Building a server?

[Moby-Dick]

I think the partify for each drive is distributed accross the rest of the array in a raid 5. ie in a 3 disk array , 2/3rd of each disk is used for data and 1/3 rd for the partity of the other two.

with 4 disks , 3/4 of the disk is used for storage and 1/4 for parity etc.

remeber that riad 5 is good if 1 drive filas , but if another 1 failes before you rebuild the array , then you are in trouble.

given that hard drives tend to fail at similar ages and you tend to buy drives in bulk , the chances of having 2 drives fail in close sucession is greater than you'd think - its no substitute for back ups , but it does offer a level of fault tollerance.

[Moby-Dick]

incedently I got my compaq from the same place as that IBM is being advertised from - they are nice guys

[Rave]

OMG!

Edit: even better OMFG!

[Moby-Dick]

thats what I have but with a bit less RAM and a couple more NIC's

it runs a busy VMware network

[Allen]

Can't wait to see these links and see what's making you overuse the smileys!

Thanks for the info guys, still don't understand RAID that well, but am now learning. Would you say RAID is essential for servers then? Would RAID 5 be the best option?

And Moby, who is IBkm? Or did you mean IBM? If so, got a link or something? Still gonna look at sourcing parts myself, but getting specs from pre-built might help me understand what makes a good server.

[Moby-Dick]

sorry it was a typo

IBM - Raid isn't essential , but if you want any form of redundancy then its usefull to have. It can also improve write performance.

knowledge of how RAID works is pretty important , but MS insist on you using evhul (tm) software riad , which is useless.

[Rave]

My three links are for an IBM netfinity Dual P3 700MHz (and yes Moby did mean IBM), and two Compaq quad PII Xeons- all currently on ebay with no bids at sub-£60. The auctions end just after 8.30 tonight.

[Allen]

Dual P3's? Will they do the job?

[Rave]

If it goes for £60, you could probably afford to suck it and see? I reckon you could easily get your money back by parting it out, or selling it here if it doesn't have enough juice.

[arthurleung]

I wonder if you can wait. Since I got some friend to get me some dual opteron bundles in the AMD Tech Tour 2005 (They're amazingly cheap)

If you need it in July I could ask my friend to ship you a bundle, adding 4 250gig drives, a PSU and you'll be well below your 1000 budget with a damn powerful system (no graphics)

Though I'm unsure if its good to sell what meant to be OEM/NFR (though its not marked NFR anywhere on the box at all)

[Allen]

I'll take a look later then. Thanks.

[StormPC]

I have a network with a dual PIII 1GHz PDC that serves 30 users and it's very fast. You should look for something like that, although for your use it's probably overkill.

[dorky]

Hi everyone, I'm new here, but I help moderate on a Xeon server website.

A recent development is that dual Xeon boards have recently been released with the 875P chipset. Since this is a commonly used chipset, it means that the cost of Xeon motherboards using the 875P chipset are now very affordable. It is also very overclockable (due to the 875P chipset), and the cost of Xeon chips are fairly affordable now also. So you can buy a Xeon system cheaply, and overclock it fairly easily for some serious power.

I can give you some recommendations on choices of motherboards and xeon cpu's if you want?

How much speed do you need?

It sounds like you want to use it for server type duties? (and not for workstation tasks?)

[Moby-Dick]

nice forum dorky

a dual xeon rig would be amazing if ti could be done within budget ? I presume the 875 boards will use regular DDR chips which would save a little , but where would you find a good source of cheap xeons ?

something specced like the rig in your sig might be over kill , but it would also be sweet as I dont think they'd need the quadro or the soundblaster and could perhaps use 2.4's or cheaper , and lower cost RAM ,but more of it

[Rave]

A lot of the D2OL crowd on xtremesystems put together xeon crunching rigs using Low Voltage Xeon 1.6GHz chips- they found a guy on ebay in the states doing them for $99 a pair. Being low voltage with a 400 FSB they overclocked pretty well apparently (with a bit of pin modding to up the voltage).

These could probably be OCed a reasonable amount, especially since Xeon multipliers are unlocked downwards.

[Moby-Dick]

nice , you probably woudn't need to OC them for what Allen wants either