Suitable spec for a server

RobinH · 6 Apr 2007 at 19:15

I'm looking to build a new server and am looking for a really solid & reliable motherboard/CPU/RAM combination. The only bit of the spec that's been decided so far is the disks which will be 1 x 80Gb IDE boot drive and 2 x SATA2 500Gb drives (possibly mirrored) as I've already got those. As for RAM, I'm guessing 2Gb will suffice and integrated graphics that can push out 1280x1024 will be fine too.

The OS will be Windows 2003 Server SP2, with Outpost Pro Firewall and NOD32 AV. The role of the server will be:
- Sharing about 50,000 files to 3 workstations
- Web server (very light use, about 10-20 users) using built-in IIS and EFS 4.0
- SQL Server 2005 Express with Helium 2007 clients on 2 of the workstations
- Nightly backups of workstation data using Second Copy.

That's about it. Much of the performance of the server will be constrained by the (wired) 10/100 LAN which is the bottleneck I guess. Only exception is the SQL re-indexing that Helium does which makes an AMD 3700+ run flat out for 20 minutes when kicked off. As I say, reliability & stability are the key things I'm after. Any thoughts gratefully received

Energize · 6 Apr 2007 at 19:43

Maybe you should consider upgrading the 3 workstations with a gigabit lan card?

Trigger · 6 Apr 2007 at 21:18

Based on what you've said, I think you would be better off looking at a HP server- you could get a fairly decent ML150 with a dual core xeon, 1GB of RAM, 80GB SATA drive and native gigabit ethernet for £775. Stick your two 500GB drives in it and give it a RAM upgrade and you have a decent spec, highly reliable server

Energize said:
Maybe you should consider upgrading the 3 workstations with a gigabit lan card?

Wouldn't really make much difference if they were on the PCI bus. If you could pick up 3 PCI-E gigabit cards and your 3 machines can support them then it should be fairly decent

Energize · 6 Apr 2007 at 22:16

I thought pci was 66MB/s which is 528Mb/s ?

Trigger · 6 Apr 2007 at 22:37

Energize said:
I thought pci was 66MB/s which is 528Mb/s ?

Yes but Mb/s is 1,048,576 (2^20) making the bandwidth of PCI v2.1 508.6Mb/s

I was referring more to the fact that the PCI buses are interfaced via the southbridge chipset whereas IIRC, the PCI-E bus is interfaced via the northbridge chipset which has a direct connection to the CPU and RAM

Energize · 6 Apr 2007 at 22:41

Trigger said:
Yes but Mb/s is 1,048,576 (2^20) making the bandwidth of PCI v2.1 508.6Mb/s

Actually 10^6 is the SI and IEC standard, and is the correct usage for networking and storage. 2^20 is only supposed to be used for ram.

2^20 is a MiB.

RobinH · 6 Apr 2007 at 23:27

Must admit I was thinking along the lines of a self-build, but a ready made HP is quite appealing (plus dual core xeon CPUs don't seem to be standard fare for components suppliers).

The trouble with the LAN speed is that it's currently based around a D-Link G624M wireless router, but the current server & workstations are wired for better performance as it has 4 ports. Need wireless for a couple of laptops and the problem has always been finding a decent wireless router that also has gigabit ports for the wired devices (didn't D-Link use to do a gaming router that had gigabit ports as well?). Then again, I could go with a small gigabit router and add a wireless AP.

Energize · 6 Apr 2007 at 23:38

You could buy a gigabit switch and use that instead.

Trigger · 6 Apr 2007 at 23:51

Energize said:
Actually 10^6 is the SI and IEC standard, and is the correct usage for networking and storage. 2^20 is only supposed to be used for ram. 2^20 is a MiB.

Yeah I've just checked my book and the more common standard is 10^6

Either way, the bandwidth of the PCI bus is entirely theoretical and transfer rates are never reached anywhere near the max. Even if you did get 1Gb/s throughput on it (Which won't happen on a standard PCI bus), it would be saturated by the southbridge chipset anway as it can't exchange data with the CPU and RAM quick enough

RobinH said:
Must admit I was thinking along the lines of a self-build, but a ready made HP is quite appealing (plus dual core xeon CPUs don't seem to be standard fare for components suppliers).

Yeah, I would buy the HP kit anyway purely for the relaibility and warranty. Stick some extra RAM in it and your extra SATA disks and you're laughing

Snapshot · 7 Apr 2007 at 06:22

RobinH said:
Must admit I was thinking along the lines of a self-build, but a ready made HP is quite appealing (plus dual core xeon CPUs don't seem to be standard fare for components suppliers).

The trouble with the LAN speed is that it's currently based around a D-Link G624M wireless router, but the current server & workstations are wired for better performance as it has 4 ports. Need wireless for a couple of laptops and the problem has always been finding a decent wireless router that also has gigabit ports for the wired devices (didn't D-Link use to do a gaming router that had gigabit ports as well?). Then again, I could go with a small gigabit router and add a wireless AP.

I hung a 5-port gigabit switch off my wireless router as I have four PCs with built-in gigabit NICs and it worked very well. This would still be worth doing even if your workstations only run at 100 Mb as the server would then be able to supply data to all of them at 100Mb simultaneously.