I'm curious as to whether a normal pc for a local store would suffice as a web server with the right parts ? I purchased my lastest pc from http://www.computeralliance.com.au/prices.asp for home use

but their prices are pretty good in Australia

What parts are needed beside the usual that get listed ? Anyone care to list al parts ? controller cards and all ?

This would be for a dual cpu system - it's just a thought now since don't have such money on me yet :)

I wouldn't use a PC designed for home use as a server... a lot of companies out there offering inexpensive and sometimes expensive PC's are generally using boards similar to the following:

MicroATX formfactor
Integrated, onboard sound, modem, video, etc...
Lots of them are made by PC Chips...

To quote a PC Chips rep at a meeting for a company Im with (we build home PC's)

"We sell 1 million motherboard a month!"

This was followed up by a bunch of us shouting "Because they all get RMA'ed!"

Generally speaking, home PC's just don't deliver the reliability that a server would be expected to.

As far as parts to build your own. I would generally stay away from AMD in general, however if you are deadset on an AMD try not to put one in a 1U case as AMD's get a lot warmer than a PIII will. That aside, I would go with 1ghz chips. If you are buying them from a place that has competitive pricing they won't cost all that much more than something in an 800mhz range.

Motherboard: You mentioned you are building a dual CPU system. I really like the ServerSet motherboards made by Asus and Tyan. Both are a very good company I have had good experience with, you will spend a bit more for a good board but it's well worth it. Both companies offer models with onboard SCSI. SCSI hard drives is also a good way to go, isn't too much more than IDE, and if you look at performance you can easily justify it.

Memory: Get a lot of it, look for a good name too. I've had luck with Apacer, Kingston and generally any brand that uses Infineon chips. I've always used ECC in servers nowdays, it's not much more than standard memory too. With memory prices down now, it's a good time to buy. If I remember the retail price of a 512mb ECC stick is $190 where I work.

NIC: Get a good and reliable NIC, Intel makes a great NIC as does 3com.

Hard disks: I would always buy the fastest rpm drive you can get for the money, and if possible go with SCSI. If you can't afford SCSI get some ATA/100 7200RPM IDE drives and make sure your motherboard supports ATA/100, it's not a bad idea to purchase a $40 ATA/100 card from Promise Technologies either, these generally give you much better performance than the onboard ports.

I think that just about covers all you need to know. Just make sure you allow plenty of room for cooling and load it up with fans. If you are using the system for hosting perhaps you might not want to consider dual cpu's. It would be faster, but after all... you don't exactly want to cram a 1000 users on a single server. In my opinion it's better to get servers that may not be as fast but put a small number of users on it. If you have one server with a bunch of people and that server goes down, your going to have a lot more customers upset :)

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Mike

i think most NOC's require that you send them a 1U case, since it occupies less space... as for everything else, always use top of the line equipment....

Any NOC that you send to should quote you a price for whatever size case you want to send them, else what would the people who want to use Xeons etc. do?

Originally posted by kunal
i think most NOC's require that you send them a 1U case, since it occupies less space

That's just silly. The only thing they require is that you send them a check for the space and bandwidth you use.

I would agree with Phiberop, especially concerning memory. As memory is so cheap, there is no excuse for not loading up with 512M or better. For drives, it would depend on what sort of stress you think they will be under. If it's just for you, personally, IDE would be fine unless you think you'll be thrashing the drives continuously. For anything else, if you have the money, go SCSI.

agreed it sounds dumb.. but ppl NOC's prefer it..

thanks guys i'm just planning waaaaaay ahead of time (6 - 12 months) to setup this purchased server as a dedicated mysql database server for connecting with my current leased dual p3 866, 768mb ram 18gb scsi hdd server so i'd be paying for rack space and setup without bandwidth costs for this 2nd server :)

my vbulletin forum current get's 2,000 new posts/day and the current server handles very well all of my sites and forums. But one day adding that dedicated mysql server will be needed - especially at the rate of growth i am going at.

Originally posted by kunal
i think most NOC's require that you send them a 1U case, since it occupies less space... as for everything else, always use top of the line equipment....

