Help building/spec for a server

Roeg1

Roeg1

Roeg1

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2 Nov 2007
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Some of you may of seen from my thread last week i lost an hard drive that died with a lot of work data on..

This as made me relise we badley need a server in place with some kinda raid array so heres one ive picked that im hopeing i can run in raid 5 with 3 mirrored drives and one for *** OS

Heres the sepc can anyone help me if something stand out that will be a problem everything listed but the case.

serverid8.jpg
 
everything looks fine, you got a budget and what case? ...

seen a nice server someone1 made a while back, had a mini-keyboard & mouse which slide out of the 5.25 inch bay, and used the monitor that way also :D
 
platinum87 said:
everything looks fine, you got a budget and what case? ...

seen a nice server someone1 made a while back, had a mini-keyboard & mouse which slide out of the 5.25 inch bay, and used the monitor that way also :D
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case will be last thing i pick but ill go for a silverstone, have one at home and love it, thou still looking at cases..think the components are the most important.

budget of no more than £1000 were only a small company, so i cant really afford anymore not after it just cost me 600 quid for a dataa recovery company to retrive the data from dead HD

Any info on the server your refering to ?
 
why not use on board RAID, as the raid card you have is not hardware card, so will still use the CPU. what raid levels do you want.

this borad has lots more ports and does raid 5

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-088-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913 and it is cheaper that the one you have up there, if you want to go down the intel root. AMD will be much cheaper, as you don't need performance out of this

also remember, RAID IS NOT A BACKUP SOLUTION

EDIT: if you want to look into a proper hard where raid solution, take a look at a Dell Perc 5/i, its fussy about the motherboards you use, but its can run 8 SATA drives all in raid 5, can be picked up for £100 second hand, but out of a new server.
 
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the motherboard supports raid. why not drop the 400gb o/s disk in favour of a pair of 160gb drives in raid? if your going to the trouble of ensuring the data availability then you may as well make the o/s available too!
 
crazyDAJT said:
why not use on board RAID, as the raid card you have is not hardware card, so will still use the CPU. what raid levels do you want.

this borad has lots more ports and does raid 5

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-088-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913 and it is cheaper that the one you have up there, if you want to go down the intel root. AMD will be much cheaper, as you don't need performance out of this

also remember, RAID IS NOT A BACKUP SOLUTION

EDIT: if you want to look into a proper hard where raid solution, take a look at a Dell Perc 5/i, its fussy about the motherboards you use, but its can run 8 SATA drives all in raid 5, can be picked up for £100 second hand, but out of a new server.
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What do u mean by that do you mean you need software aswell, to run backups id so yer ive been reading on some kits/software for backups some are extremly expensive £2000+:eek:
 
my choise of case

400x400_s411open.jpg


can pick one up for £80 inc vat, new

then get 2 of these

HD-018-BT_400.jpg


to do this with 1TB drives, i.e 7TB of storage in one array, or two arrays = 6TB. costs a about £1.1K

EDIT: barging, will get two..... ow darn it.... vetoed by the girlfriend :(
 
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Roeg1 said:
What do u mean by that do you mean you need software aswell, to run backups id so yer ive been reading on some kits/software for backups some are extremly expensive £2000+:eek:
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If you are referring to the

"RAID IS NOT A BACKUP SOLUTION"

raid offers some level of redundancy, but it is quite possible you will get a double disc fail. or another disc dies during rebuilding

if you are using this to serve your company's data you need to have another backup method. a second server off site. or tapes
 
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XP Pro can only support 5 concurrent network conenctions - is that ok?

You don't need a CPU anywhere near that good, just get a E2xxx or even a Celeron.

You should buy the Raid Edition versions of the drives if you are doing RAID 5 for their TLER ability.

I think you should just mirror two bigger drives and stay away from RAID 5, especially if you cannot afford a tape drive. At least with a mirror you should hopefully have one good copy of the data left.

