP Video Card
Creative Labs 52X CD ROM Drive
Mitsumi 3.5" 1.44 Mb Floppy Drive
DUAL Genuine Intel Pentium III 1.0 Ghz., 256k Cache
Keyboard & Mouse
3 COM 3C905C 10/100 LAN Card
$2,050.00

Originally posted by iwannabe
Or this?

Antec RackMount Case w/ 300 Watt Power Supply
Abit VP6 DUAL RAID Array Motherboard
512 Mb SDRAM, PC-133 8ns
3 - Western Digital 40 Gb 7,200 RPM Hard Drive
8 Mb AGP Video Card
Creative Labs 52X CD ROM Drive
Mitsumi 3.5" 1.44 Mb Floppy Drive
DUAL Genuine Intel Pentium III 1.0 Ghz., 256k Cache
Keyboard & Mouse
3 COM 3C905C 10/100 LAN Card
$2,050.00

Where you get that?:eek:

Originally posted by creid


Where you get that?:eek:

So sorry.
I didn't post the link, did I?

I am at home now and I saved the link at
office computer:(

I promise I'll post the link first thing in the morning right here:D

Jonathan

Originally posted by creid


Where you get that?:eek:

Here is that link:)

http://www.ashtabuladigital.com/serverseries.html

Note:
I didn't buy anything from them.
One of my account holders forwarded me the URL
about two years ago.

I bookmarked it and forgot all about it until yesterday:D

Jonathan

Originally posted by NORRITT

Purchase price: $3,085.00
48 Month lease: $92.55



Here is an advise, try getting into 24 month leases .. most likely the server won't last more that that before you decide it's too old ;)

Don't you have to send the server back to them if you lease the server? I think if you do a cluster them you just buy a bunch or 1U servers and keep added more servers and you will have the power of a super server for a much less price. I am not exactly sure on how you cacualte the processing power of clustered servers. Maybe I have the wrong idea. I thought adding a server to a cluster is like adding more ram to a motherboard.

What kind of networking equipment is best for spliting a T3 to a bunch of clustered servers?

Originally posted by NORRITT
why do you need 2 CPU? As far as I know thats just good for big databases, but for normal webhosting not really necessary.

well, I have looked at qsol. In my eyes RAM is little expencive, better you add more on your own. (->pricewatch.com $28 - PC133 512MB )


Q10.Ds 1U - SCSI 250W PS
Tyan Dual CPU SCSI Dual NIC (4GB)
Pentium III 1GHz/133MHz x 2
256MB REG ECC RAM x 1
HD 1: 36GB SCSI 10K RPM x 1
HD 2: 36GB SCSI 10K RPM x 1
PCI 1: Empty PCI Slot
Slim Line Teac 24X CD-ROM
Sony 3.5 Inch Floppy Drive
Red Hat Linux 7.1
Standard 3 Year Warranty
West Coast FedEx 3rd Day

Purchase price: $2,695.00
48 Month lease: $80.85



also interesting: with 2x 74 GB SCSI HD:

Purchase price: $3,085.00
48 Month lease: $92.55


I do not know about their service or anything, perhaps you try to search this forum ...


For the ram I would not use cheap ram. I will not buy top quality hardware and put in cheap 28 dollar ram into it. Uptime and reliabilty is very important. I would at least get 512MB 133MHz ECC Register Samsung SDRAM $75.00 from Compu-Tera. Not sure how much I am being charged for ram buy Rackable though.

Originally posted by ClusterMania

For the ram I would not use cheap ram. I will not buy top quality hardware and put in cheap 28 dollar ram into it. Uptime and reliabilty is very important. I would at least get 512MB 133MHz ECC Register Samsung SDRAM $75.00 from Compu-Tera. Not sure how much I am being charged for ram buy Rackable though. of course you are right, but the charge much more than $75 ..

Check out AcmeMicro.com - there site is soooo slow to load but there prices make up for it as does the service and the build quality.

Anyone have experience setting up a cluster? What kind of networking equipment do I need? Is a the HP Procurve Switch 4000M a good Switch for a cluster? I got a Quote for a Extreme Networks Basic Layer 3 Summit 24 is $3495.00 and the HP Procurve cost $1,675.95

Anyone have experiences with these kind of switches?

