[YLUG] Server purchase

[Richard G. Clegg]

Matthew Bloch wrote:
> Hi Richard, my £0.02 --
> 
> Yes SCSI is avoidable :)  I'd recommend 3ware SATA controllers.  These have a 
> solid hardware RAID implementation with an open-source driver and solid (and 
> closed source) control tool.  I think we pay <£200 for a 4-port 9550 
> controller.  We also favour Supermicro barebones chassis for being solidly 
> built, well-cooled and reliable.  Put in the memory / processor etc. that you 
> need (e.g. 4x74GB WD 10,000RPM Raptor drives would give you a bit over 140GB 
> in a super-fast and super-cheap RAID10 configuration, or 200Gb in a RAID5) 
> and you won't go far wrong -- we use www.tmc-uk.com for supplying both 
> Supermicro and 3ware kit.

Thanks for these recommendations.

> Personally if you only *think* you might need a cluster setup, you probably 
> don't as you can introduce a million new failure cases if you're not 
> careful :-)  I would just budget for a permanent stock of spare bits for one 
> decent server, and buy quality parts: power supply, fans, drives etc. which 
> are the most likely things to fail.

Oh...  you are absolutely right to question this.  My feeling is that a 
system which the administrator understands throughly is much more likely 
to be reliable than one with a million poorly understood and badly 
implemented failsafes.  I was pretty resistant to the idea of a cluster 
set up initially because I'd rather have a single system I understand 
well.  However, the theory is that someone else will take over the admin 
and there is a (meager) budget to train him to learn all this.

I am by nature extremely cautious in what I do with servers and believe 
that unless the admin really understands what is on system then any 
failures will be more regular and harder to recover from.

-- 
Richard G. Clegg,
Networks & NonLinear Dynamics Group,
Dept. of Maths, Uni. of York.
http://www.richardclegg.org/