small business server recommendations 1

[umbletech]

Hi All

I need to buy another application server. I've been given a budget of $3355 to $4100 in $US but can probably get a little more if I mount a good business case

Our current servers have twin xeons. In the DL range the twin processor models seem expensive.

Is there another range that would be better value?

Currently we have SCSI arrays. About 50 users at the moment - business been growing by 10% each year so say 80 users to be safe. Can I cut costs by going to SATA?

The main application currently uses a foxpro database back end and is disk I/O intensive - it is going to sql2005. Is it worth going for the twin processors?

And what should the drive config be - an OS mirror with a raid array for the data or is it better to put the lot on the array?

Thanks tremendously.

 

[jfrantz]

In your situation, I would get a DL385 with a single dual-core processor. The Opteron servers simply fly when it comes to I/O.

Another option is to purchase one on Ebay. I just saw a dual-core 2.4GHz DL385 for $2700 and a dual-core 2.2GHz DL385 for $2100. The auction number is 9738991017 for the 2.2GHz box.

I've got two DL585s, one 2x dual-core 2.4GHz Opterons and one 2x single-core 2.2GHz Opterons. I am blown away by how fast these machines are. I've got VMware ESX running on the single-core 2.2GHz machine with 16 VMs. It runs flawlessly.

If this is still straining your budget, a DL380 G3 or G4 on Ebay is not a bad way to go. Staying one server generation behind and purchasing used can make a budget go a long way. Throw a Smart Array 6400 and some 15K SCSI disks into the DL380 and you've got a very nice server with great I/O.

-Jeff

 

[umbletech]

Thx Jeff

I did a project recently with sunfire opterons and boy they do smoke.

In your humble opinion ;-) does SCSI still walk over SATA. I've got a 3rd party vendor saying we should keep the cost down by going SATA and my boss doesn't want to buy 2nd hand.

 

[jfrantz]

You specificaly mentioned that your database is I/O intensive. SATA drives are no where near SCSI when it comes to moving data fast. Average seek times for SATA drives are 9+ milliseconds whereas 15K SCSI drives are less than four milliseconds. Throw in the battery-backed write caching RAID controller and you've got blazing I/O. It pays to focus on the I/O subsystem of the server.

I've seen companies try to save money up front time and time again. You always pay in the long-run, especially in terms of labor costs. How much does it cost to pay 50 users to sit around waiting an extra 10 hours per year?

I worked for a company about 17 years ago which had an older Unix server. I pleaded for over a year that the machine was terribly outdated and that it was time to replace it. They finally agreed. One report which had taken over two hours to run on the old machine was running in under 5 minutes on the new machine. That was mostly due to replacing the old 8-bit SCSI subsustem with new (at the time) 16-bit technology. How much time and money were wasted by 70 employees waiting for this old machine over a three year period?

I've found the best way to approach situations such as yours is to sell the solution to management. Show them a five-year plan for this server and that by spending a little extra will save them money and increase productivity. Plan to add RAM in two years and perhaps replace the hard drives in three.

Good Luck!
-Jeff

 

[umbletech]

Thx tremendously Gents

To hit the price point it looks like my options are to drop the cache enabler on a dl385 and enable write through caching versus looking at an ML350 with the enabler

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtmlstory_id=03000000LKZO

They seemed happy but

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/70392/hp-proliant-ml350-g4.html

had a couple of concerns:

"Cooling is nowhere near as good as that found in the TX300, though. There's only a pair of active processor heatsinks, a fan in the power supply and a large variable-speed fan at the rear of the chassis. None of the fans are truly hot-swappable, and the hard disk and expansion bays have no accompanying fans or any facilities to fit one to them.

Furthermore, it was disconcerting to hear the main chassis fan constantly varying its speed, indicating that either its sensor was too sensitive or it was having trouble holding a stable internal temperature."

Are these dealbreakers? What is people's experience of this box? Oh I should mention that I'm looking at a second 3.0 GHZ Xeon on the 350 - a single 3.0 just doesn't seem much these days.