Webmaster forum - Question on server machine

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Question on server machine

Patrick

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

Hi All,

Was wondering;

If you had $5k to spend on a machine to be used as a web server (Linux),
what and why would you buy (memory, processor, etc)? The machine would
be used to display results from numeric model runs from a 192 processor
cluster. I'm not sure yet how the results would be displayed or what
technologies would be employed.

Regards,
Patrick

George L. Sexton

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

That's simple. 2G on a dual core machine with maybe 4GB of RAM, and then
spend the rest on an Apple Cinema Display.

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:20:07 -0400, Patrick wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Was wondering;
>
> If you had $5k to spend on a machine to be used as a web server (Linux),
> what and why would you buy (memory, processor, etc)? The machine would
> be used to display results from numeric model runs from a 192 processor
> cluster. I'm not sure yet how the results would be displayed or what
> technologies would be employed.
>
> Regards,
> Patrick

--
George Sexton
MH Software, Inc. - Home of Connect Daily Web Calendar
http://www.mhsoftware.com/connectdaily.htm

Matt Probert

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:20:07 -0400, Patrick <psmith@marine.usf.edu>
wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>Was wondering;
>
>If you had $5k to spend on a machine to be used as a web server (Linux),
>what and why would you buy (memory, processor, etc)? The machine would
>be used to display results from numeric model runs from a 192 processor
>cluster. I'm not sure yet how the results would be displayed or what
>technologies would be employed.

Any cheap off-the-shelf unit for about $600 and then spend the
remainder on a decent connection. Linux doesn't require much
processing power, the bottle necks are often in the connectivity.

Matt

--
The Probert Encyclopaedia
Reliable, accountable, data for serious researchers

Patrick

2007-04-25, 6:18 pm

Matt Probert wrote:

> On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:20:07 -0400, Patrick <psmith@marine.usf.edu>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Any cheap off-the-shelf unit for about $600 and then spend the
> remainder on a decent connection. Linux doesn't require much
> processing power, the bottle necks are often in the connectivity.
>
> Matt
>
>
Hi Matt,

I don't have much control over the connection as it is supplied by the
University. However I've heard terms like SONET, OC3, 100 Mbps
connections and T1 backbones. Don't know if that means we have a good
network or not, but it seems to work fairly well for the 43,000+
students here. That and I never have to wait to long for sites to
download, at lunchtime of course :) So any old machine will do then?

Patrick

CJM

2007-04-26, 6:16 am

"Patrick" <psmith@marine.usf.edu> wrote in message
news:f0o3i8$4cr$1@news1.usf.edu...
> So any old machine will do then?
>

If you have got the money you might as well use it - it probably won't be
there when you need an upgrade.

I would suggest a machine based in on of the new Xeon chips - effectively
industrial strength Core 2 Duos. 4GB+ RAM. RAID5 or some other resilient
disk configuration. Back disks or drive too.

Choose a reliable brand, and get a h/w support package included.

You shouldn't need $5k for this....

Toby A Inkster

2007-04-26, 6:16 am

Patrick wrote:

> If you had $5k to spend on a machine to be used as a web server (Linux),
> what and why would you buy (memory, processor, etc)? T

The last couple of servers I chose for work were 2u rack-mountable HP
Proliant DL380s. The mobos are dual-processor, but will happily run with
only one processor. Each of those can take a dual-core Xeon processor.
(Xeons cores also support hyperthreading, so you end up with 4 "logical"
cores per processor.)

Stick 2 x 1GB FB-DIMMs in them. They've got eight slots for memory, so
this is easily expandable.

Get two nippy hard disks (HP make 15000rpm disks for these servers, though
their 10000rpm ones will do) and RAID-1 them together using the server's
hardware RAID facility. For a web server, I'd probably suggest 73 GB would
be enough. (With RAID-1, two 73 GB drives add together to give you only
73 GB of disk space, but in return you get redundancy in case one disk
blows up, plus a very slight speed-up in disk reads.)

As you've mentioned that you're on a speedy network, you'll be glad that
the server has not one, but two Gigabit Ethernet cards. If you set them up
with different IP addresses, you can use one of them to "talk" to your
computing cluster, and the other one to interface to the world, serving
web pages.

Get a redundant power supply. They're well worth the extra spend.

The DL380 has something called "integrated lights out" which is basically
a remote access control panel to beat all remote access control panels.
Rather than being something like VNC which runs on top of the OS, ILO runs
*underneath* the OS, so it can be used to, say, restart the server even if
the OS has crashed.

In summary:

1 x HP Proliant DL380
1 x Intel Xeon 3.2 GHz Processor
2 x 1 GB FB-DIMM SDRAM
2 x HP 73 GB 10000rpm HDD
1 x redundant power supply

The list price of that lot (in the UK anyway) would be about £2500 (~$5000)
including tax, but you could probably bargain it down a bit. It would last
you for years before you'd need to even think about upgrading it, and when
you did, you'd find free slots for an extra processor, six extra FB-DIMMs
and four extra HDDs.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
http://tobyinkster.co.uk/
Geek of ~ HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python*/Apache/Linux

* = I'm getting there!

