req advice: about server hardware before purchase
tg
and I'd appreciate advice regarding more recent servers.. I can only afford
second hand and running it for web and email hosting at home but I know
nothing about more recent hardware.
My needs are:
1) has to have a cd drive
3) has to have two network ports
2) I don't necessarily need raid or twin drives
3) prefer 1U rackmount form
4) must be low on power usage - near or below 100W
I'll be running a linux dizzy on it, maybe blueonyx or similar. Thanks for
any advice.
ps: I know there are other forums that cover this.
Trevor Hemsley
You don't say how much you _can_ afford. For ￜ409+VAT you can get a brand new
Dell R200 with a 3 year on-site warranty. That's pretty basic but would be
functional - 1GB RAM, dual core 3.16GHz chip, 250GB SATA drive. Upgrading that
to 4GB RAM would cost you a shade over ￜ500 by the time you add VAT (since
you're posting from zen.co.uk I am assuming that you are in the UK) - cheaper I
suspect if you do it via Crucial instead. Since one of their operating system
choices is RHEL5 you can be fairly sure that CentOS will install and have
support for all the devices.
--
Trevor Hemsley, Brighton, UK
Trevor dot Hemsley at ntlworld dot com
tg
"Trevor Hemsley" <Trevor....@mytrousers.ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:gjxI70UYBlcC-p...@trevor2.dsl.pipex.com...
> On Thu, 3 Dec 2009 09:45:59 UTC in comp.os.linux.hardware, "tg"
> <nos...@nospamevereverever.net> wrote:
>
>> my time struggling with cobalt raqs is coming to an end, I have to
>> upgrade
>> and I'd appreciate advice regarding more recent servers.. I can only
>> afford
>> second hand and running it for web and email hosting at home but I know
>> nothing about more recent hardware.
>> My needs are:
>> 1) has to have a cd drive
>> 3) has to have two network ports
>> 2) I don't necessarily need raid or twin drives
>> 3) prefer 1U rackmount form
>> 4) must be low on power usage - near or below 100W
>> I'll be running a linux dizzy on it, maybe blueonyx or similar. Thanks
>> for
>> any advice.
>> ps: I know there are other forums that cover this.
>
> Dell R200 with a 3 year on-site warranty. That's pretty basic but would
> be
> functional - 1GB RAM, dual core 3.16GHz chip, 250GB SATA drive. Upgrading
> that
> you're posting from zen.co.uk I am assuming that you are in the UK) -
> cheaper I
> suspect if you do it via Crucial instead. Since one of their operating
> system
> choices is RHEL5 you can be fairly sure that CentOS will install and have
> support for all the devices.
ok thanks for your feedback Trevor.
Not sure I can afford �500, that's why I'll have to get second hand.
Henrik Carlqvist
> I'd appreciate advice regarding more recent servers.. I can only afford
> second hand
It would not be much point in recomending getting a brand X server with a
Y CPU and Z chipset. When you are looking for second hand you will
probably have to buy what you can find.
However, as second hand probably means it is a few years old it will most
likely be well supported by any modern version of any Linux distribution.
So IMHO "more recent servers" contradicts "second hand".
Maybe you could first check and see what you can find second hand and
then come back and ask if that model has any known problems?
regards Henrik
--
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc3(at)poolhem.se Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@localhost postmaster@localhost
Trevor Hemsley
<nos...@nospamevereverever.net> wrote:
> Not sure I can afford ￜ500, that's why I'll have to get second hand.
The advantage is that a) it's new and b) it has a 3 year on-site warranty
that'll get you an engineer the next business day and free replacement parts if
it breaks.