Which NOC will require you to send 1U case? you can ask for 4U (or even 10U if you want) rack space (good enough for Xeon, etc) and you just have to pay more for the rack charge... That's all...

cheers,
:beer:

Originally posted by Phiberop
[snip]

Hard disks: I would always buy the fastest rpm drive you can get for the money, and if possible go with SCSI. If you can't afford SCSI get some ATA/100 7200RPM IDE drives and make sure your motherboard supports ATA/100, it's not a bad idea to purchase a $40 ATA/100 card from Promise Technologies either, these generally give you much better performance than the onboard ports.
[snip]



Mike, all very excellent suggestions. I would add one more item that you only glanced upon. If you use high-speed SCSI drives, make sure you have a lot of cooling! I cannot emphasize that enough.

The high speed SCSI drives generate a lot more heat than their IDE counterparts.

For my home PC, I like to use SCSI drives because I don't like to wait for anything :) and I buy HP Kayak PCs because they have four fans, one of which is dedicated to pulling in outside air and blowing it on the SCSI drive bays.

By the by, the Western Digital Cheetah X15 is an excellent drive. Super fast under load. But make sure you cool it, otherwise you'll have a 1U toaster-oven instead of a 1U server.

I am going to suggest the Intel D815EEA(AL) i815 cause it's one of the most stable boards I know of, not to mention it's got video and NIC integrated.

Since it's stable, and has most everything you need - chances are just get some hard drives and a case and your set.

Fiber,

Have you ever configured Intel D815 onboard NIC under Linux? I used MicroStar 6315 D815EMPro, basically the same as Intel D815 (same chipset, NIC, etc) but I have heard things that the onboard NIC won't work under Linux and in fact, when I install RH 7, the onboard NIC was not automatically detected. Quite a good motherboard though....

cheers,
:beer:

Originally posted by Mike the newbie

[snip]
By the by, the Western Digital Cheetah X15 is an excellent drive. Super fast under load. But make sure you cool it, otherwise you'll have a 1U toaster-oven instead of a 1U server.




Mea culpa... the Cheetah X15 is made by Seagate, not Western Digital. Here's some info on the drive
http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/01q2/010404/index.html

I wouldn't use Seagate drives, especially the Cheetahs, if they were provided for free. In one server alone, that had 6 of them, they were replaced regularly, about every 6 months, because of failure. This went on for at least two years (I know from looking up the invoices and RMS).

I got them switched to the equivalent Quantum drives and only one was replaced and that was 1 1/2 years later. i know several others who have had problems with various Seagate drives (as well as some I know going back to the days of MFM and RLL drives).

On paper, the specs between many drives are identical. This was true of the Seagate and Quantum drives above. Real life time between failures, however, was vastly different.

Originally posted by dektong
Fiber,

Have you ever configured Intel D815 onboard NIC under Linux? I used MicroStar 6315 D815EMPro, basically the same as Intel D815 (same chipset, NIC, etc) but I have heard things that the onboard NIC won't work under Linux and in fact, when I install RH 7, the onboard NIC was not automatically detected. Quite a good motherboard though....

cheers,
:beer:

There are some drivers for the 815EEA LOM (Lan on Motherboard) for lunix You might want to try Dektong. I have been working with it but have gotten pretty frustrated so I've just bought a Network Card.

http://support.intel.com/support/network/adapter/pro100/30504.htm

Originally posted by Duster
I wouldn't use Seagate drives, especially the Cheetahs, if they were provided for free. In one server alone, that had 6 of them, they were replaced regularly, about every 6 months, because of failure.



Sounds like a cooling problem.

Yep... really sounds like a cooling problem. Note: this drives are spinning at 15000 rpm. Does quantum drives spin this fast too? If not, than it's not a fair comparison...

Another way that you can do is probably to buy the HD fans to make a better air flow and cooling. You can buy this HD fans practically anywhere, I believe...

Cheers,
:beer:

I already said the specs for the Seagate and Quantum drives were identical, whcih makes it an eminently fair comparison. If it was a cooling problem, the Quantum drives were far more resistant to failure than the Seagates.

