what should i look for in a server

jonny512379

jonny512379

jonny512379

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I have a few websites on a shared server, that is getting to be slow/hang (probably a routing error between here and the US server)

Anyway i am toying with the idea of dedicated and wondered if i can get a second hand server for bargain prices from an auction. The problem is i don't know what i am looking for and what spec i will need. Could anyone help?
(i know pc's but not servers too well).
I have a friend that will have some spare rack space so plan to see if i can get a bargain price to link it to his network.

It will need to run 50 to 100 websites with a total visitor count of currently 5,000 to 50,000 visitors / 15,000 - 200,000 page views (i assume this is relativity low for most servers).

Basically what is the minimum spec i will need (a few server/product numbers would help me). All i see on auction sites is that they have Xeon's CPUs, but they don't say CPU model numbers or much else.

Is there anything i should stay away from?

I would be grateful of any help please

Thanks
Jonny
 
Entirely depends on what you're running, you could serve that many page views on a PII if you had the write software stack, conversely I've seen brand new £4k blades struggle to serve 25/pages a second due to inept configuration and lack of optimisation (I'm looking at you default drupal install...).

For that many sites, a decent £50/month VPS would probably do the job if you're being sensible about architecture
 
Why not just send the seller a message and find out what Xeon CPU it is? Also, you could buy multiple servers and setup load balancing on them as well.
 
At least two hot-swap HDD bays for the OS (RAID 1). Possibly a third bay dedicated to backups. Any more drives would be used for bulk storage or a tempdb/scratch area.

SAS drives are more expensive than SATA. 2.5" enterprise drives are also more expensive. Some servers can take SATA drives, but official manufacturer-supported drives are mainly SAS nowadays.

Manufactuer recommended/supported enterprise hard drives are often very expensive, unless you get lucky on ebay.

Out of band management, i.e. HP ILO ("lighs out") or Dell DRAC. ILO Advanced (IP KVM) requires a license key; dunno about DRAC, as never used it.

Redundant hot-swappable PSUs. Dual NICs, teamed, perhaps to different switches if the datacenter topology allows that.

Manufacturer management agents - either SNMP or event logs, combined with an email alerting mechanism so that you are alerted of hardware failure.

Obviously you need to ensure that the rack is connected to a UPS and generator.

Any "proper" server will use ECC memory as standard.

I prefer HP kit myself. Note that some older HP servers don't have any management agents and/or poor ILO.
 
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Im an HP fanboy I have to admit.

Every single detail on the servers is top notch.

The drives are great, the data sheets, the manuals, the break downs of the parts, the quality just everything points to HUGE amounts of effort to offer a complete package when you have one of their servers.

I never get that feeling with Dell, who are great value for money, but when things go wrong they never seem to be quite as good as HP at resolving things.

The HP Manuals and Datasheets for the servers are so detailed, they cover literally everything you need to know about the model of server you have, much more detail than I have seen from Dell so far.

All these things help immensely when you have a single PDF that tells you all the Network cards that work with the server, or all the types of RAM or various optional parts.
 
Thanks for the info, although now i am slightly more confused than before.... :-)

@bigredshark i would like to have Xeon CPU's (either dual or quad core), but i think a blade server may be a little over kill for the loads it will be getting. (i had a PIII server many years ago, so would like better, as i do like to know i have half decent hardware even if not needed). I do know Windows Server software a little, but would like to run a Lunix system but know next to nothing about this (the shared hosting uses Cpanel, but i'm not sure if i need this on a dedicated server + it is expensive! - i need to ask my programmer about this). VPS may be the way, but i think a server in the UK would be faster than the US???

@bigredshark = now i am confused :-) but i like the suggestion of HP - i don't plan to manage the server myself, my programmer will set it up and the hosting company will then look after it for a fee (i hope).

@Dr. Pain. i may join you in becoming a fan boy of HP too, sounds good - would you have any idea on model numbers for a reasonable Xeon (dual or quad core)?

Thanks again!
Jonny
 
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The bargain price Xeon servers you see on Ebay are often only 32bit Xeons, P4 variants that check out a lot of heat and use a lot of electricity. You need to check with you pal if he's willing to host such a beast, as he might not be too keen.

If you're looking for a HP, try get a DL360/380 G5 or newer, G4's are 64bit but still quite hot and power hungry, old scsi disks etc.
 
Hi,

Im not really a webserver guy, more Sans and virtualisation, so not sure of the requirements for that setup. However, losts of the G6 or G7 (opteron) DL Proliants can be Dual Socket, Quad CPU jobs. Therefore with HT giving you 16 workable threads to deal with in the case of the Quad Xeons, and more if you decide on Hex core Opterons.

How the webserving software you are using manages to serve 100 websites with x amount of rescources I have no idea, but it would make sense to come up with a performance plan, to see exactly what sort of horsepower is recommended to go with.
 
Thanks guys, really helpful as to what the difference is in the Xeon's
After seeing the price that a "good" server sells for maybe VPS or shared hosting with my friends company is the best value :-)
Although i will live in hope and see if i can snap up a G5 DL360/380 for around £100 (although i find this unlikely :-( ) Possibly over kill, but that's where all the fun is:-)
 
I'd recommend staying away from an older 1u server unless you have somewhere to house it as they make a tremendous amount of noise. You could also probably build your own server fairly cheaply these days as newer cpu's are pretty good on multithreaded performance and good power management to boot. IF you decide on a "proper" server setup the price rockets pretty quickly and you'd find it hard to justify the outlay. 100 websites served from an apache box is well within a modern quad core processor with a fairly decent amount of ram.
 
I have a couple of HP rack proliant servers. They are dual Xeon G4's. I keep thinking about listing them on the bay, but they are beasts in size, and courier costs would be high. I am located in Salisbury. If you are interested i can list the spec and maybe list them in the MM.
I don't use them anymore as i bought some G6's and Virtualised our stuff.
 
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