Possibly buy a terrabyte external drive and use it for backups?
 
Magsy said:
XP Pro can only support 5 concurrent network conenctions - is that ok?

You don't need a CPU anywhere near that good, just get a E2xxx or even a Celeron.

You should buy the Raid Edition versions of the drives if you are doing RAID 5 for their TLER ability.

I think you should just mirror two bigger drives and stay away from RAID 5, especially if you cannot afford a tape drive. At least with a mirror you should hopefully have one good copy of the data left.

Possibly buy a terrabyte external drive and use it for backups?
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You seem like the guy that can help me out.. i see now way of pming you:confused: I have a few question's as money is tight i need to do all the reseach myself and build it myself, i u would be willing to answer any questions i have, id really appretiate it:D
 
Why aren't you buying a pre-built server from someone like HP or IBM?

If it's mission critical data that needs to be stored reliably then you are wasting your time buying parts for enthusiast home/gaming machines. Get your self a proper server with reliable parts from a company that will provide support properly. If this machine dies in the middle of the night you can bet your ass there will be no-one from OCUK on the line to talk you through any problems, and they sure as hell won't supply you with replacement parts in anything less than a week.

Buy an IBM or HP server. You can get them for less than £1000 and they'll be a hell of a lot more reliable and supported by a company that's used to catering for business customers.

You're doing a disservice to your company if you buy enthusiast parts from an enthusiast company to provide business level service.
 
Scottly said:
Why aren't you buying a pre-built server from someone like HP or IBM?

If it's mission critical data that needs to be stored reliably then you are wasting your time buying parts for enthusiast home/gaming machines. Get your self a proper server with reliable parts from a company that will provide support properly. If this machine dies in the middle of the night you can bet your ass there will be no-one from OCUK on the line to talk you through any problems, and they sure as hell won't supply you with replacement parts in anything less than a week.

Buy an IBM or HP server. You can get them for less than £1000 and they'll be a hell of a lot more reliable and supported by a company that's used to catering for business customers.

You're doing a disservice to your company if you buy enthusiast parts from an enthusiast company to provide business level service.
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Would you mind linking me to a small server from HP ive looked on there site and its vert confusing.. Plus only servers i can really see are enterprise ones.

Also i cant see any prices at all regarding the sevrers HP provide ?
 
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Roeg1 said:
Would you mind linking me to a small server from HP ive looked on there site and its vert confusing.. Plus only servers i can really see are enterprise ones.

Also i cant see any prices at all regarding the sevrers HP provide ?
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Your asking for a competitor link/price, that's a no no here. :)
 
deleted said:
Your asking for a competitor link/price, that's a no no here. :)
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O bloody hell yes im very sorry totaly slipped my mind. im not sure how i delte the above post, can a mod do that please, didnt relise i was breaking forum rules, thou i do no better..

again very sorry
 
have you thought of somthing inbetwean buillding and a prebuilt systme, i missed the fact this was for bissness, so i would highly recommend getting an off the self solution .

something like this would do nicely

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-005-SY&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=707

HD-005-SY_400.jpg


EDIT: this is the 4 drive version, they do 2 discs one

just add discs, will do raid 5 and gigabit lan!!!

£346.61 inc VAT from this site, get two, 6 500GB discs, leaving you the option to put one extra each. thats £1,066.81 inc VAT.

this give you 1TB of redundant storage on one device you can then back up with another device.

or a bit cheaper. for about £700

get one of the above, with 3 500GB drives, and a 1TB drive and a USB caddy. keep the 1TB drive off line (i.e. turned off) and do full backups once a week.
 
platinum87 said:
seen a nice server someone1 made a while back, had a mini-keyboard & mouse which slide out of the 5.25 inch bay, and used the monitor that way also :D
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Apologies for the off topic bump, but does anyone have a link for details on a build like this?
email in Trust if you want to keep the thread on topic.
 
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