Hi there people.

I am planning on building a server and need some help of where to get some components and cheep. I am having some difficulty in finding a lot of parts.

I am based in the UK.

Supermicro X5DPE-G2 Dual Xeon Motherboard
Supermicro SC933T-R760 3U Server Chassis
I need 15x 250gb Sata-150 HDD's
Dual 2.8 or 3.06 Ghz Xeon Processors (preferably 3.06Ghz)
4gb of ECC Registered RAM
Dual 3Ware Escalade 8506-8 hardware RAID-5/10/50 controllers

If anyone could help me find anything I really would appreciate it.

I am also interested in purchasing from websites from any country providing they ship to the uk.

Regards
Barry

You need 3,750 GB of space?! Wow.

How can you get 15 HD's in a 3U case? Heh, but anyway, dont try and be cheap. By paying more, you lessen the chance of things breaking. If you pay say $125 for a 512 MB RAM stick rather than $75. When that 512 RAM stick for $75 breaks, you'll buy another and end up paying $150. Of course the risk runs both ways but the odd are different when spending more for quality.

well you dont get all that because of the raid setup.

I am a bit confused as to what raid is best.

I want it so if one hard drive fails no data is lost. I have been advised of 2 options but I cant decide which. Any input is appreciated.

pair of RAID-50 -
6x 250G RAID-50 plus 2x hot-spare on 1st SATA RAID card
6x 250G RAID-50 plus 1x hot-spare on 2nd SATA RAID card
total of 2TB (2000G) will be available to OS.

or

pair of RAID-5
7x 250G RAID-5 plus 1x hot-spare on 1st SATA RAID card
6x 250G RAID-5 plus 1x hot-spare on 2nd SATA RAID card
total capacity is 2.75TB (2750G)

Barry

How can you get 15 HD's in a 3U case?

Here is a link to the product page.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/3U/933/SC933T-R760.cfm

Heh, but anyway, dont try and be cheap. By paying more, you lessen the chance of things breaking. If you pay say $125 for a 512 MB RAM stick rather than $75. When that 512 RAM stick for $75 breaks, you'll buy another and end up paying $150. Of course the risk runs both ways but the odd are different when spending more for quality.


Yeh I can agree with you there. (I dont mean by as cheap ram as possible I only really meant cheap for the model numbers I listed).

Barry

Originally posted by Bazz_2k1
Hi there people.

I am planning on building a server and need some help of where to get some components and cheep. I am having some difficulty in finding a lot of parts.

I am based in the UK.

Supermicro X5DPE-G2 Dual Xeon Motherboard
Supermicro SC933T-R760 3U Server Chassis
I need 15x 250gb Sata-150 HDD's
Dual 2.8 or 3.06 Ghz Xeon Processors (preferably 3.06Ghz)
4gb of ECC Registered RAM
Dual 3Ware Escalade 8506-8 hardware RAID-5/10/50 controllers

If anyone could help me find anything I really would appreciate it.

I am also interested in purchasing from websites from any country providing they ship to the uk.

Regards
Barry

i just check with some of my suppliers. those components that you listed are not cheap. what's your budget? how about getting it from tire1 pc vendors such as Dell or HP. their server with spec. like you listed may be lower since they buy in bulk.

Thanks jt2377.

Yeh unfortunately they aren't cheap.

Well I just wondered how much cheaper it would be to do it myself than a company I have spoke with.

I have been offered:

Dual Xeon 3.06Ghz CPUs, 512K, 533mhz FSB
Supermicro X5DPE-G2 dual Xeon server board
Intel E7501 server chipset
4096Meg ECC Registered DDR-266 PC-2100 (4pcs 1G)
8x DIMM slots for up to 16-Gig RAM
15x 250G SATA-150, 7200rpm, 8M buffer, hot-swap
Dual 3Ware Escalade 8506-8 hardware RAID-5/10/50 controllers
on-board dual Intel Gigabit 1000/100/10 NICs
on-board ATI Rage Video, 8Meg
SuperMicro SC933T-R760 3U Rack-mount Chassis
15x hot-swap SATA carriers and backplane
760w triple redundant (380w 2+1) Power Supplies
Mounting Rail/Bracket Kit included
no provision for internal CD-ROM nor floppy drive
========
US$8125

OPTIONAL EXTRAS - Does anyone reccommend taking any of these extras?

extra Intel dual port gigabit NIC: $195 each
extra Intel dual port 100/10 NIC: $95 each

I wanted to build my own server but at the end of the day I know quite little about building servers. Well ive built several pc's so it wouldnt be so much a problem its just configuring it. I have found someone who would do it for about £75 (thats based on a days work and he is unsure how long it would take).

Well I dont really have a budget as at the moment I am just looking into prices to give me some idea of what its going to cost. I am probably going to be getting one in about 2-3 months time.

I did look into dell but I feel dell are overpriced. I did like hp plus a friend of the family who lives in california works for hp i think so i may be able to get a discount on a server I dont know I would need to look into that.

Regards
Barry

I have managed to source all the components other than a Dual 3Ware Escalade 8506-8 hardware RAID-5/10/50 controllers.

Can anyone find me a link to such a product?

Regards
Barry

Here is one link (http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20031114/raidcore-12.html)

I think this will help you.

Unfortunately the number of Supermicro distributors, suppliers and builders is a bit limited in the UK, but try Broadberry (http://www.broadberry.co.uk/) and Armari (http://www.armari.co.uk/).

GND (http://www.gnd.com/) should be able to help you out with 3ware cards, and they're very helpful people when it comes to building servers.

Thanks Eck & Paul.

Unfortunately yes there are few distributors in the uk.

As I said above I dont specialise in servers. The thing that scares me the most is RAID. I installed RedHat as a desktop version on my computer on a seperate permission that was okay.

Anyway I have bought several book on the subject so there should be no problem.

I am going to pay for a pro to set it up anyway. I would build it myself.

Anyway to the point. As I am having 15 drives do I need more than one raid card?

Barry