Is Qsol the only company that offers leasing options. I quickly went through the other companies and I didn't see and financing or leasing options.

Thanks.

Originally posted by WebBloom
Is Qsol the only company that offers leasing options. I quickly went through the other companies and I didn't see and financing or leasing options.

Thanks.

A lot of companiues offer leasing options, email them. Dell.com has Great Servers and leasing.;)

Chris

This one seems to be ok:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1286521621

Originally posted by microsol
This one seems to be ok:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1286521621 Well, they write "Disk interface Ultra DMA 33/66". Isn´t Ultra DMA 100 or even 133 already state of art?

I donno, but invest in a dual P III without SCSI but even with a slower IDE HD than possible would not make much sense in my eyes.

what do you think?

look here:

http://www.online-spectrum.com/rack_sys/r175.htm

this server is even faster, offers DMA 100 Mode, more RAM and is even cheaper!

... just my .02 ;)

You'd have to plug the drives into the on-board RAID controller for UDMA100 as the spec on the site I believe is wrong as the server works chipset only supports UDMA33.

Originally posted by NORRITT
look here:

http://www.online-spectrum.com/rack_sys/r175.htm

this server is even faster, offers DMA 100 Mode, more RAM and is even cheaper!

... just my .02 ;)

The cheapest value i have seen so far ;)

Dual Intel 1.13Ghz Tualtin-S (512k L2 Cache)
4Gb ECC Registered Kingston RAM
4 x 60Gb IBM 7200rpm HDD in Adaptec 2400A RAID Controller
CD-ROM + Floppy
2U Case

$2883 including building, delivery and wire transfer fee.

From AcmeMicro.com

Try PogoLinux.com :)

Originally posted by KDAWebServices
Dual Intel 1.13Ghz Tualtin-S (512k L2 Cache)
4Gb ECC Registered Kingston RAM
4 x 60Gb IBM 7200rpm HDD in Adaptec 2400A RAID Controller
CD-ROM + Floppy
2U Case

$2883 including building, delivery and wire transfer fee.

From AcmeMicro.com

Nice spec KDA, gonna get meself some of those, thanks m8

You could always look on Ebay or QXL if you want some cheap servers. I've gotten a few good deals from there.

David

Is IBM ram better than Kingston Ram? Someone said that if you buy and add ram to your server yourself it would be alot cheaper than buying a server packed with 4 Gigs of ram.

http://www.compu-terra.com./productm.cgi?MM
1GB SDRAM 133MHz ECC Register 128x72 IBM $148.00

http://www.8anet.com/merchant.ihtml?id=25&step=2
1024MB, 1GB, PC133 ECC Reg. SDRAM, KVR133x72RC3/1024, Support Supermicro P3TDL3, Lifetime warranty $ 148

And is DDR worth the money? Its double the price of SDRAM.

Thanks for so much input guys!!!!!

Originally posted by ClusterMania
Is IBM ram better than Kingston Ram?

IBM is not building RAM on their own, they also buy it from others (i.e. Kingston).

Do they get a better quality? - I do not belive

Why sell they at that high price? - big businesses pay it anyway ... :rolleyes:

for using DDR RAM you need a special motherboard

Is this specs good for a 100/gig bandwidth server? I'm going to host only a few domains in it.

Here it goes:

Q10.s 1U - SCSI 180W PS
Intel 815 Chipset - One NIC
Pentium III 1GHz/133MHz x 1
256MB ECC RAM x 2
HD 1: 18GB SCSI 15K RPM x 1
HD 2: No Item Selected x 1
PCI 1: Adaptec 19160 U160 1CH SCSI
Sony 52X CDROM EIDE
Sony 3.5 Inch Floppy Drive
Red Hat Linux 7.1
Standard 3 Year Warranty
East Coast FedEx Next Day
price= $1,454.00


Tell me what you think. Thanks

Originally posted by TheRealDeal
Is this specs good for a 100/gig bandwidth server? I'm going to host only a few domains in it.

Here it goes:

Q10.s 1U - SCSI 180W PS
Intel 815 Chipset - One NIC
Pentium III 1GHz/133MHz x 1
256MB ECC RAM x 2
HD 1: 18GB SCSI 15K RPM x 1
HD 2: No Item Selected x 1
PCI 1: Adaptec 19160 U160 1CH SCSI
Sony 52X CDROM EIDE
Sony 3.5 Inch Floppy Drive
Red Hat Linux 7.1
Standard 3 Year Warranty
East Coast FedEx Next Day
price= $1,454.00


Tell me what you think. Thanks

You got yourself a nice server there!;-) Maybe bit more ram....

