Server Choices

[cvc61]

I'm wondering if anyone could help me decide our needs for a server. We are a printing company planning to put together a macintosh prepress department. We have had suggestions on NT, SGI, and SUN. Would any of these be best suited to our needs or overkill. How should I base my decision?

TIA

 

[catorze]

I would start with deciding which Operating System (OS)supports the primary application(s) you will need for your business. If the vendor of the application supports multiple platforms, the one with the highest version number is likely the most used, and my inclination would be to lean towards that platform. Once you've determined the OS, the hardware platform decision may already be made. If not, and the OS supports the Intel-based platform, I would lean to this as competition is robust, making prices good, and parts availability is abundant.

 

[Morsing]

I would say SGI and SUN are more stable and perform better but the hardware is more expensive. You would easily loose the money saved on an NT platform on downtime though.

Of SGI and SUN, SGI is probably the easiest to work with but the choice also depends on if you have the in-house experience to run either of these platforms.

If the application supports it and you have the money I'd go for SGI.

Cheers Henrik Morsing
Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration
& p690 Technical Support