Cooling problems would not account for all the other problems with Seagate drives.

Duster... I never knew that Quantum makes 15000 rpm Hard Drives... Will you please tell me what it is? I have a friend who is going with Seagate but Quantum sounds to be a better solution, indeed....

cheers,
:beer:

If you don't mind me asking, why stay away from AMD? Tom's hardware guide chose the Athlon over the Pentium 4 for its latest "Power Box."


Andrew

First, AMD does not do SMP (can't have multiprocessor), at least not until the schedule new chipset from AMD on June/July this year.

Second, AMD CPU generates more heat, so it's not really good for rackmount server, especially 1U and probably even 2U rackmount chasis.

Any other than that, I will go with AMD .... no problem...

cheers,
:beer:

how come no one mentioned IBM drives ? are they too expensive because my current server uses IBM 18GB 10k scsi drive and alot of hosts seem to use them

Originally posted by dektong
Duster... I never knew that Quantum makes 15000 rpm Hard Drives... Will you please tell me what it is? I have a friend who is going with Seagate but Quantum sounds to be a better solution, indeed....

I never said the drives were 15,000 RPM drives That was an assumption made because of an error I made. It wasn't Seagate Cheetahs but Barracuda drives. I don't know about Seagate's present offerings (nor Quantum's).

Checking the web sites of both companies might reveal their present product lines. I know Quantum recently bought Maxtor, whose drives have been reliable though they've tended to be slower and lag behind the latest technologies and speeds.

I know that over the years, I've had better experiences with Quantum drives. People I know and respect have told me about problems with Seagate drives, including one of them thelling me about a drive catching on fire when he had his hand on it (the problem with fires was reported in PC Magazine and others years ago and pertained to MFM drives, not used in years).

Quantum and IBM drives were the only two recommended by Adaptec for use with their SCSI controllers. Adaptec knows quality and both are excellent drive lines.

You can't go by specifications put out by manufacturers. Real world and independent tests can reveal very different results.

When I was doing more in hardware, it was often harder to find Quantum drives. Only a few of my suppliers carried them and because they were so popular, supplies were often low or depleted. However, it was worth the effort.

The updated 6 drive server (when I was working for someone) was the most dramatic difference I've personally encountered illustrating the difference in quality between 2 drives that were identical on paper. The real world experience was quite different and more revealing.

That's why I would never use or recommend Seagate drives. It would be like using ***** and NSI. They might look good on paper.....

Adaptec knows quality! That is a great line.

Ask users of their EzCD Creator, it stinks. A program like Nero is so much more reliable, uses much less RAM and CPU, works under Win2K, etc, etc.

I also find their cards to be overpriced 3x what competitors have. They are nothing but a built-up brand name... their drivers are not any better than anyone elses.

They also don't produce any open source drivers for other operating systems... they leave it up to reverse engineering. let alone anything obscure like OS/2.

Adaptec + Compaq + Cisco -- I thrown them all in the same pile in terms of "image value" over "real value."

Of course, I'm the kind of person that loves a company like Asus where you don't need support -- they are very proactive. I'd rather have a product that has NO SUPPORT and is a near perfect product! or an affordable product so I can get a spare. These companies (like Compaq and Cisco) that have "great support" are just charging you for it (with markup). Which give them incentive to MAKE MISTAKES as they can get money from you for "their great support" when they rescue you :)

I always cringe when I hear one customer recommending a product to another customer because of "great support" when I know that the product support is only good because the product has so many flaws.

My rant for the night :)

Originally posted by Duster
I already said the specs for the Seagate and Quantum drives were identical, whcih makes it an eminently fair comparison. If it was a cooling problem, the Quantum drives were far more resistant to failure than the Seagates.


The Seagate Cheetah product line is the place where Seagate puts its very high performance drives. In SCSI disk drives, high performance requires more power to attain, and more power not only means more heat, but also an additional load on your power supply. If your power supply cannot handle the additional load, then the power fluctuations cause cause other types of problems within your system.

