As I know a lot fo you are budding geeks, and some grand masters

I'm looking to swap hardware platforms (possibly). I've noted the massive drop in hardware pricing, and relative leap in chip power since signing for our present server.

Ok the challenge is to either find from a vendor or build from parts a new server.

It has to be 1u or 2u.

Be at least as powerful/capable when comapred to:

Chassis: Dell PowerEdge SC1425

CPU: Dual Intel Xeon 3.0ghz, 2mb cache

RAM: 2gb DDR2 ECC SDRAM

HD: 2x 160gb 7200rpm SATA

RAID: RAID 1 (Mirrored with 3ware Escalade RAID)

Looking hotswap raid as it's going to be a long drive to the data cenre, 4Gb of Ram and either sata or scsi.

Rough budget is 2.5k

Away you go, for anybody that finds a gem of a box I'll make it worth your while with a bit of shiny stuff for your car, somehow.

Also if anybody happens to swear by a data centre that has nas and good bandwidth (1000Gb ish) let me know too

I'd look towards a Dell Poweredge 1950.

Its a 1U box and will most likely fit your specs and budget. The build quality of these is excellent when compared to previous Dell Servers.

We have a demo model coming to work soon with 2 * Quad Core Xeons and 32 GB RAM.

Aye, keeping my eye on the outlet, just in case

What about the HP DL360 G5? (g5 uses the new intel "core" xeons) can use SAS discs.. sata or SAS in same box... 1u can hold 6 discs :eek:

also has ILO 2 if the datacentre supported it... tis a remote management interface which is independant of the software on the server.. its come in handy for me at work to reboot a bluescreened box.

'I'll make it worth your while with a bit of shiny stuff for your car'

Looks like its down to me - the BTEC student in ICT how about this -

DELL PowerEdge

HP Proliant DL360? 1U, proper hotswap backplane etc, RILO (2nd pc on a card, allows remote powering up and control etc) - top, top units...

What Operating System do you want on it - Windows, Linux, Mac OS X? What does the server run - Apache, PHP, Tomcat? What's wrong with the one you've got already?

The XServe Mac looks pretty nifty with its 'Woodcrest' Xeons and Mac OS X server, but Apple Drive Modules are very expensive.

Digital Networks UK (dnuk.com) have a nice range of kit. Like the 2U R320HS:

* 2x Xeon 'Woodcrest' 5140s (2.33GHz)

* 4GB DDR2 ECC

* 5x 250GB 7,200rpm SATA drives (maybe 4 in RAID-10, 1 hot spare)

* 3Ware 9550 8-channel SATA RAID card with Battery Backup

£2300 + vat

Or the 6U RS6360:

* 2x Dual-Core 2.0GHz Opterons

* 8GB RAM

* 36x 750GB hard disks

£16,400 + vat

Try and fill that bad boy!

J

The one we have at the moment costs over 2.5k a year. So I'm looking at co-location with cost savings in year 2, or another box for web to reduce load, predicitng growth is the problem

Considered the xservers, but mysql has a memory issue with them apparantly.

Os is linux, spec has to be at least as stated above as requirements will only ever go up...

The other alternative which I'm builing in a lab over dec is a qtr rack and a collection of salavaged old servers, so 3/4 web and beefy db. But I'd prefer to go with a single box for time and support issues.

Some good choices thus far

Although if i were not constrained by rack space it would be far easier

Well you'll want an 64bit installation of Linux, to make use of all the RAM you can get in your new box. 32-bit OSes will only allow each program to use 2GB of virtual memory (which includes any open memory-mapped files!). Current XServes only come with OS X 10.4 'Tiger', which is (mostly) 32-bit. OS X 10.5 'Leopard' is fully 64-bit. Maybe that's the problem.

If you're database-heavy, maybe it's worth skimping on the CPUs a bit and getting some 15krpm SAS drives?

J

Something like that:

http://www.xyratex.com/pdfs/products/storage-systems/ds/HS-1235_DS_3-2_SCREEN.pdf

I would suggest:

- 2u server (or 2*1u server in redundant config)

- 2 sockets with Dual Core Opteron or Core 2 Duo.

- 8GB RAM

- Hardware RAID card with at least 4*500GB HDDs

Depending on money, something like a sun nigara T1 is a stunning web server.

That plus a 1u PC to run MySQL would give a huge performance boost.

EDIT:

Linux you can definately have more than 2GB RAM per CPU, you just need to compile the option into the kernel.

Colin, PM me about co-location if you like, I might still be able to get some really good deals in a place I used to work.

Will be cent os 64 bit

Redundant is a serious option, but potentially doubles the budget. The abovespec is what is presently runing the site, so you don't want it to be slower do you

The new sas options are a god send over scsi, pricing wise although maybe not relaiability, although I think thats a moot point now a days.