Patrick

2007-04-26, 6:19 pm

CJM wrote:

> "Patrick" <psmith@marine.usf.edu> wrote in message
> news:f0o3i8$4cr$1@news1.usf.edu...
>
>
>
> If you have got the money you might as well use it - it probably won't be
> there when you need an upgrade.
>
> I would suggest a machine based in on of the new Xeon chips - effectively
> industrial strength Core 2 Duos. 4GB+ RAM. RAID5 or some other resilient
> disk configuration. Back disks or drive too.
>
> Choose a reliable brand, and get a h/w support package included.
>
> You shouldn't need $5k for this....
>
>
>
>
Thanks CJM

Matt Silberstein

2007-04-26, 6:19 pm

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:29:05 -0500, in alt.www.webmaster , "George L.
Sexton" <gsexton@Mhsoftware.com> in
<D6udnSRKvOQs-LLbnZ2dnUVZ_qXinZ2d@comcast.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:20:07 -0400, Patrick wrote:
>
[color=darkred]
>That's simple. 2G on a dual core machine with maybe 4GB of RAM, and then
>spend the rest on an Apple Cinema Display.

Why a big display on a server? Why a dedicated display on a server?

--
Matt Silberstein

Do something today about the Darfur Genocide

http://www.beawitness.org
http://www.darfurgenocide.org
http://www.savedarfur.org

"Darfur: A Genocide We can Stop"

Matt Silberstein

2007-04-26, 6:19 pm

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 09:20:07 -0400, in alt.www.webmaster , Patrick
<psmith@marine.usf.edu> in <f0nkia$6sc$1@news1.usf.edu> wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>Was wondering;
>
>If you had $5k to spend on a machine to be used as a web server (Linux),
>what and why would you buy (memory, processor, etc)? The machine would
>be used to display results from numeric model runs from a 192 processor
>cluster. I'm not sure yet how the results would be displayed or what
>technologies would be employed.

If it is just displaying the results you don't need a big system. If
it has to process the results or store *many* gig and do extensive
complicated searches through the results that changes things. Can you
estimate that work?

BTW, If you over-spec the system it will end up doing more jobs. In
fact, even if you don't over-spec the system it will end up doing more
jobs.

--
Matt Silberstein

Do something today about the Darfur Genocide

http://www.beawitness.org
http://www.darfurgenocide.org
http://www.savedarfur.org

"Darfur: A Genocide We can Stop"

George L. Sexton

2007-04-26, 6:19 pm

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:50:54 +0000, Matt Silberstein wrote:

>
> Why a big display on a server? Why a dedicated display on a server?
>

Mis read the question. I thought he was looking for the machine that would
view the results. The question said "display results".

Still, buy the big monitor, say it was an oops, and then put it on your
desk :).

--
George Sexton
MH Software, Inc. - Home of Connect Daily Web Calendar
http://www.mhsoftware.com/connectdaily.htm

Matt Silberstein

2007-04-26, 10:17 pm

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 12:30:56 -0500, in alt.www.webmaster , "George L.
Sexton" <gsexton@Mhsoftware.com> in
<5badnRRtVKFNfK3bnZ2dnUVZ_oLinZ2d@comcast.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:50:54 +0000, Matt Silberstein wrote:
>
>
>Mis read the question. I thought he was looking for the machine that would
>view the results. The question said "display results".
>
>Still, buy the big monitor, say it was an oops, and then put it on your
>desk :).

Now that I can agree with. You get a budge, you use a budget!

--
Matt Silberstein

Do something today about the Darfur Genocide

http://www.beawitness.org
http://www.darfurgenocide.org
http://www.savedarfur.org

"Darfur: A Genocide We can Stop"

SpaceGirl

2007-04-27, 10:17 pm

On Apr 26, 10:23 am, "CJM" <cjmnew...@REMOVEMEyahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> "Patrick" <psm...@marine.usf.edu> wrote in message
>
> news:f0o3i8$4cr$1@news1.usf.edu...
>
>
>
>
> If you have got the money you might as well use it - it probably won't be
> there when you need an upgrade.
>
> I would suggest a machine based in on of the new Xeon chips - effectively
> industrial strength Core 2 Duos. 4GB+ RAM. RAID5 or some other resilient
> disk configuration. Back disks or drive too.
>
> Choose a reliable brand, and get a h/w support package included.
>
> You shouldn't need $5k for this....

Agreed. The Mac Pros have two of these beasts in them and they are the
fastest machines I've ever come near. And that's for desktop stuff. As
a server it would be... well overkill probably :)