Spec Me a small Development Server

toosepin · 22 Aug 2011 at 09:44

Hey guys, not sure if this is the correct section but here it goes.

We're looking for a small development server for our in house web development. A simple headless tower will do, something like 8Gb of RAM and a quad-core would be suitable.

It will be running CentOS and we'd be mainly running Apache with MySQL and PHP.

It will need a decent size HDD (I presume a decent speed might be a requirement) as we'll be running version control.

Would we be able to get the above in a 200-300 (possibly a bit more) budget? Is that even possible?

stulid · 22 Aug 2011 at 09:49

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2300 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £142.99
(£119.16) £142.99
(£119.16)
Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
(£54.16) £64.99
(£54.16)
MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** £46.99
(£39.16) £46.99
(£39.16)
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT51264BA160A) £43.19
(£35.99) £43.19
(£35.99)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £39.98
(£33.32) £39.98
(£33.32)
Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£14.16) £16.99
(£14.16)
Sub Total : £295.95
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £61.54
Total : £369.24

Good enough?

£355 with free delivery.

----------------------------------------

Or AMD,

Your basketProduct Name Qty Price Line Total
AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core 640 3.00GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Cooler Master Elite 430 Windowed Case - Black (with 500w Elite Power PSU) £64.99
(£54.16) £64.99
(£54.16)
Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £54.98
(£45.82) £54.98
(£45.82)
Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BL2KIT51264BA160A) £43.19
(£35.99) £43.19
(£35.99)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SJ) £39.98
(£33.32) £39.98
(£33.32)
Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£14.16) £16.99
(£14.16)
Sub Total : £250.11
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £52.37
Total : £314.23

£300 with free delivery.

Xelene · 22 Aug 2011 at 10:13

Can just get a VM with someone like Vidahost as an alternative, I run my SVN and LAMP stack on one - think I pay £15 a month or so for it.

toosepin · 22 Aug 2011 at 11:43

sldsmkd said:
Can just get a VM with someone like Vidahost as an alternative, I run my SVN and LAMP stack on one - think I pay £15 a month or so for it.

We currently have a very powerful external hosting solution for our clients, this solution would purely be for in-house local development before pushing updates to our live setup.

toosepin · 22 Aug 2011 at 11:46

stulid said:
specs

That's great thanks! How do you feel either spec would fair for upgrades.

We would quite like the ability to expand the storage, maybe introduce a raid config - upgrade the processor later if needed and keep upping the RAM as we see fit.

It's not something that has to be hugely powerful, it will be a simple fine-tuned LAMP stack with SVN and some update control via an FTP configuration.

We do deal with huge SQL queries at times and we will be running about 10-50 key client sites on the box - albeit they wont be in use at once, mostly just stored on the box and then accessed as we start development on individual client sites.

stulid · 22 Aug 2011 at 11:47

The AMD has a AM3+ board, so Bulldozer compatible, has four RAM slots.

Storage Built-in Controller :
6 x SATA 3Gb/s port(s), blue
Support Raid 0, 1, 10, JBOD

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/M5A78LMUSB3/#specifications

And the Intel board takes all current chips and maybe Ivybridge with a BIOS update, but only two RAM slots.

- 4x SATAII

but no mention of RAID - http://uk.msi.com/product/mb/H61M-E33--B3-.html#?div=Overview

Entropy · 22 Aug 2011 at 11:57

I would reckon its worth getting a second samsung f3 and running raid. You don't want a server going down and loosing data especially if its concerning business interests

Xelene · 22 Aug 2011 at 11:59

toosepin said:
We currently have a very powerful external hosting solution for our clients, this solution would purely be for in-house local development before pushing updates to our live setup.

Just because you don't host it, doesn't mean you can't use it internally. Depends on how much traffic you need to push over SVN really.

toosepin · 22 Aug 2011 at 13:04

sldsmkd said:
Just because you don't host it, doesn't mean you can't use it internally. Depends on how much traffic you need to push over SVN really.

We have a external backup solution with our current IT support company doing nightly backups to an external location, we'd also probably have an internal backup solution, maybe just mirroring the drive at the end of each day or possibly half a day and me or one of the other heads would take it home. We'd only be pushing a few hundred MB of new data to the live servers each day. I think something local would be better for speed?

Entropy said:
I would reckon its worth getting a second samsung f3 and running raid. You don't want a server going down and loosing data especially if its concerning business interests

That's why raid appeals to me, but if that's going to alter the price much then we'd probably hold out for that one.

This will basically be an experiment to see if we're comfortable with a headless tower in the office for running our development environement, currently we run a high spec Windows Server 2003 rack with a WAMP setup, but we'd quite like to see about seperating the two servers.

Xelene · 22 Aug 2011 at 18:58

toosepin said:
currently we run a high spec Windows Server 2003 rack with a WAMP setup, but we'd quite like to see about seperating the two servers.

Just the voice of experience here, best to keep dev environment and live environment as close as possible. All sorts of weird gremlins can sneak in when there's differences.

durbs · 22 Aug 2011 at 21:20

Get a Proliant ML110 G6 server new for £180 then spend the extra on upping the memory and adding a couple of 500 gig disks in RAID to it. Perfect dev web box and SVN server machine and built for the job.

toosepin · 9 Sep 2011 at 11:17

Sorry for bumping, trying to recreate the specs up top but with in-stock suff, what do you guys think? Any more cost-effective solutions?

Intel Core i5-2400 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail with FREE TrackMania 2 Canyon PC Game £149.99
(£124.99) £149.99
(£124.99)
Crucial Ballistix Sport 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit (BL3KIT51264BA160A) Crucial Ballistix Sport 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit (BL3KIT51264BA160A) £59.99
(£49.99) £59.99
(£49.99)
MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** £46.99
(£39.16) £46.99
(£39.16)
Cooler Master Elite Power 500W Power Supply Cooler Master Elite Power 500W Power Supply £40.99
(£34.16) £40.99
(£34.16)
Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD502HJ) £33.98
(£28.32) £33.98
(£28.32)
Cooler Master Elite 335 Case - Black Cooler Master Elite 335 Case - Black £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM Samsung SH-S222AB/BEBE 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM £16.99
(£14.16) £16.99
(£14.16)
Sub Total : £315.77
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £65.50
Total : £393.02

Socrates470BC · 9 Sep 2011 at 14:21

toosepin said:
Crucial Ballistix Sport 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit (BL3KIT51264BA160A) Crucial Ballistix Sport 12GB (3x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Triple Channel Kit (BL3KIT51264BA160A) £59.99
(£49.99) £59.99
(£49.99)
MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard **B3 REVISION** £46.99
(£39.16) £46.99
(£39.16)

Memory not compatible with board or Processor.

Sandybridge i3/15/i7 1155 sockets only support dual channel memory, so usually either 2 sticks of memory or four sticks of memory.

However the MSI H61M-E33 Intel H61 (Socket 1155) only supports TWO sticks of unbuffered DIMM of 1.5 Volt DDR3 1066/1333 DRAM, 16GB Max (assuming that you can find 8GB sticks of memory)