Spec Me The Ultimate Server - Budget £5,000

Soldato
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Hey people!

OK so I know 5,000 pounds isn't going to allow you to go crazy but my partner is too sensible I would have preffered to have an unlimited budget but I don't think I can push him past 5k.

Anyway here's the gyst of it, we will be running a server on Windows 2008 r2, running multiple virtualisations (maybe 5-10 if we can) so i'm interested to know what the max number we could run would be while staying stable.

Our aim is ...24:7 uptime though we can restart as needed every 2-4 weeks.

Kind of workload involved will be web server KIND of stuff...so think- web pages, cache, obviously multiple Windows instances..a lot of repetitive tasks. So I'm thinking the performance focus here should be hard disk read/write and RAM.

My amateur opinion for the build is suggesting a couple of SSD's in RAID 0 then an i7, filling all 6 ram slots with 2gb each (but if that's overkill we could try just 1gb each with Registered DIMM's instead). edit: I've discovered proper server solutions like Dell's have much more ram space, and as another user said raid 0 will probably be too unstable. Dell is looking like a good option so far.

Sorry about my poor level of knowledge it's been a good 6 years since I had the oppurtunity to keep up with the latest components.

Do your worst :D
 
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Soldato
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I think you're mixing up servers and desktops here:

SSD's in RAID0 - A server in RAID0 that you expect to give you great uptime, are you mad?
6GB RAM 'but if its overkilll' - Its becoming more and more common for people to have 8GB of RAM in a workstation so the 'ultimate' server would have considerably more RAM than 6GB I would hope.

I really think you need to heavily consult the drawing board before you ***** away £5k. Furthermore, why you think a home build server will be better than, say a Dell (especially considering their deals at the moment), is beyond me!
 
Soldato
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I really think you need to heavily consult the drawing board before you ***** away £5k. Furthermore, why you think a home build server will be better than, say a Dell (especially considering their deals at the moment), is beyond me!

Well I've come here to seek your superior knowledge as opposed to my 6 year old knowledge which was desktop based I've never specced a proper server.

Thanks for pointing out my mistakes, I'm hoping you can also suggest a possible custom spec? Though I will look into Dell too if they have deals as you say.

re-edit: Noticed I was looking at the wrong section, Dell's 'rack' servers have great spec and features, like immense amounts of ram and proper server boards with multiple cpu slots etc- I will definitely consider one thanks for the tip
 
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Soldato
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yeah i would definately go down the dell route, as you have said so yourself most youre knowledge is deskptop based. so with dell you will get a fully working server and will have the supoort behind you
 
Man of Honour
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If your looking to custom build still you want to move away from the intel route and go for a pair of the six core amd opteron chips in a tyan or supermicro motherboard this would definatly give the power to run 5-10 visualisations.

I guess you intend on running VPS from this otherwise i can't see a need for visualisation
 
Soldato
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If your looking to custom build still you want to move away from the intel route and go for a pair of the six core amd opteron chips in a tyan or supermicro motherboard this would definatly give the power to run 5-10 visualisations.

I guess you intend on running VPS from this otherwise i can't see a need for visualisation

Thanks for the great reply. In terms of virtualisation, I'd like each VPS to have it's own WAN connection (so I have multiple connections coming into the server)..I think that's possible as it is on Linux. then each VPS I want to be able to be logged in on 10-15 users simeltaniously all sharing the WAN connection of that VPS- Windows definitely doesn't allow me to do this on the desktop but I'm guessing on server versions it allows the WAN connection to be shared between the simeltanious logged in users?

Also what's max number of uses that can be logged in simeltaniously on each VPS? And is there a licensed maximum I have to abide by overall on the server?
 
Man of Honour
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Your best bet for uptime is two decent £2500 boxes, each probably with a decent 4 or 6 core chip and 12GB of RAM, then 4x 300GB SAS drives in RAID10. That lets you split the VMs so the backup of the service runs on a different physical server to the primary, a single server will break one day, no matter how high end it is. You should get something like that out of Dell or HP for £5k if you have a reasonable discount level.
 