I did have a quick look at Ebay UK and you can pick up a PowerEdge 860 - the
immediate predecessor to the R200 - for not very much. The cheap ones that I see
listed seem to be all from the same dealer and do not have hard disks installed
so would need those bought. They're all between ￜ135 and ￜ155 for something with
a dual core 2.4GHz and 2 - 4GB RAM. There's also one quad core but that's ￜ395
and also from the same person with no hard disk. I have 5 or 6 of these that we
bought from Dell, running Centos 5 at work so I know that they work OK :-)
tg
"Trevor Hemsley" <Trevor....@mytrousers.ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:gjxI70UYBlcC-p...@trevor2.dsl.pipex.com...
> <nos...@nospamevereverever.net> wrote:
>
off a bit by the power requirements - both are up near the 400w mark which
if running from home could make for a painful electricity bill. I do like
the 860 though, and wattage query aside it looks more than enough for my
needs. I expect the wattage spec is peak and not normal running. Maybe the
power requirement can be tweaked right down?
I expect the 860 can run blueonyx and be controlled by web gui....?
Trevor Hemsley
<nos...@nospamevereverever.net> wrote:
>
> "Trevor Hemsley" <Trevor....@mytrousers.ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> news:gjxI70UYBlcC-p...@trevor2.dsl.pipex.com...
> > On Thu, 3 Dec 2009 18:52:08 UTC in comp.os.linux.hardware, "tg"
> > <nos...@nospamevereverever.net> wrote:
> >
> both those dells look nice, and the 860 looks a good bargain. I'm just put
> off a bit by the power requirements - both are up near the 400w mark which
> if running from home could make for a painful electricity bill. I do like
> the 860 though, and wattage query aside it looks more than enough for my
> needs. I expect the wattage spec is peak and not normal running. Maybe the
> power requirement can be tweaked right down?
> I expect the 860 can run blueonyx and be controlled by web gui....?
Where do you see that 400W figure? The Dell data centre capacity planner flash
UI says that a PE860 with a Xeon 3070, 4GB of RAM and a single 3.5" disk will
pull 138W if running 'scientific' workloads (read 100% cpu) or 84W if idle. I've
never tried attaching any of ours to a power meter to find out how much it does
pull. That 138W goes up to 173W if it has a Pentium D chip or 200W with a quad
core 2.4GHz Xeon.
I'd also want to know from this seller if the 860 includes the weird Dell
mountings for a hard disk or if you have to buy that separately. Also worth
knowing is if it's a Pentium D or a Xeon as that makes a difference. I suspect
the ￜ150 ones are not Xeons but it's worth asking questions. Also, the ones that
have 2GB installed may have that as 4 x 512MB so would be full and to extend RAM
might require spending a bit - Crucial have RAM for these at ￜ97 for 4GB (2x2GB)
or ￜ48 for 2GB (2x1GB). The maximum you can take them to is 8GB.
All ours have Sas 5iR RAID controllers and RAID 1 disks.
C.
<Trevor.Hems...@mytrousers.ntlworld.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 3 Dec 2009 18:52:08 UTC in comp.os.linux.hardware, "tg"
>
> <nos...@nospamevereverever.net> wrote:
>
> The advantage is that a) it's new and b) it has a 3 year on-site warranty
> that'll get you an engineer the next business day and free replacement parts if
> it breaks.
>
> I did have a quick look at Ebay UK and you can pick up a PowerEdge 860 - the
> immediate predecessor to the R200 - for not very much. The cheap ones that I see
> listed seem to be all from the same dealer and do not have hard disks installed
> a dual core 2.4GHz and 2 - 4GB RAM. There's also one quad core but that's £395
> and also from the same person with no hard disk. I have 5 or 6 of these that we
> bought from Dell, running Centos 5 at work so I know that they work OK :-)
>
Even the more expensive "IBM PC Compatible" servers tend to be built
with relatively cheap components but have a relatively high 2nd hand
value; if your skills are up to the job I'd recommend going for a non-
intel/AMD server - i.e. HP, Sun, Apple because:
1) they are usually built out of very high quality components
2) their second hand value plummets
3) they're usually better setup with high performance peripherals
The other downside (in addition to a bit of head scratching when
installing Linux on them) is that when they do break its usually not
viable to repair them.
C.