Server Newbie

[Phaeton]

Our company is ready to roll out an online application for our sales agenets. I read as much as I could on the web and believe that a two-server configuration, one to house our app and the other our database should be sufficient to get us going. In terms of hardware, a RAID-5 configuration of 3 HDs each and a tape drive would provide a nice backup solution.

My question is what brand and at what price? I'm currently looking at the DELL 500SCs but I'm not sure it supports RAID-5...so I'm also looking at the 1400. I'm curous about the nature of the PERC3/SC and PERC3/DCL controllers. What are the advantages of Dual channel Raid Controllers?

 

[pgoss]

Well it all depends on what you are looking for. Do you want Rack-mounted? What is your spending limit? A front-end web server will (I'm guessing your online application will be served via a web interface) cost less then a back-end SQL server. I would suggest the PE2550 for the Web server. We run a lot of our web stuff on those and they make a great front-end. If cost is a major issue, look into configuring a 1550. For the back-end SQL server, look towards the 4600, it's beefy with room for expansion. I would not suggest the 4400 because those are going to be discontinued in a few months.

A little background info, we have standardized on Dell, we have about every one of their rack-mount servers listed so we are pretty familiar with them.

My $.02
pat

 

[FilthPig]

Regarding the RAID controllers, if you're going to set up a single RAID-5 array for each, then the single channel is fine. A dual-channel controller is nice to reduce I/O overhead when you want to set up RAID 0 & 1 or RAID 5 & 1, that is when you want to mirror an array. Marc Creviere

 

[MrTom]

where i work it's all dells too. they are pretty well designed.
if you are going for rackmount kit then i'd definately recommend the 2550's. they come with one onboard 1 gigabit copper ethernet which could link your app and db server with just standard cat5e crossover. the other onboard 100Mb/s could then supply your link to the rest of the network.
i've never been too impressed with RAID 5 on a small number of disks. if one fails then performance can be crippled. i'd spend the extra money on RAM.

 

[schase]

I've got a poweredge 2500, we love it, went for the dual cpu, a gig of ram, redundant fan, redundant powersupply - 3 harddrives for now, and a tape backup.

its housing about 10 websites for the moment, plus acting as a intranet. running Microsoft Small business Server Suite. DNS, Email, etc.

no problems.

 

[johnv20]

Hi,
You could buy a 4th drive and set this up as a hotspare - comes online automatically if 1 of the drives in the raid fails. This should remove any problems with performance being crippled if a drive fails

 

[johnny99]

We buy 2 different servers from Dell at the moment:
2550 with dual CPU and dual power supply and 2x2 backplane and the 128MB raid cntl.
The other one is 6450 again with dual CPU, and dual power supply and 2x2 backplane and 128 MB raid.
We try to use 9 GB disk in the servers running raid 1 with one hotspare.
The we put 1-2 Qlogic 2200F for the connection to the SAN.

You can also put a DRAC in the servers.

These two server types work fine in our shop.

/johnny

 

[MJewell]

We use, Dell 4400's, the 4600's look just as good, and we just ordered 4 of the Dell 2500's, I believe the 2500 is a little more robust then the 2550 (Rackmount), if you are interested in Racking them, just order the rails with the server... I prefer the 2500s because of the backplane options, to me a 2x2 is useless unless you plan on Raid 0/1, We primarily use Raid 5 for its redundency. We also always get the service on the servers, usually 4hr and 24hr on Workstations, we have never had a problem with support on any Dell PC we have, although the techs are a little annoying asking you to go through all the diags you allready ran to determine what part to order a replacement for, but just tell them what they want to hear and the'll send the parts right out....

Mike