Don
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Your best bet for uptime is two decent £2500 boxes, each probably with a decent 4 or 6 core chip and 12GB of RAM, then 4x 300GB SAS drives in RAID10. That lets you split the VMs so the backup of the service runs on a different physical server to the primary, a single server will break one day, no matter how high end it is. You should get something like that out of Dell or HP for £5k if you have a reasonable discount level.

totally agree, maybe run DFS have some high availability :)

Stelly
 
Soldato
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Firstly, is this going to be delivering/hosting a service you are hoping to sell? i.e. web hosting? If so, what are you planning to put in your service levels about availability (99.9% means you would get about 5hrs per month downtime for 'fixing' on the physical box, 99.8% would get you 10hrs downtime etc). That should then give you an idea about how to build any resiliency into the server(s) and the storage architecture.

We've specced machines for virtualisation at my place with pretty much dual everything and lots of ram (40gb) and are looking to host around 10-15 vm's per box, though that is to allow for capacity for vmotion incase of hardware failure etc as our boxes should be able to host about 20 vm's quite easily
 
Soldato
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PS, a Dell Poweredge T610 is where you want to be looking mate, Given you have little background on the server side of things... you pay and you get a VERY good and VERY Competitive Server.

IF your only going to be hosting VM's why not go down the ESXi route?

an i7 VS Opty or Xeon for VM is a no brainer.
4gb of ram for a Server 08 and ONE VM, add 2gb for each other VM (IMHO)
 
Soldato
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Wilmslow, Cheshire
Firstly, is this going to be delivering/hosting a service you are hoping to sell? i.e. web hosting? If so, what are you planning to put in your service levels about availability (99.9% means you would get about 5hrs per month downtime for 'fixing' on the physical box, 99.8% would get you 10hrs downtime etc). That should then give you an idea about how to build any resiliency into the server(s) and the storage architecture.

We've specced machines for virtualisation at my place with pretty much dual everything and lots of ram (40gb) and are looking to host around 10-15 vm's per box, though that is to allow for capacity for vmotion incase of hardware failure etc as our boxes should be able to host about 20 vm's quite easily

Oh, also. If your on a bit of a Budget and a Partner with a lock on the budget, i think a fail over option will be a bad idea, having to explain that you have two boxes of which one is a Standby for the possibility that one may go down.


EDIT - SORRY MODS. i meant to hit EDIT. NOT Quote.
 
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Ev0

Ev0

Soldato
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As said do not use RAID 0 in a server, madness!

The machines that our vm stuff is hosted on have stupid amounts of ram and 4 6 core Xeons in, slightly overspecced lol. The first lot we bought were about 20k a blade, then when we got another later on the price was down to about 12k I think.
 
Soldato
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As said do not use RAID 0 in a server, madness!

The machines that our vm stuff is hosted on have stupid amounts of ram and 4 6 core Xeons in, slightly overspecced lol. The first lot we bought were about 20k a blade, then when we got another later on the price was down to about 12k I think.

I'm thinking later down the line I can eventually add 3 more Xeons to our server (assuming we get the Dell PowerEdge R905) and a bunch more RAM once my partner sees the profit coming in from the business as we expand in future. Would this be more expensive than buying a server with 4 processors already in...as in would that give a big discount?

Also I noticed you mention a blade server, but these are built to be efficient use of space- space isn't a big problem for us so we can go with a rack instead- am i right?

Is there a point at which adding more RAM isn't really neccesary? It said the R905 can fit 256gb in total, but surely once I hit 64gb that's more than enough for the kind of tasks I'm doing? Or is it a case of more the better?
 
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Ev0

Ev0

Soldato
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Yeah you won't be wanting a blade setup, normal tower/rack server for you.

As for RAM, well you need however much depending on how many vms you'll be running.

I don't know a huge amount about it all as I'm not the VM person at my place, but think that's right :p
 
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