Small Company New Servers

[supern0va]

hey everyone I know theirs alot of great wisdom and intellgence on theses forums thats why I picked you guys

My friends and I were thinking of starting a small company and we were trying to get some ideas on server hardware. We've made a list of some of the mid range hardware we might think of purchasing.

CPU- ($411)AMD Opteron Model 244, 1MB L2 Cache 64-bit Processor - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-422&depa=0

Mobo- ($205) MSI K8T800 Chipset Motherboard for Dual/Single AMD Socket 940 Opteron CPU, Model "K8T Master2-FAR" -RETAIL

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-130-436&catalog=302&depa=0

RAM- ($258) Corsair XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series, (Twin Pack) 184 Pin 1GB(512MBx2) DDR PC-3200 - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-145-449&catalog=147&depa=0

Server Cases- ($248) DYNAPOWER 4U Black ATX Rackmount Case for Dual AMD CPU with 460W Zippy Power Supply, Model "EJ-419SB.Z46A" -RETAIL

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-138-012&catalog=412&depa=0

Hard Drives- ($150) Seagate 37GB 10,000RPM SCSI Hard Drive, Model ST336607LC, OEM Drive Only

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-111-132&catalog=14&depa=0

OS-Unix(were not sure what exact kind yet)
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I would like to get all the imput possible. Good or Bad. Any helpful tips at all. I also would like to know if Opteron or Xeon processors would be best.
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With a T3 connection ofcourse. We are just looking for a basic start to a web server and game hosting company. The reason why we want to start is becuase we ourselfs wanted a fast connection but had to go outside the state to get one.

[septimus]

That memory cannot be used with Opterons.

Consider getting a MSI K8D Master instead, or a Tyan K8W. You will need registered memory, and a SCSI controller too.

You and your buddies know much about unix? I'm not sure if there are drivers out for some of the newer stuff you are looking at.

[kryyst]

For Linux I would recomend Debain for setting up a server it's got a lot of usefull development going on specifically for it right now from the server side of things. It also doesn't have a lot of the crap built into it that Mandrake has.

[versello]

Don't forget fault-redundancy. RAID and/or backup tapes and UPS.

[kryyst]

UPS for sure. But depending on what you need or want for a back-up. A better solution is to have 1 or 2 hdd's and backup upt the full thing to an external USB harddrive. It's cheaper, faster and infinitely easier to recover from if something goes wrong.

[primesuspect]

Trust me on this. Especially since I own a hosting company and have "been around the block" so to speak.

Don't build yourself a server. Go to a managed hosting company and get a colocated server (unmanaged) and let them supply the hardware. Or, just buy an IBM xServer or a Dell PE 650 or a Sun Sunfire V100 (3 of many sub-$1000 1U servers)

You are going to give me 1000 reasons why it's cheaper and cooler to build your own, and how you can build a server for 1/2 the price of one of those, but I am telling you that you need to look at the big picture when you have a hosting company, and take downtime and support into consideration. It's called TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and the TCO on a home-built thing is always higher than a purpose-built OEM box.

[kryyst]

Trust me on this. Especially since I own a hosting company and have "been around the block" so to speak.

Don't build yourself a server. Go to a managed hosting company and get a colocated server (unmanaged) and let them supply the hardware. Or, just buy an IBM xServer or a Dell PE 650 or a Sun Sunfire V100 (3 of many sub-$1000 1U servers)

You are going to give me 1000 reasons why it's cheaper and cooler to build your own, and how you can build a server for 1/2 the price of one of those, but I am telling you that you need to look at the big picture when you have a hosting company, and take downtime and support into consideration. It's called TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and the TCO on a home-built thing is always higher than a purpose-built OEM box.


I'll actually second that especially now since you can pick up a fairly decent Dell Poweredge 700 for around $1400cdn. Working with home built servers and working with a true server doesn't compare. Speed for speed they are about the same, but downtime on a Real server is way less not even taking redundancy into account. They just run better.