Looking at the top of the line drives for both Quantum and Seagate, the Seagate Cheetah X15 18GB drive draws 10.7 watts at idle. The Quantum (now Maxtor) Atlas 10K III draws 7.5 watts at idle. The Cheetah draws 42% more power just sitting at idle! Hardly "identical" specs, don't ya think?


Here are the spec pages:
http://www.maxtor.com/Quantum/products/hdd/atlas_10kiii/atlas_10kiii_specs.htm
http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/enterprise/tech/0,1131,243,00.html


Perfomance in disk i/o subsystems does not come cheap. Over the past couple of decades I have had to clean up many a disk farm because of someone who thought that there was always adequate cooling and power for high-performance drives. There is far more to specifying and configuring disk i/o subsystems than just making sure the connectors match up.


Am I saying that the Quantum is not a good drive? Absolutely not. I have used many of the Quantums, and they are very solid, very efficient performers. The Quantum drive is not more resist to failure, as you said. It may be something as simple as the Quantum drive required less cooling than the Seagate and was better suited for the environment in which you placed the drives.

However, if you want to go to the leading edge of drive performance (and you have to look beyond the spec sheets to see the real benefits a drive can bring to the table) you have to understand that leading edge performance comes at a price. With disk drives, it is cooling and power supply capacities.

Take the time to read through the review of the Cheetah X15 in Tom's Hardware review (link is in one of my prior messages). The Cheetah is compared with other drives that have apprx. similar static specs, yet the Cheetah supplies better performance when the load is notched up. That type of differentiation is tough to distill from the static spec sheets.

Originally posted by Duster
[snip]
Quantum and IBM drives were the only two recommended by Adaptec for use with their SCSI controllers. [snip]


I would be very interested in seeing the Adaptec press release that makes that recommendation.

Pay attention, Mike. I've already said that I was mistaken and that it was Seagate Barracuda drives that had the horrid failure rate. Their specs on paper were identical to the Quantum drives that eventually replaced them (I think the Grand Prix). The specs were identical.

Duster.... OK, I just can't believe that Seagate is a low quality product and that Adaptec don't recommend Seagate and only recommend Quantum and IBM. If you have any link to support this claim, I will be happy to see that. I have never seen anybody (who knows what they are doing) claims that Seagate is a low quality brand! No! And if I am not mistaken, Seagate, Compaq, and Sun, are the only manufactures making 15000 rpm SCSI drives. Quantum and IBM can't even (or haven't) match this.

Besides, Now you are comparing seagate baraccuda and what quantum series?

cheers,
:beer:

1. Believe what you want to. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything
2. I was just passing on my experiences with Seagate drives
3. The comment from Adaptec was made to me on the phone by them.
4. The 15,000 rpm drive issue is irrelevant
5. I've already stated that the spects for the Barracuda and the Quantum were identical. I'm not going to repeat myself for people who won't read what is already written.

Originally posted by cimshimy
If you don't mind me asking, why stay away from AMD? Tom's hardware guide chose the Athlon over the Pentium 4 for its latest "Power Box."


Andrew

Read this to read about indepth of Pentium 4. After you read this, you might not want to buy one.

http://www.emulators.com/pentium4.htm


Definately AMD is better for home use. But wondering why AMD is not popular for server use. I know of more heat it generates but cant a better cooling fan do the trick?

DJ

Originally posted by Duster
1. Believe what you want to. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything
2. I was just passing on my experiences with Seagate drives
3. The comment from Adaptec was made to me on the phone by them.
4. The 15,000 rpm drive issue is irrelevant
5. I've already stated that the spects for the Barracuda and the Quantum were identical. I'm not going to repeat myself for people who won't read what is already written.


When you pass on your experiences, you should also pass on more factual information instead of just anectodal evidence.

For example, you say the specs of the Seagate Barracuda and the Quantum drives were identical, it would be helpful for you to include the model numbers of the drives as substantiation.

