Building a Server

Habanerosky

Habanerosky

New Member
I am looking into building a server for my father's business. It is an accounting firm and only requires a max of 250 GB of storage. If anyone could enlighten me on the differences between a normal PC and a server (as i have never put one together) pls fill me in. This is what i have put together so far:



I took off the graphics card (due to onboard video) and added a $25 sound card

I am wondering a few things:
1. Is the PSU strong/reliable enough for a 24/7 server? (considering the components I added)
2. On Newegg the description says the motherboard is compatible with the AMD FX series, does this mean I need to get an FX?
3. Should I get more/different memory?

Any other advice would be fantastic as well.

Thanks in advance!
 
Honestly, i think you took it overboard, Servers recuire ALOT less then people think. What exactly is the server going to be preforming for your dads buisness? Most likly you can spend half that.


A Good investment would be a UPS(Universl power supply) battery backup, so when the power goes out the server stays running.
 
Honestly, Servers are expensive and very important in the every day work of the company.

My dad needed to buy 3 servers for his company, he spent tons and tons of money. I asked him if I could do all the arrangments for him and he made me think of what would happen if I did it wrong, it would all be on my shoulders.

It is a big responsibility, thats why I think leaving it to Dell would be good. Or HP.
 
You dont need expensive parts for it to work everyday, and that is why I asked that its going to be doing, since most dont need to be as powerfull as people think.
 
A server needs no more than onboard video, even though that's a cheap video card, maybe you can add it to a desktop?
 
Did you read all of my comment?

"Habanerosky" said:
I took off the graphics card (due to onboard video) and added a $25 sound card
Click to expand...

Just did't feel like re MS painting the webpage :P
The server really wont be doing THAT much. It will be running some relatively demanding programs (accounting programs that require a lot of database access), and it will be used as the host for them all. (all 12 of the computers will simultaniously run the programs off of the server). The Dell server he has now is pretty slow (its only 2 or 3 yrs old too) but his business partner skimped out on it.

I think the most important thing to us is that we have an extremely low seek time. We are a completely paperless office meaning that all of the documents that our clients give us are scanned onto the server drive. Also, the documents we produce are printed to file on the server. Speaking of which, would a RAID 1 array be a good idea? :o

I figure that the 74gb Raptor will be used for the server OS and all of the programs that the workstations will be running, and the 250 caviar will be used for the database.

The DVD burner is actually used often. Employees use it when going on vacation or the weekend when they need to take home data. (some of our bigger clients can require a GB of space).

Can you tell me what is going overboard? The server we are running now is a P4 (dont know what exact model) that's running at 2.4ghz, 512mb Ram, and it has a couple of 7200rpm EIDE drives. It doesnt work very well... With this machine I figured it had a lot of room for expansion in case of any more demanding software switches, or just to keep up with the times. The big downside is we get no Dell support (which i have to admit is good, even though i hate their proprietary nature).

Another question, could i run XP Pro as the server OS, or should i stick with 2000 server edition?
 
I would highly reccomend getting anoter 250GB and running it in RAID, if just for the the protection of data-loss.

Also you shoulnd't have to buy a sata cable(first in pic) it should come with both the harddrive and motherboard.

What programs and what database type are you using on the server?
 
Arm_Pit said:
I would highly reccomend getting anoter 250GB and running it in RAID, if just for the the protection of data-loss.

Also you shoulnd't have to buy a sata cable(first in pic) it should come with both the harddrive and motherboard.

What programs and what database type are you using on the server?
Click to expand...

The hard drives are OEM, so they won't come with a(n) SATA cable, but the motherboard should come with at least one.
 
I'll throw a few ideas out there.

We have two servers and a hd rack running over here. Two HP Proliant's dl560 and dl380 and what not. And a few things I've learned from them is that they are loud. And we all know the reason for that....Heat.

-So make sure you have good cooling, esspically so if they are running 24/7.
-Instead of using a x2 I would run either zeons or optron's, even dual or quad.
-Use raid as mentioned before.
-Get a ups as mentioned before.
-You may want to consider scsi 15k hd's if you need alot of speed, but then price is a huge factor.


Thoes are just some ideas to think about.
And why the heck did you add a 25 dollar sounds card lol?

And hardly any of thoes idea are going to save you money lol

Hope this helps.
-Bob-
 
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If you're building a server for somebody else's business, I would agree with bigsaucybob. Its a big responsibility and honestly its worth having a large company build one for you because of all the tiny things that go wrong. If your building a general usage rig or something for yourself you have can fix all the little problems, but when your messing with your dad's business I wouldn't risk it.
 
