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On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 14:20:03 +0000 "Richard Brown" <rich@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Firstly, servers. The customer is currently disappointed with Dell and > > so wants to look elsewhere. He is looking to spend around £2500 which > > includes a rack on a rack mounted server. I obviously want to get the > > best spec for him and the best equipment. What would you recommend > > please? Consider a second-hand box - use dcglug.org.uk as an example if the customer is worried. Hosting the box costs a LOT more than the box itself. Who will be hosting this server? Who pays the bill? Do you really need a real server of your own? Has the customer considered shared hosting, virtual servers and other existing online arrangements? All manner of hosting can be arranged online, from simple webhosts to hosting your own box in their racks. Try positive-internet, RackSpace and any number of others. The box that runs the dcglug.org.uk site (and many others) cost £120. > > Secondly, distros. What would be the best to get please? I doubt you'll find anyone seriously considering any distribution other than Debian for servers. The only question is whether to use stable or testing and this close to the Etch release, it doesn't matter that much. There are pre-release images available for Etch and by the time you actually install this server, Etch may finally have been released anyway. > I am looking > > for something that I can administer and learn as I go along. He wants > > raid - which one would be best please? I have been recommended CentOS. > > I would like to be able to manage the whole through a gui at first. You should not install a GUI on an internet server. You can use webmin to configure the box over a local connection but make sure that is secure (or removed) before connecting the server to the internet. This isn't Windows - forget all the GUI stuff, don't even install it. What Simon and I did was connect the server to a simple CRT monitor for the time required for the installation, then configure via ssh until it was ready to have the internet connection connected - a separate box does the firewalling. You should do something similar: divide the tasks so that this server does not have to do the firewall itself. > > The server will support 5 clients but increasing to 10. It needs to be > > configured to serve files and possibly web. Sounds like a trivial workload for any server even remotely recent. £2,500 sounds like complete overkill for such trivial amounts of work. When you say 'support' - do you mean thin-client type support? That's more intensive because of the amount of data being moved around the LAN. Ordinary sharing of home directories, a printer or two and a web proxy does no, IMHO, require a £2,500 server. £500 - £1,000 maybe. I suspect Neil S. has setup a variety of servers with similar or higher workloads - I'm guessing each one cost a lot less than £2,500. Remember, there are no licences to pay here - it sounds like your customer has been duped into thinking he needs a mega-spec box for mini-spec workloads. £2,500 would be enough to buy, install and configure *three* capable rack servers! > Add to that - is it better to get a rack mounted monitor or dump one > on top of the cabinet please? Rack units are hellishly noisy - you need to have a separate room with some degree of sound proofing. (Remember, you need a firewall box as well as the server, possibly doubling the noise. The firewall box can be very basic and very low spec.) Desktop towers always take up more room per device than a rack mount and you then need to ensure you have a UPS and trail cables around the place to the firewall box etc. Having a rack just puts the UPS, the firewall and the server(s) close together. If you have a rack and a room to put it, look into getting a rack server. It's easier to use a rack server in a rack than to use a desktop tower in a rack. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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