which forum should I put this post - building a server 1

[silvere]

hey,

If I'm not in the right forum could someone please redirect me.

I need to build a computer for a company with about 40 users. They use solidworks and a database program called E2. Both of which are quite a load on the servers memory and hard drives. I currently have win2k adv server.

I was looking at a Dell that has the following specs:

dual xeon 3.0ghz
2gb ddr
1st hd 36GB 10K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI Drive for the os
2nd hd 73GB 10K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI Drive and put these two in raid 0
3rd hd 73GB 10K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI Drive


Does this sound about right? If so here are my questions:

1. what mobo to use
2. what psu
3. do I buy 1 2gb stick or 2 512's
4. do I switch to the 15k instead of the 10k
5. should I go with 4gb memory instead
6. or would the ATHLON 64 be better?
7. is the raid 0 the route I should go or should I stripe and mirror it...is so do I need two more of the 73GB 10K RPM Ultra 320 SCSI Drives?

and any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Andy

 

[NickFerrar]

The Dell spec looks OK, if there was a bit more money available I'd do a RAID1 OS (2 x 18GB 15k) and a RAID5 (4 x 36GB) for the data.

Personally I would stick with a Dell (with a decent warranty) rather than build one from scratch, it's just too risky for a production server. Of your specific questions though:

1). don't know
2). A 700w should be ample - probably could get away with 400w
3). Depends on costs and how many of the available slots you'd be filling up - always best to leave some room for expansion.
4). Might help but personally I don't notice much difference in speed between the two - certainly not enough to justify the much higher price.
5). Depends on the apps - I'm not familiar with them.
6). The A64 looks nice but I wouldn't go cutting edge building a production server for someone...
7). Don't use RAID0, there's no fault-tolerance. Either use a RAID1 mirror or a RAID5 stripe set with parity. Combining striping+mirroring can give even better performance but for your purposes I wouldn't bother with due to costs/technicalities. This site is quite good for a quick reference for RAID levels:

http://www.acnc.com/04_01_00.html

 

[technome]

Motherboard- Supermicro x5dp8, it is a dual cpu board, (2 gig ecc ram). On mine I only have 1 cpu. The machine is an active directory FSMO running DNS, DHCP, and MS SQL server. Even with this load the serve is bloody fast.( this is not the recommended setup; with mucho resources I would not have SQL running on an FSMO, still it is extremely fast)

Server is running raid 5 on a LSILOGIC Dual channel u320 card (140 gig array), with 4-15k 73 gig Seagate drives (1 drive is hotspare). 2 drives on each channel. If you are running a data base, with high usage I would go for the 15k drives because of the database use. The u320 card is a key factor of the server's performance, much faster than a u160. raid.

http://www.lsilogic.com/products/stor_prod/raid/index.html

If you go with mirrored drive, still go with a LsiLogic scsi adapter. Have one in another server, remarkable performance.

With 40 users, 2 gig of ram would suffice but Windows OSs love ram; stick to the manufacturers recommended suppliers (warning !)

Supermicro makes some fine cases with high power, redundant power supplies. Below is an url to Aberdeen computer, with servers from Supermicro.

http://www.aberdeeninc.com/ABCATG/mb6887.htm

Building a server can become a non profit learning experience. If any part is DOA or any problems arise, you will have a tough time making a profit, unless you markup the price.

With a Supermicro 850 case, the mother of all server cases, CDR, cables, etc, I purchased the components for less than $ 7600.00. This config is superior to a $ 16,000.00 (plus tax) Dell 6600. (Dell offers a u160 raid adapter).

Purchase the drives separately, so you have a 5 year warranty, oem is 3 years.

 

[silvere]

thanks for the info...it helped a LOT

how's this lookin?

SuperMicro Server CSE-942S-600B Tower
Supermicro x5dp8 mobo
Dual XEON 3.0ghz
4 - Samsung 1GB PC2100 ECC Reg
4 - CHEETAH 73.4GB 15k ULTRA-320 raid 5
MegaRAID SCSI 320-2 card

any suggestions?

 

[technome]

Case specs are very good, plenty of drive expansion possibilities, 4 u units are a nice size. I really dislike the 1 u units servers, due heat and dust and small factor chassis parts ( reliablity).
Make sure you get the x5dp8-g2, believe there are or were two versions of the mobo. All other parts are good.

If you go with this, order round Scsi cables from Adaptec, I would not take chances on other cable manufactures

Purchase a CDR, floppy, a couple of spare fans for the case; I would mount an extra fan in the case ( looks easy to do). Never leave the case cover off in operation for more than a few minutes, drives will become hot. With any unused drives carriers, I block the air inlets to produce more air flow over the drives, box tape or scotch tape will do it.

I also purchase a drive as a "hotspare", cheap insurance.