Each page is mostly mysql query based, anda considerable number of them make these pages up. Or it hits from the cache, so disk is vital

Budget is fairly fixed unless we can assure it will last the course of 2 years...that is it's a 2.5k budget for the next 12 months, beyond which some cost savings would be nice, or redundancy etc etc...whos got a pack of hundreds and thousands

I guess what I'm really looking for is not configs par se, but some gems from other providors, I kind of know the dell line up and some of the ibm x series. Not adverse to sun and solaris 10, but I don't know solaris well, although with the intel switch I don't think thats so important.

So the hp one's are interesting as I'd never even looked at hp.

Don't quite need 500Gb disks, if storage ever became an issue I'd look at a san type arrangement, presently we use hardly any disk...but things change

dual core would be good, not convinced the quad core's warrant the cost, I'd rather bump the ram by 8Gb or so

SAS != SATA

SATA is a desktop interface and i personally wouldn't use it if you are relying upon it as your only storage. An exception might be made to this if you were to use RAID 6 with a hotspare.

I'd shy away from HP's at the moment. I cant comment on the DL 380 G5's but after some of the build quality of the DL585's (G1 and G2) I am less than impressed. Quite a significant number of hard ware failures and inconsistent part compatibilities between RAM, processors, system board and daughter boards causing these type of boxes to throw up errors. BIOS upgrades rarely eliminate the problems either.

The 1U HP DL360 has a 2 drive capacity, and comes with onboard scsi raid controller and can have dual CPU. With this you will be limited to raid 1.

For more drive capacity, the 2U HP DL380 can have upto six drives, and again has onboard SCSI raid. With this you could do Raid 5, with ADG.

Both the above are hotswap, and the raid controller will automatically rebuild the array as soon as it detects a replacement disk.

We use DL360's and DL380's at work, very easy to setup and configure. They are reliable, ours have never broken yet despite being hammered 24x7x365.

Supermicro do a 1u 4 disk, 2 socket server, to which you might want to add a hardware raid card.

at Data center

This has just reminded me about are state of the art data center which is bomb proof and can with hold a plan crash. Shame they never thought about a rat eating the wires

The 1U HP DL360 has a 2 drive capacity, and comes with onboard scsi raid controller and can have dual CPU. With this you will be limited to raid 1.

For more drive capacity, the 2U HP DL380 can have upto six drives, and again has onboard SCSI raid. With this you could do Raid 5, with ADG.

Both the above are hotswap, and the raid controller will automatically rebuild the array as soon as it detects a replacement disk.

We use DL360's and DL380's at work, very easy to setup and configure. They are reliable, ours have never broken yet despite being hammered 24x7x365.

Seconded.. our new hp kit is ace (only a year old tho)

i mean by no means is dell bad.. we have quite a few 6/7 year old dell PE6300 that are still running albeit with a couple of fan psu and disc failures.. but you dont get the remote management features like the HP kit

Righty ho the time is nigh to bring this up again. With nearly double the traffic since October and a few reports of slow downs, it's time to prepare

So the challenge is relaunched.

I have two possible data centers, and I am willing to entertain 1u or 2x1u solutions

Present hardware is Dual xeon 3's with 2Gb of ram, ram will be at least double if not 8 for longevity.

Fire away, and if anybody has any stonking discounts available via there work, please bear them in mind

Off to bed now ...

First of all, have you sorted that thing that Cheezhehmonkey brought up about the ccs thingymajiggys? - that could save alot of traffic

What about the HP DL360 G5? (g5 uses the new intel "core" xeons) can use SAS discs.. sata or SAS in same box... 1u can hold 6 discs :eek:

also has ILO 2 if the datacentre supported it... tis a remote management interface which is independant of the software on the server.. its come in handy for me at work to reboot a bluescreened box.

we use dl360s and dl380s all over the place.... great peice of kit

we also use a complete solution san from hp kit.. avoid the data protector gear though its taken us 18 months to get it to work

Some of the new hp offerings seem really good, and its now possible to buy a decent server and get raid 5 in a small box. The new HP servers are using 2.5" hotswap hardrives. I have no experience of these though, just came across them whilst researching a replacement for an aged ML570.

what about using a citrix netscaler for caching data on the webserver therefore reducing the amount of work the webserver has todo

Some of the new hp offerings seem really good, and its now possible to buy a decent server and get raid 5 in a small box. The new HP servers are using 2.5" hotswap hardrives. I have no experience of these though, just came across them whilst researching a replacement for an aged ML570.

Wouldn't go 2.5" yet, they are still v expensive per GB and the first generation of enterprise HDDs are not long term proven. I would stick for 3.5" this time and look at 2.5 next time if it takes off.

Colin, I'll get what we discussed to you asap, however would one of these please you:

Supermicro UK - Products | SuperServers | 1U | 6015T-TV

Think you will like that as it is two nodes in a single 1u, so you could have a web-server and a seperate DB server in a 1u.

I'll have to ask about pricing as I have no idea on that as yet.

Do you need hotswappable power supplies etc