Just like to know if you think SCSI hard drives would be required on a system like this or would ibm deskstars do? I want to have lots of storage space for my customers so would a mixture be a good idea like maybe the OS files on a SCSI and the customers sites on a 76gb ide drive?

The machine im going to build will should have at least
1gb of ram and dual 1ghz PIII.

One last thing is there any differnce between motherboards that are designed for servers and motherboards that are for normal use?

Thanks

I definitly recommend SCSI drives. They are expensive, but they are a necesity. One of the biggest slow downs on a server is the hard drive itself.

If price is a problem, then you may want to look into getting multiple very fast ata100 drives and setup raid 0 (striping). Do this with at least 4+ drives and get a controler card that can read/write to multiple drives at one time. What striping does is that it writes 1 file across multiple drives such that a little piece is on drive 1, then another piece is on drive 2, etc...

If your controler can handle reading/writing to more then 1 drive at a time, it will speed up things allot.

Doing raid 1 (or raid 5 if you have the money) with SCSI drives is the best solution you can get.


As far as server motherboards and normal ones, there are some differences. Server motherboards are definitly faster. The bandwidth between certain bridges is definitly faster. As they say, you get what you pay for. If you get a $50 motherboard, don't expect that great of a performance.

That doesn't mean you should get the most expensive either, but stick with known "good" manufacturers such as Abit, Intel, etc...


Hope that helps.