Try to order the drives with the same firmware revision.

When hooking up the scsi cables to the drive backplane refer to PDF on the Supermicro site, first time I did a hookup to the backplane , I attached the cables to the wrong set of connectors and wasted 4 hours thinking it was a bad mobo. No terminator is needed for the raid, backplane has termination

I use Teflon spray by Elmers call "Slide-All" on all conntectors, power and scsi, makes it a lot eaier and less chance of damaging pins on scsi. Spray the whole connector. Mark the connectors and drives.

Connect tape drive to the onboard Adaptec scsi, not to the LsiLogic raid adapter. If you have a battery backup unit such as APC for the server definitely use the "write back" setting on the raid bios setup. Stripe should be 32k to 64k, personnal for a multi purpose server I would use 64k, I have tried different sizes, this is my usually setting. Disable the "virutal size or disk" ( don't remember) had problems with this,and disabling is recommended by LSI. Must hit F6 on Windows install to add driver. Make sure you check the LSi site for the newest drivers and firmware. This raid adapter is very fast.

Create at least two partitions, one for the system and one for data. Place your page file on the data partiton, you will not have enough room on you system partition unless you can create a much larger partition by some means than then the OS will allow ( had troble creating a 5 gig, 4.5 is about max on wk2, Windows 2003 does not limit you.
If resources are unlimited you could also add two small scsi drives ( 18 gig) mirrored (raid 1) for the pagefile and log files ( generally recommended for SQL and Windows). Remenber to divide you drives over the two channel as equally as possible. Leave your completed server on for a week, test the drives for errors before transferring data over to it. LsiLogic will walk you through the raid setup via a telphone call, if you have not done it before.

I would not jump into a second processor, performance does not increase drastically, and SQL has licensing issues. Disable hyperthreading with Windows 2000 in the bios. Mobo takes zeon, order with the 512k cache, the 1 meg cache provides miniscule speed increase

You could use 512k memory if you want, there are 8 stick slots. Probably better off using the 1 gig sticks ( less to items to fail)

Once Windows OS is up update all drivers in device manager, all MS updates Recomend purchasing Excutive Software's &quot;Undelete&quot; and &quot;Diskeeper&quot;. If you get Diskeeper, do a &quot;boot time&quot; defrag on the partitions. I install ALL software, aside from the system and system components onto the data partition under a directory \install\<each program in it's own sub directory>, so you cannot run out of room on the system partition.

With case I use the drives and CPU remain a few degrees over room temperature, you should have the same; look like a really good case.

Shop aroud the Internet. Drives, Case, Mobo etc prices vary considerably.

Make sure you charge you client for this advice and shopping, tac on $ 500.00, I do.

 

[silvere]

wow you sure do know what you're talking about. can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

couple more questions:

1. this is supermicro's addy for suggested memory. I want 4-1GB sticks. which do I get?

2. Few raid 5 questions...I'm familiar with 0 and 1, but not 5. if I have 4 hds at 73.4 each will I have 293.6gb total? does it strip and mirror at the same time? what if a hd goes bad...can I just replace it with a new one?

take care
Andy

 

[technome]

Mine was Samsung , purchase throught Cosair. From the memory list, at Supermicro site, the following would be approximate K4H560438C-TCB0
In a raid 5 drive array, equivalent of 1 drive is used for parity which is written across all drives of the array so you have 4 drives, so 3 drives times 73.4=220.2 gig, the formatting will result in a few gig less, roughly 218 gig.
As concerns how data is written. Data and parity is written across all drives in a raid 5 array. Should one drive fail, the parity info on the remaining drives can recreate the data which was on the failed drive. If a drive fails in the array, the system will slow down, because the &quot;degraded&quot; array must create the data from the parity info in real time. The system will remain operational, but you must replace the failed drive as quickly as possible. Should another drive fail before replacing the failed drive you have lost the array. I have and never lost 2 drives within a few days, but it can happen. This is where a hot spare is great; this is a powered spare, unused which automatically replaces a drive which fails, and rebuilds it's self with the help from the parity info, automatically. With this there is little chance of a lost array.
With raid 5 there is no mirroring. You can mirror a raid 5 array but this requires double the amount of disks, not practical and there are better options.

 

[silvere]

ok couple more questions

I'm going to want to clone the hard drives and I will need something to partition them with.

do you know of anyway to do this without spending a billion dollars on software that I'd only use once?

thanks
Andy

 

[technome]

Not sure I understand your reference to partitioning; basically once the raid driver is installed (F6) at the initial setup, you can think of the array as just a large single disk. When the install screen comes up to create partition to install windows 2000 on, just create a partition and proceed with the install, the remainder of unused space can be partitioned for another, or multiple partitions. Recommend not converting the array into a &quot;Dynamic&quot; disk unless you must for some reason, &quot;Basic&quot; disks are the default.