I think that dual or quad processing redefines "over-doing it" in my situation :/ Why would I need that for a server with 12 hosts?

The sound card is there because it was the cheapest one (that wasnt rated as being DOA by 75% of the users on newegg). Why wouldnt you want sound?

We already have UPSs (and have had them for years).

I would LOVE to go SCSI 15k.. but it's too much, 10k is more than enough for what we're doing. (not to mention that oodles of money :P)

What is the difference between a server CPU (like opteron) and a PC chip? Is it worth paying about double for the opteron?
 
Well in your first post it sounds like you wanted some high end hardware, so I just threw some idea out. Never said any of the ideas were actually pratical, lol.

I still don't really see the need for sound if it's a server and you shouldn't have to be messing with it that often, but suit yourself.

Actually you can find some extremely good deals on scsi drives if you know where to look. What going to cost you then is the controler card/s.

I wouldn't pay double for them after what I've heard you say now, but x2 were not made with server applications in mind, unlike opterons.

Hope this helps

-Bob-
 
Is Raid one going to be your only backup system? Or are you going to use a tape drive/external Hard Drive? Dont your Dad's associates have DVD burners in their computers? I thought is was generally a good idea to keep the users away from the server. Wouldnt want anyone to introduce a virus. (Accidentaly)

Good Luck
 
Good point about the burner; i just figured that it's onl $30 or so, might as well :P. We have a pretty extesive backup system though, 5 external drives, one for each weekday. Our office manager take one home every night. we also have an archive that we update monthly locked in a safety deposit box. The RAID 1 would just be optimal for minimizing downtime in the event of an HDD failure.

I dont think i want to deal with SCSI because i never have before. SATA is already on a quick enough bus that it cannot be matched by current HDD speeds (except those insane all solid state HDDs that I've heard about). SCSI would be good if i was using more than 4 drives.

Bottom line: should i pay a little bit more and get the opteron just to be safe?

EDIT:

Should i get http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103586

Or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103594
 
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i will not be contributing much here to the ideas already mentioned but i think you should address the issues i raise.
1) Tell us your exact budget
2) Tell us the specs of your old rig
3) Tell us the memory footprint of the existing apps
4) Tell us what OS it will be
5) Tell us what RDMS it will be
6) Do you have off site backup facilities, if these are accounting applications it is highly important that the records are maintain, and 3-4 fold redundecy would be recommended for back ups.
7) Where is the server to be located
8) How large is the database
9) how heavily used are the applications
10) what is the bandwidth usage across the network, may give an indication of its usage
11) Who is going to support the application
12) who is going to configure the server
13) Do you require a SLA
14) How business critical is the server
15) Has a risk anaylsis been performed

To be honest there is an endless list of question that could be asked but these are the key things i would be discussing with clients, and the ones you and your father should discuss and document

As for my suggestion
1) Go with dell, they have good SLA options and the support is great
2) Raid 1 is an essential minimum
3) Should prob be looking at xeons/oppies but not nessessarily exclusively
4) cooling is an important issue and should be addressed when we know the location of the sever.
 
Budget is unlimited (whatever i need, i can afford; i mean, i cant pay like 10k for a server that i dont need)

The old server is EIDE drives (no type of RAID), 512kb RAM, P4 2.4 Ghz (basically a low budget PC compared to now)

I dont know what a memory footprint is... Maybe this will help. (this is just taken during lunch when there are only a few computers using applications and only a coupl of applications running (pretty much the filing system and a few accounting programs) the filing system runs at about 30,000 K idle, the office suite we use is about the same. There are 5 Tax programs, all of which are running on all computers. On the server, the load for that is about 60,000 K. There are also other programs that are run on fewer computers. At full load the entire system is probably about 250,000K

View attachment 1291

The OS would be windows. I want to know if i need 200 SE or if i can use CP Pro.

I dont think we use an RDMS, or i just dont know what you are talkign about (you mean like mySQL?)

We back up our HDDs every night except sunday. We have an archive at 2 employee's homes and one in a sefety deposit box.

We do not require an SLA, but it is something to think about when deciding whether to build my own or to do it through a company.

The database is teensy compared to most servers. It takes up about 80-120 GB, (when we switch to a new less hardware intensive paperless filing program it will go up by about 60GB)

Out of about 15 Applications, 5 are running on everycomputer all day (some people turn off computers at lunch). The rest are used as needed.

Not sure how to check bandwidth on the network

We have a client that sets up networks and servers for this area's businesses who will take care of our system.

Without it, we cannot do any work at all.

Risk analysis: If it fails, we're... well you get the idea
 
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