[Shameless Plug] Re: [OT] Server choices?

[Alex Satrapa]

Rob Shugg wrote:

>My company is starting to think about buying some server hardware and I 
>wanted to get some feedback on what makes a good server.
>
I work for TPG, so I figure I may as well plug their products:

http://www.pc.tpg.com.au/servers.php

The things that make "good" servers from TPG's point of view:
 - reliability of the hardware
 - RAID controllers

These machines only use on-board video, since they're not intended to be 
placed in front of humans.

>What I would like to know is, what do you really get when you fork out for a 
>server as opposed to a standard pc? and what are the main questions you need 
>to ask yourself in specifying one?
>
The main feature of a server is reliability, the second is performance 
(as opposed to a high end workstation, which will often put performance 
first, and reliability a distant second). For a database server, you 
will usually want fast disk I/O, rather than fast processors - so RAID 
is essential, and lots of RAM won't go astray either ("RAM" in Linux 
speak being read as "disk buffer" ;)

Note that most "server" class machines will use ECC RAM, to avoid data 
getting corrupted by stray gamma rays. If you want to cut the price of 
your server, you might consider using standard SDRAM (on a standard 
workstation motherboard) - but be aware that SDRAM is not as reliable 
(safe to your data) as ECC RAM! TPG servers come with 2 network 
interfaces - if you're not saturating your Internet connection yet, you 
won't need to worry so much about having 2 interfaces unless you're 
multihoming the server.

You might want to think about getting a P4 on a motherboard that 
supports hyperthreading too - I've heard reports that under Linux you 
can get as much as 30% extra performance out of the P4 when 
"HyperThreading" is enabled.

At the cheapest end of the market, buy a couple of big IDE drives, and 
use software RAID to improve the throughput of the database server.

The main thing you get from a "server" machine is reliability (spelt 
"M-O-N-E-Y") and performance (again, spelt "M-O-N-E-Y"). The people with 
the money might decide that the extra cost of a $8k server (over a 
hotted-up $2k workstation) is cheap insurance.

HTH
Alex