[Sussex] RAID, and building a server.

[Mark Harrison (Groups)]

Angelo Servini wrote:

>Try www.autdirect.co.uk they do some very nice barebone systems and all you have to put in is an HDD, Graphics card and DVD Writer.  The AMD XP's and AMD 64 Based systems both support RAID and Serial ATA.  They are also very quiet systems and you have to listen hard to even hear the fans.
>
>I hope this is of use.
>
>Ps. Regarding the conversations on Windows refunds, the fact that these days the barebone systems are so well made it is not even necessary to buy a mainstream product.
>  
>
Thanks Angelo et al for all the responses. I'm not worried about the 
noise for my server, since it'll go in, well, my machine room (every 
house should have one.)

I agree absolutely that buying a mainstream product is seldom 
cost-effective. My last 3 PCs have been handbuilt, and each has been 
rock solid.  In fact, it's fair to say that I've never had a Blue Screen 
on any of them, despite the fact that all three run Windows 2000 on a 
24x7 basis. The same cannot be said of my laptop, which is a Compaq 
"corporate grade" thing.

Personally, I'm wary of "no name" components, not because the hardware 
doesn't work, but because of the driver support which in my experience 
is the biggest problem with Windows stability for servers. (No peer 
review of the *%$£ing drivers is basically the root cause). In fact, 
brand name PCs tend to be worse at this than self-built, where at least 
I _know_ what I'm getting.

I've used a genuinely silent PC (no fans, no hard disk, no moving parts) 
on and off for about 6 months, and I do like it for "domestic areas". 
Linux lends itself well to running in this way, provided you've got a 
fileserver elsewhere convenient and lots of RAM :-) Personally, I've got 
a hand-crafted distro that boots a basic system from CF into RAMdisk 
(preventing the "don't write to CF too often" problems, and then mount 
the rest remotely.

I have a "house fileserver" and a "house database server" that perform 
those tasks solidly. At the moment, both of those are running, gasp, 
Windows. Phase 1 is to cut the fileserver over to a new box running 
Linux. Phase 2 is to cut the database server over from MySQL/Win to 
MySQL/Linux.

That having been said, Phase 0 is to get an Asterisk server up and 
running to sort out my LCR, Voicemail and VOIP issues. I've been using a 
mix of a Sippura box and softphones to date, but getting in a voicemail 
capability is quite important at the moment, since we're spending more 
and more time on the road and less and less in the office.

Mark