I have used Norton Ghost for cloning, but it has not always liked various CDRoms in the past; had pretty good luck with &quot;Liteon&quot; CDRs. All you need to clone is the system partition. Your system partition may be trashed ( had software, poorly created, trash the system a couple of times when Windows 2000 first appeared), but data partitions are untouched, except for security properties on files/folders. A tape backup system is still needed

Each drive in the array cannot be cloned; drives in an array are not considered individual drives to the OS, once an array is created, all drives work in unison. Once the driver is install at F6, click your heals three times an say &quot;It just one large disk&quot;, again and again until you believe it. Remember to document your raid bios settings and backup the raid setup ( LsiLogic powerconsole software) to floppy.
Advise you to read about raid and lurk in forums which have threads on raid; this site has many references as does Dell's forum site.

Make sure you monitor your drive temperature, drive longevity depends heavily on drive temperature. Your Supermicro case should have excellent cooling (drives should maintain slightly warm, about 10 degrees over room temp); with this case, dust build up would be the only cause of drive temperature increase. Dust-out the server and drives mounts every few months.

Remember to burn in the server for two weeks before placing into production

When completed you will have one kick ass server.

 

[silvere]

ok, getting closer to ordering the parts and I have to create a p.o. for it. I want to make sure that I have everything down to the last detail.

1. I looked up the adaptec round cables and they have any different choices:

http://www.adaptecstore.com/index.cfm?category=285&subcategory=950&productid=2017100

Which ones do I need and how many of them?

2. Do I need to order any extra fans or other cooling products?

3. I couldn't find the memory you had: K4H560438C-TCB0. All I could find is K4H560438D-TCBA... The difference is the C and D after 438 and the last four letters.

http://www.dallasmemory.com/estore/prodView.asp?idProduct=270

Is there a difference in this memory?

4. I want four 1GB sticks….do they have to be matched?


Thanks again,
Andy

 

[technome]

Little update...
As a FSMO, with SQL 2000 and everything else I have on the server, this server is still incredibly fast and rock solid stability. Not one roll over ,memory dump or bsod. The ultimate server.

This is the newest Lsilogic raid adapter (link below), this is faster than the Lsilogic u320-2, it is really the LSIlogic u320-2x, sold under Intel' name. Not sure if they are out yet.

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/SRCU42X/index.htm?iid=ipp_srvr+srvrraid_srcu42x&

Cables..You need two round cables for the raid, if you have a tape backup you will need another cable, but not a u320 and a motherboard to pc slot adapter bracket ( 8&quot;-12&quot; length cable I guess, attached to the motherboard adaptec channel). Trade secret, get a can of Borden's &quot;Slide All&quot; Teflon spray, spay all connectors, and motherboard slots( good hardware store), makes removal a breeze.

This box has so many fans, you won't believe. You could order extra fans or other parts, but buy from Supermicro direct, cheap. Case will keep your cpu and drives about 5 dregrees above room temp.

As long as you get the recommended ram you should be OK. I purchased the ram from one of the big guys, so I have a lifetime warranty. Make sure the ram sticks match (should not be a problem, if ordered at the same time).

When you get the board in, update the bios from the Supermicro site, small issue with the floppy drive not showing up during part of the install (intermittant), corrected by the update.

If you get the same Seagate drives make sure they are all the same firmware revision !!!!!!! or don't place the order. Note I had to update the firmware on the drives as in the link below, my drives came in with different revisions some than 003, some 004. Please read before you buy. If update is needed, must be done before Windows install

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/u320_firmware.html

Instead of installing software to c:\program files, I install as much as possible to the data partition in a directory such as d:\install. This way you cannot possibly run out of space on the system partition.

Since you are gettting 4 gig ram, I would place the pagefile on the data partition or create another partition(3 total) just for the pagefile, 1.5 times 4 gig for size (6 gig). This way you can choose the cluster size (when you format this particular partition) to match the stripe size of the array, default stripe size being 64 k, makes it faster. Remember to leave the other two partitions the default cluster size.

In the device manager update every drice driver just after the inital install then apply the MS updates

Shop carefully, prices vary considerablely

As a reference Mark Minasi's Master Windows 2000 server(or 2003) is excellant, the most understandable.

At this point I would go for the 3.0 or 3.2 Ghz Cpu. Almost temped to say go for Windows 2003 but I have my reservations for a production server until patch 2 comes out, even then you have to wait for the bug to show up. Have it running on non production server seems pretty good.

Remember to keep the server install as simple as needed, no extra software, or services than needed. If more windows components are needed later, add as needed. K.I.S.S... Keep it simple as Sh*t.

This should make it easier for you
Good luck
Paul Meiners