Chris

Originally posted by creid


You got yourself a nice server there!;-) Maybe bit more ram....

Chris

I think that is the MAX ram for that Motherboard. :)

I doubt 256mb is the max unless it is a pretty poor quality board. 512MB is the max for the Intel 815 chipset though.

Originally posted by KDAWebServices
I doubt 256mb is the max unless it is a pretty poor quality board. 512MB is the max for the Intel 815 chipset though. It says 256 x 2 :)

And 512 is the max for that motherboard.

Hi,

While we are on the subject I just bought the following:


256 MB Ram
9.1 GB IBM SCSI Hard Drive (Might put a second 9.1GB in and configure as RAID1)
Windows 2000 Advanced Server
CD-Rom
2 x 100Mb/s Ethernet Ports


Do you think this will be suitable to host 50 - 100 sites? Or should I implement some of the changes I thought about (more RAM as well maybe?).

Also which is better pcAnywhere or Terminal Services in Win2k AS?

Thanks,

David

Ooops, that'll teach me to read things slower in the future. Nothing wrong with an i815 Mobo, we've got one running rock steady.

Yeah its 256 x 2.

What are the RAID controllers for? Should I get them?

I will and I always will (as long as time permit and money is the limited resource :D) build my own servers ... With $3000 I can have 4-6 medium range web servers (with 512MB, P3/800), etc ....

I have build 8 web servers, 5 is being used and have not single problem yet on any of them (knock on the wood).

cheers,
:beer:

Sorry, I forgot to say it's a 650Mhz Pentium 3 which can be upgraded to 750Mhz and the motherboard supports dual CPUs although only 1 is in at the moment.

What are the RAID controllers for? Should I get them?

The RAID controllers give greater reliability/speed for your hard drives. RAID 0 allows you to have two hard drives appear as one, RAID 1 allows you to your web server setup so that if one hard drive fails the other takes over, and so on (I'm not sure about the other RAID configurations, they go upto 10 I think)

David

Also which is better pcAnywhere or Terminal Services in Win2k AS?TS is much better, faster and more secure than PCA. Plus it's free :)Do you think this will be suitable to host 50 - 100 sites? Or should I implement some of the changes I thought about (more RAM as well maybe?). I would save your money and buy MS Server 2000 instead of Advanced Server unless you need clustering/loadbalancing (that is the only difference between the two). Maybe buy a more RAM.

Hope that helps!

Don't you need Advanced Server to use Terminal Services?

I've got both Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server, as I bought Server and then someone gave me Advanced Server shortly after :angry:

I'm probably going to be looking to sell Windows 2000 Server on at some point.

I think you're right about adding more RAM since it's so cheap. What about the second SCSI hard drive? Or faster/dual CPU?

Thanks,

David

Don't you need Advanced Server to use Terminal Services? Big misconception (TS is included with all versions of server).

The ONLY difference between MS Advanced Server and Server is that AS has clustering and load balancing features. That's it! So unless you need clustering and load balancing, plain old Server works just fine :) !

Hi,

Thanks for correcting me on that.

I might as well install Advanced Server seeing as I have it and sell my copy of Windows 2000 Server. Don't you think?

David

Unless you don't need Cluster/LB services and can make more money off selling AS :)

Yeah, I could. What's the normal selling price of Advanced Server?

David

~ $1,500.00 US :)

Well it makes more sense to keep Windows 2000 Server and sell Advanced Server if I can make more money off it.

So there is no difference apart from Load Balencing and Clustering? No extra ASP components? Or anything like that?

Thanks for your help I just don't want to lose AS if it's going to be useful,

David

Hey Guys,
Good news to all. From what I understand Dell is going
to offer 0% financing on all small-medium sized business
purchases over 500 dollars! This means wicked good deals
for smaller companies.
I think I also noticed 200 dollars off one of the 1u's the other day. So take a look, and read the article below.

Here's a great article!
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2822063,00.html

Good Luck,
Brad

Just to double check, take a look at MS comparison page:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/serverfamily/default.asp