Jens Frank wrote:
1 CPU at about 2GHz 2 GB RAM 2*36G 15kRPM SCSI Disks Remote controller (rILO, eRIC) for remote "lights out" management 1 Unit rack mountable redundant power supply
Being most familiar with Compaq's Intel servers, I configured the box in their webshop and it was about 4,000$
I just looked at a configuration at Silicon Mechanics. (But, I am also considering another vendor with similar prices, Penguin Computing. And I'm open to more suggestions, as always.)
SM-1151SATA, http://www.siliconmechanics.com/i1511/p4-server.php
1 CPU at 2.4GHZ P4. (They offer a cheaper Celeron, I'm not sure if the P4 is worth the extra money for webserving or not.)
2 GB Ram (2x1GB, which is a little more expensive than 4x512, but leaves slots open for future growth.)
2*80G 7.2kRPM, 8MB cache SATA drives
SATA RAID controller (we could run raid 0 or 1 for redundancy or speed - since a webserver ought not hit the disk all that much, I think redundancy is more important)
NO CD-ROM yes floppy Red Hat 9
The price on this box is $1951. Going with a cheaper processor, and (4x512) RAM, I can get that down to $1579.
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SATA vs. SCSI -- SCSI is theoretically faster, although many say that the practical difference is minimal. SCSI is theoretically more reliable, but with 2 SATA drives in RAID redundant configuration, this is a very minor issue?
Anyhow, for reference, the same exact configurations as above, but with SCSI instead of SATA (and only 36Gb disks instead of 80Gb since disk size on the webserver boxes is not so important):
$2521/$1749.
Just for clarity in case people dozed off during the boring bits above:
SATA 80GB RAID $1951 or $1579 depending on ram/processor SCSI 36GB RAID $2521 or $1749 depending on ram/processor
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I am thinking of buying several of these boxes, to be potentially used in these capacities:
load balancers (2) squid proxies (3) web servers (4) backup db machine (1) (this one should be stuffed with extra ram and the fastest processor, I guess)
Many alternative configurations are possible, esp. if as the current trend seems to suggest, we eliminate the load balancers and simply count on squid+heartbeat
then we would have database machine as geoffrin, the big dog, when fixed and other old hardware eventually moved to the new colo to be mailserver, etc.
Our budget is $20,000 but we have more money than that by far, donated by people who knew that we were already over $20,000. We don't want to go crazy and spend it because we have it -- better to take a wait and see attitude, because hardware will only get cheaper, and our needs will be better understoood in a few months. However, going a little bit over or under should be no cause for concern, if the purpose is valid.
--Jimbo