For example, you said that Adaptec recommended Quantum and IBM drives. Yet upon further explanation you said that some unspecified person at Adaptec made the comment on the phone to you. I doubt if that person had the authority to speak for Adaptec, very few people within a corporation can speak for the corporation. More than likely, you were speaking with someone who just offered his/her personal biased opinion, with little substantiation.


When information is drawn from a larger body of knowledge, the real trends become more apparent. Take a peek at this article http://www.storagereview.com/welcome.pl/http://www.storagereview.com/articles/9908/990825ST328040A.html and note the following two paragraphs:

Late 1997, Seagate shook up the marketplace by announcing the world's first 7200rpm ATA drive, its revolutionary Medalist Pro ST39140A. Before the Medalist Pro's introduction, ATA drives hovered around constant 5400rpm operation. 7200rpm was something reserved for enterprise-class SCSI drives. Combined with an areal density of 2.3 gigs per platter, the ST39140A promised to be a screamer.
The Medalist Pro ended up hitting general availability quite a bit later, around March 1998. Nevertheless, it was still fast enough to set new performance marks, displacing the IBM Deskstar 8 as the fastest ATA drive around. Seagate also debuted fluid bearings in the drive, an improvement that resulted in less idle noise (whine) and that supposedly made the drive more reliable. And what a short run it was, for since then neither Seagate nor any other manufacturer has incorporated fluid bearings into a disk.

and

Finally, a year and a half after the ST39140A's debut, Seagate has followed up with another 7200rpm drive. This time around, however, the Medalist Pro moniker is gone. For this new drive, Seagate has leveraged a brand name that's perhaps the "Pentium" of the hard drive world: Barracuda. As the first 7200rpm drive around, the SCSI Barracuda line boasts a proud and distinguished lineage. Even today, where the latest iteration of the Barracuda isn't always the fastest around, few would dispute the name's implication of performance and reliability.


You will notice that storagereview.com will say when there is a problem with a drive, as they did with the fluid bearings. And the site has had less than flattering things to say about other drives as well.

While I do not not deny that you had the problems with the Seagate Barracudas that you say you did, I do question the validity of the projection of your problems onto the entire product line. You've not provided anywhere near enough information to substantiate the position you've stated, or to show that the problem was not something local to your environment.

thanks guys.. just a tad too much for me to take in at the moment though :emlaugh:

i compiled a list of vendors from threads on this forum and would like your feedback on them... it's a bit different that i am in Australia and half way around the world

http://www.cognigen-pc.com
http://www.compunite.com
http://www.crystalpc.com
http://www.googlegear.com
http://www.gtweb.net
http://www.indybox.com
http://www.interpromicro.com
http://www.linuxcomputersystems.com
http://www.linuxonline.org
http://www.minotaur.com
http://www.penguincomputing.com
http://www.pogolinux.com
http://www.pricewatch.com
http://www.protronics.com
http://www.rackmountequipment.com
http://www.rackmountland.com
http://www.rackmountnet.com
http://www.racksaver.com
http://www.rocksolidnetworks.com
http://www.servelinux.com
http://www.techdata.com
http://www.tesys.com
http://www.thelinuxstore.com
http://www.valinux.com
http://www.xcomputing.com

Add mwave.com to that list.

http://www.mwave.com

eva2000.com -- I've waited to see if anyone else would reply.

Can you provide some idea of your server usage? Why the dual CPU requirement?

That is a very long list of vendors. I'm not sure what you are expecting us to comment on?

I am putting together 3 of my own 1U servers right now, all identical. I'd be glad to share with you what I'm doing and why on email.

I favor two cheap servers over 1 expensive server. Not sure what your goal is. In my case, I am putting together my own servers (in the USA) for US$950 each. They are 1U - single Pentium3/512MB RAM/30GB hard drives.

In my case, I found the savings of cramming everything into a 1U unit pays off with most ISP's. Plus I get redudancy. Especiallly when the servers are 1500 miles away and a failure would mean days to repair it. Having two $950 servers that were 1U each made more sense for my needs than a "faster" single (larger) system that needed more space.

