Custom Servers

[anything I don't mind]

I have been looking in to building custom servers with non server hardware and server hardware and utilising the latest technologies. For example if we take a vmware infrastructure server.

GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD7 (2 x gbit lan, 8 x SATA 3Gb/s, 2 x SATA 6Gb/s, 7 PCIe 2.0 x16)
Intel Xeon X5650 2.66GHz
dual pci-e 10gbit lan
24gb Corsair DDR3 2000
2x OCZ Z-Drive R2 1tb (1gbit/s, 135000 iops) in raid 1
1u or 2u server chassis with redundant psu

The major limitation in comparison to mainstream server hardware would be the lack of second cpu and the amount of support memory, only going up to 24gb while mainstream servers can go up to 192gb. Gigabyte does offer a server range with support of two cpu and 192gb memory, but the speed of the memory and pci-e speed and amount of pci-e is not as good.

For a custom nas or san setup

GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD7 (2 x gbit lan, 8 x SATA 3Gb/s, 2 x SATA 6Gb/s, 7 PCIe 2.0 x16)
Intel Xeon X5650 2.66GHz
dual pci-e 10gbit lan
24gb Corsair DDR3 2000
3u or 4u server chassis with redundant psu

using onboard controllers example:
2x 3TB SATA 6Gb/s 7200rpm
8x 3TB 4Gb/s 64mb cache

sata 6gbps supported 3tb hard drives (fiber channel controllers are only 4gbps and there drives run at 15000rpm but these new drives running at 5400rpm have fast sustain write speeds and seek times. I would like to see a comparison between the drives themselves and not within raid setup.)

Run the freenas and you could use software based raid if you wanted. With support for rsync so you could use two identical boxes.

If you used the gigabyte server mb, you could either use the onboard sata controllers which support of six 6gbps sata or if you took the single core cpu you could get many pci-e sata / sas controllers with support of up to 16 sata+ with advanced raid configurations etc.

Has anyone implemented this in corporate environments and do you think there is any future in the custom server market. What do you think about the use of standard atx motherboards in small enterprise environments and say if you put a vm infrastructure on the ocz z-drive (raid 1) could use rsync within the vmware to backup the drives to another identical machine. Essentially have redundant pc setup. Mirroring the raid 1 across the network to another identical pc in raid 1.

In cost comparisons you could see that you could get better performance benchmark wise from custom server hardware. Where the mainstream enterprise server market you pay for the quick support and the guarantee on the package. Plus corporations like spending too much money on server hardware.

 

[anything I don't mind]

For psu, there is a bit of an issue because atx psu and rackmount chassis have not realy been put together. You can get single psu rackmount chassis from antec and you can get redundant psu that might fit in to the chassis. But what we realy need is a chassis with two of these that connect to a controller that controls the fail over, with one set of cables going to the m/b.

 

[anything I don't mind]

Yea i was only putting it out there as a consideration. I think the mainstream server market is very reasonably priced, especially at the £2000 level. But if you do a cost by cost comparison the custom server market does seem very competitive, if only recently. Because i can not paste competitor urls i could not post examples that i did in comparison. But i did a few and i would not have made the post if i did not think it was at least competitive. Of course there are benefits going mainstream server and those i have pointed out.

My point is that for £5000 you can probably get more hardware for the money if you went custom. Bar the warranty and the fact that is all put together and ready.

Controller speeds from wikipedia:
Fibre Channel 2GFC (2.125 GHz)[43] 1,700 Mbit/s 212.5 MB/s
Serial ATA 2 (SATA-300)[44] 2,400 Mbit/s 300 MB/s
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)[44] 2,400 Mbit/s 300 MB/s
Ultra-320 SCSI (Ultra4 SCSI) (16 bits/80 MHz DDR) 2,560 Mbit/s 320 MB/s
Fibre Channel 4GFC (4.25 GHz)[43] 3,400 Mbit/s 425 MB/s
Serial ATA 3 (SATA-600)[44] 4,800 Mbit/s 600 MB/s
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) 2[44] 4,800 Mbit/s 600 MB/s
Ultra-640 SCSI (16 bits/160 MHz DDR) 5,120 Mbit/s 640 MB/s
Fibre Channel 8GFC (8.50 GHz)[43] 6,800 Mbit/s 850 MB/s

Disk Benchmark

I think Sata 6gbps disks would be very competitive in terms of bandwidth and you would get more size for the price and for data that requires fast seek times, you could use solid state.

I do not think the hardware compatibility would be an issue.

 

[anything I don't mind]

I am not suggesting that there is a custom server market that will take over the enterprise server market. I was only pointing out that custom servers available are technically competitive. I was not suggesting that you should start trying to sell custom servers to enterprise clients. Like i said they like spending more money on the full package and added extras.