I am about to purchase a server and send it to a colo provider.
Here is what I want to know.

1. Does anyone has any experience with 15k rpm SCSI HDD? How does it compare to 10K rpm SCSI HDD from performance and stability point of view.

2. How do you rate P4 1.6Ghz & DDR ram compare to PIII 1Ghz with Sdram? There isn' that many P4 around to choose from especially with SCSI system.

3. Case.. Should I choose 200W or 250W or 300W?

4. I am planning to purchase a SCSI system. But I am intending to add second IDE HDD as data backup solution. Will this be a problem??

5. Anything else I should be aware of when purchasing from those online servershop?

All coments are welcome. Thanks in advance.

1. Does anyone has any experience with 15k rpm SCSI HDD? How does it compare to 10K rpm SCSI HDD from performance and stability point of view.

15K SCSI drives do cost quite a bit more than good 10K drives (such as the Fujitsu MAN series). They are quite a bit faster in terms of seek time, however this would only make a big difference if you're running lots of heavy database type apps on the server. Reliability wise they are mostly just as good as long as they are properly cooled (sometimes a problem in 1 or 2U rackmount cases).

2. How do you rate P4 1.6Ghz & DDR ram compare to PIII 1Ghz with Sdram? There isn' that many P4 around to choose from especially with SCSI system.

Most people are still choosing PIIIs with SDRAM because DDR doesn't make much of a difference for most internet hosting. I would go PIII because it's a more proven platform (especially if you're running Unix/BSD).

3. Case.. Should I choose 200W or 250W or 300W?

300W - you can never have too much power to spare. It will also increase the life of the power supply if you under drive it rather than run it closer to it's limit.

4. I am planning to purchase a SCSI system. But I am intending to add second IDE HDD as data backup solution. Will this be a problem??

Shouldn't be as long as the motherboard also has onboard IDE (I haven't seen any that don't these days).

5. Anything else I should be aware of when purchasing from those online servershop?

I never have so I wouldn't know unfortunately.

One more question...I noticed some server comes with dual network card? I am just wondering what would be the point of having dual network card?

Load balancing.

H JoshC,

One use for dual network cards is in a firewall. One NIC for incoming traffic; one NIC for outgoing traffic. Also, one could segregate one's network if one had more than one box hooked up in a network. For instance, one NIC handling in and out HTTP traffic; one NIC handling calls to a separate database server.

As with most things computer -- use is limited more to one's imagination and crativity than anything else (not implying that every thing thought up is good to do, of course!).

Also, on the hard drive issue, check out the articles and benchmarks at http://www.storagereview.com/

Not only will you get some questions answered, you can also zero in on the exact model HD you want.

Take care,

Louis