Thread: Looking for a server build

From a hardware standpoint, I assume there isn't too much of a difference between servers and clients. What are some of the things I need to look for or consider when building a server? What suggestions for hardware would you have for a "top of the line" server?

Originally Posted by jmw_man

From a hardware standpoint, I assume there isn't too much of a difference between servers and clients. What are some of the things I need to look for or consider when building a server? What suggestions for hardware would you have for a "top of the line" server?

The first thing to consider is the answer to this question:

"What do I want it to do?"

Depending on that answer, it may or may not be the case that there "isn't too much of a difference" between servers and clients.

The last server I had a hand in building was a little VIA Epia in a small box w/ a single 2.5 inch drive. Its job was to serve files and stream music. It was also supposed to be quiet, be on all the time, consume very little power, and make no one cry if it died. It worked great. It was cheap. Nothing on it was canonical, so when we had it running the way we liked we imaged the drive and then never bothered to back it up.

Depending on the job, servers can be very different from (what most people think as) clients.

Cheers,


AetheLove

There are actually a lot of differences between the client and server hardware. In servers you have things such as backplanes, power processor modules, raid controllers, different storage/memory capabilities, and on top of all that, they're built to last. I have had some servers that still operate the same as they did 7 years ago.

I have had great success with the Proliant G6-7 series. The 1U servers they offer can have up to 2x xeons with 8 drive bays and redundant power. HP ProLiant DL165 G7 Server series Small & Medium Business

The stand alone servers are good too.. but not as many drive/storage options

HP ProLiant ML300 Servers - comparison results Small & Medium Business - HP

Some of those new dell R series seem pretty good too but I have not used dell since the 2500-6500 series poweredge.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/po...e-r510/fs?~ck=


Let me know what roles and how many users you will have as well as the domain functionality and i'll be able to get a little more specific on the requirements.

Current server is the Dell Poweredge T105 PowerEdge T105 Tower Server Details | Dell
with the dual core AMD Opteron processor.
We've been using it for about 4 years now.

Price won't really be an issue for us. We need the server to run all the time, it will make us cry if it died. Noise and power consumption won't be an issue either.

Our access database data is stored on the server, along with the sql tables with data coming from the cnc equipment. We are considering having 2 servers instead of one with different responsibilities. Currently we have 10 cnc machines connected to the server streaming status data to the server. Eventually we would like to add a client by each machine giving machine operators access to database documents. We have maybe 5-6 users with access open at any given point in time and this seems to slow the network down which is why we are considering having more than one server. We are also planning on adding a video monitoring system to the network as well.

Originally Posted by Warprosper

There are actually a lot of differences between the client and server hardware. In servers you have things such as backplanes, power processor modules, raid controllers, different storage/memory capabilities, and on top of all that, they're built to last. I have had some servers that still operate the same as they did 7 years ago.

I have had great success with the Proliant G6-7 series. The 1U servers they offer can have up to 2x xeons with 8 drive bays and redundant power. HP ProLiant DL165 G7 Server series Small & Medium Business

The stand alone servers are good too.. but not as many drive/storage options

HP ProLiant ML300 Servers - comparison results Small & Medium Business - HP

Some of those new dell R series seem pretty good too but I have not used dell since the 2500-6500 series poweredge.

PowerEdge 11G R510 Rack Server Details | Dell


Let me know what roles and how many users you will have as well as the domain functionality and i'll be able to get a little more specific on the requirements.

I think the proper response is +1 if I understand what that mean . Everything he said.

Redudant powersupplies is a common one. Each plugged into a different source or in my case at work, different ups rails.

ECC memory for error checking.

If you're building a server for yourself for fun, you'll probably skip most of this and just set it up to back itself up regularly. If this is for work, you need to ask a few questions and then you can decide what you need.

Originally Posted by RhysJD3

1. Is it mission critical (yes)
2. What's the up time required (100%, of course, if there's a power outtage then it isn't crucial, but for normal day to day operations then it's 100%)
3. How much processing power is required (Unsure, I would say I'd like to maximize this but I'm unsure how the processing power of the client, processing power of the server, and network speed each play their roles in data transfer)
4. How much ram and do you need ecc error checking (school me on ecc error checking, ram is such a small expense isn't it? I would probably maximize this)
5. Hard drive space - should it be raided, 1 or 5 or better (unsure, although, if I were to build a server myself I would probably.. in the beginning, just swap out the existing HD into the new server to avoid having to transfer files and etc.)
6. Does it need a ups (recently installed a TrippLite 1500 VA)

What are you trying to build it to do?

See above

We want a faster server. We want everything faster, we want immediate response when opening up documents stored on the server, we want immediate response when navigating the company database, etc. Everything is digitized at the company. Trace-ability plays a huge role so everything is linked and people routinely need access to purchase orders, material certs, test results, standard operating procedures, inspection forms, non-conformance reports, corrective and preventive action forms, calibration forms, etc, etc...

Currently, everything on the server is backed up by a cloud service provided by the network provider.

I know you said price isn't an issue, but, what is your budget? We just spend 30k on a server, NAS drive combo. The server is going to be a VMware server. Have you considering going that route?

Originally Posted by Partyball

I know you said price isn't an issue, but, what is your budget? We just spend 30k on a server, NAS drive combo. The server is going to be a VMware server. Have you considering going that route?

What is 30k paying for divided up?

I'm unfamiliar with NAS and VMware. I looked them up real quick and it looks like NAS is almost just a hard drive connected to your network and VMware is an offsite server solution right?

30k may very well be within the realm of our budget if that's what we need to pay to get the kind of performance we want.

I just went through this last week. Building out a new solution as we move data centers.

I have 3 x DELL R410 servers with dual quad core xeons, 64gb ram, and 3x15,000 rpm drives each. A DELL MD3200i SAN w/8x2TB drives, 2 PowerConnect 2816 switches, 2 PFSense firewalls, and VMWare Vsphere Essentials Plus.

Vmware images to be stored on SAN. We'll use Vmotion and HA. data center gives us two separate internet drops and we'll run CARP on those.

Hoping this works out lovely.

This setup will run you around $30,000.

SAN itself is around $9,000. If you want fiber channel that price goes up a bit so we're using iSCSI for now. SAN generally has better IO performance than a NAS, but they cost more. I think of NAS more for file storage.