Server Suggestions

[parallon]

Hello all. I am tasked with bringing a web server in house and was wondering what some suggested hardware requirements I should look into. There will be moderate traffic if business is right, but would also like to host the company intranet and make some of our applications accessible to people in the field such as timecards, etc.

- Single vs multi-processor
- Amount of RAM
- Is RAID really necessary?
- ???

... and anything else you feel I should look into.

Also, would you recommend running Apache or IIS. The OS will be Win2k3, and I will be using PHP based pages.

Hope that I am asking the right questions.

Thanks in advance,

Parallon

"I used to think that the more that you knew, the farther you would go, then I realized that the more that you know, the more they use you."

-Me

 

[xmario2013]

it really depend on what you put on the web site, is there alot database running beneath the web pages ?

for today's hardware, it may become slow just two years from now, if you planning for long term (say, the company should be there in the next 2 or 4 years and running this thing), I would get the best server your budget allows,

Dual processor
as much RAM as you can get, at least 1GB
and of course RAID if that is mission critical

if you think price is an object, try Dell's 1600s or 400C series, they offer SATA or EIDE drives and you still have the option to do RAID later


I guess IIS and Apache both has their pros and cons, I would perfer Apache since hackers seen to love digg into IIS 's hole whenever there is one, but that doesnt mean you will have less chance of being hacked with Apache
so it really comes down to what application you are running and which one does it better, that is something you have to do homework on

hope this helps

XM

 

[parallon]

The lady at Dell is recommending the PowerEdge 2650. Is that overkill?

"I used to think that the more that you knew, the farther you would go, then I realized that the more that you know, the more they use you."

-Me

 

[xmario2013]

check out Dell outlet, \

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/servers?c=us&cs=28&l=en&s=dfb

, we always get servers there, you can get beefed up server without pay beef price

XM

 

[wdoellefeld]

The lady at Dell is recommending the PowerEdge 2650. Is that overkill?

Possibly it is. The 1750 may be a better fit for you price wise. Really the only difference between the two is the 2650 can fit 5 drives letting you get the split backplane, etc. If you plan on putting time card and mission critical data on it then get the 2650 with a split backplane. Do a raid 1 and 5 putting the OS on the raid 1, data on the raid 5. Dual proc and 2gig of memory.