Anyway -- if you think it would be of any help, email me at Stephen@RoundSparrow.com and I'll give you a list of what parts i got and what I paid for them. I spent at least 20 hours researching the parts, and I have 10 years experience building "component computers" -- what we used to call "IBM PC Clones" in the old days.

well the server is to be a dedicated mysql database server to connecting with my current leased web server.

that's why i need fast scsi disks, ram and cpu

what i intend to do eventually is colocate this purchased server with my current host ventureonline/vdi and dedicated the server to mysql stuff since i run a growing vbulletin forum

since i don't have bandwidth costs associated with the database server i am only colocating without bandwidth since the database server won't be accessed over the net.

i'm a regular over at vbulletin forums - http://vbulletin.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=14 and alot of the large vB sites are forced to go this route as well ... so i am planning ahead :)

i read all the posts and there's alot of price different between building your own and going with something like racksavers.com

i suppose with prebuilt ones you know they work out of the box as opposed to home built

eva...

Are you sure that CPU is really that much of an issue? It sounds like proper disk config (log to one controller, database random on another) and RAM are the two big factors...

Reference:
http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=8119&pagenumber=1

In other words... instead of:
2 CPU, 256MB, 1 15,000 RPMhard drive
You might get better performance out of:
1 CPU, 512MB, 2 7200 RPM hard drives

By keeping the sequential activity on the first hard drive (web logs, database transaction logs)... you keep the drive heads on the 2nd drive free for random searches.

And RAM to cache frequent read-only information that a forum has (such as the user info).

Reading your messages on the other forum ( http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11903 ) sounds like you are pretty much in the green on performance right now.

More direct to my point... have you ever built a dual CPU system before? They can have their own unique stability problems (especially if your OS isn't perfect). I wouldn't suggest doing your first as a machine you are mailing off to put in a colocation facility.

Are your CPU's really above 50% usage? How much of that 512MB of RAM are you actually using?

You have 2*866 now, perhaps a 1GHz (133Mhz FSB) CPU + right amount of RAM and disk subsystem would be a better config...

eva2000 -- I'm curious if you have made any progress on reaching a configuration?

To the ridiculous debate about Seagate HDDs, I respond with this: RPM speed doesn't matter people! Yes it matters some, but a 10k RPM drive can read just as fast as 15k RPM drives in some cases. It depends on platter size, where the data is located, etc. so when you say Quantum and IBM can't match Seagates "superior" 15k RPM that's a ridiculous claim considering some of the 10k RPM drives and read data just as fast in a lot of cases.

Originally posted by SaluHost
To the ridiculous debate about Seagate HDDs, I respond with this: RPM speed doesn't matter people! Yes it matters some, but a 10k RPM drive can read just as fast as 15k RPM drives in some cases. It depends on platter size, where the data is located, etc. so when you say Quantum and IBM can't match Seagates "superior" 15k RPM that's a ridiculous claim considering some of the 10k RPM drives and read data just as fast in a lot of cases.

Your post created a strawman and then made a specious argument against a position that was never taken.

Indeed, if you look at the citations posted, you will see that in some areas the 15krpm drive is faster, and in some areas it is slower. And that the Seagate X15 seemed to deliver better performance under higher loads.

As with disk rpm, there is more to disk drive speed than sustained read rates. For example, a 15krpm drive has a smaller rotational latency. While that does not affect sustained read rates, it does have a positive effect upon performance in multiuser/multitasking environments.

But one person (I forget who it was) was saying in effect that Seagate is some how better because they have 15k drives out when in fact that's not all high and mighty like he/she made it out to be. My point wasn't to say that 10k is better than 15k or vice versa, I'm just saying there is more to disk quality and speed than just the pretty little numbers.

Originally posted by StephenRS
eva2000 -- I'm curious if you have made any progress on reaching a configuration? well i'm still deciding and my hearts set on either a dual p3 1ghz, 1 or 2gb ram with 2 x 36GB IBM 10K scsi drives for a dedicated database server

but as i said these are long term plans ( 6 - 12 months)

And with VO's move to verio.com's NOC things will be interesting