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Server recommendations

I

iparout

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 27, 2002
Messages
235
Hi.

I am building a server for work and I would like some recommendations or opinions since I am quite new to this. The server will have around 10 clients and will be running an MS-SQL database with around 80.000 entries and growing…

1) Should I go with Dual Intel Xeon processor 2.8GHz with 512KB cache or Single Intel Xeon processor 3.0GHz with 1MB cache ? Price is the same.

2) And last but not least, will I benefit a lot if I go SCSI on the drives or should I just stick to SATA which is 1/4 the price ? In both cases, I’ll be running RAID 1.

3) Which OS should I choose ? Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2003 Server ? Pros and cons ?

Thanks in advance.
 
Server 2003, no reason to go 2000 now that it's out. There's a debate out there that two lower clocked procs are the same speed as a higher clocked single proc because the single gets work done in half the time and can hit the next job sooner. If you are only providing one service, I'd think single would be fine. Especially with more cache. I'd also recommend take a serious look at the Opteron instead of the Xeon. Not to turn this thread into a debate, but I believe the Opteron dominates in SQL and costs less to boot. As for storage, I'd either do SATA in RAID5 or SCSI in RAID1 assuming you don't have a lot of money to spend on storage...
 
Mission critical data needs scsi reliability and warranties. I'd go with a dual processor system for future needs. You considered looking at going with amd chips rather than intel?
 
1) I would suggest the dual processor system...but I don't know if applications can actually take full advantage of the dualies + HT (multi threaded?)...but still...dualie = good

2)you should def. go for SCSI disks, 10k rpm probably, and if at all possible, try for a RAID 5 (3 disks at least) thats just my .02 on disks, I always try to do RAID 5 for data...and RAID 1 for an OS maybe...

3)I would vote for whichever is cheaper


how much memory is this system going to have?

MSSQL is a resource whore, and I would highly recommend 512Mb of ram...or more like 1GB....
 
opterons should be able to dominate in the database arena. also, MS SQL is multithreaded so your dually system should provide considerable benefits. if you decide to use opterons and there the dually is going to suddenly cost twice as much then that's another consideration. but in the example you give i would go dually no question.

for disks i would suggest scsi unless the budget prohibits it. choose whichever raid solution meets your needs, but it should be one that provides fault tolerance (1, 3, or 5). go big on ram. 512MB is a good start if you leave room for expansion.
 
1. Dual Procs
2. Windows Server 2003
2. Go SCSI Raid 5. Tell the bosses to dust off the company check book and quit being Cheap Asses :p
 
OK, first of all, thanks for your input.

I'll try to reply to all of those comments.

Regarding the Opterons, they may be better, however I have faced all kinds of problems with many AMD based PCs in the past (from random restarts to overheating e.t.c.), so I have lost faith in AMD, especially for such a critical system as the server. I haven't ruled them out entirely yet, it all depends on how cheaper an AMD based server will be.

I'm planning on going for 1 GB or RAM for starters with the ability to upgrade up to 4 GB in the future years if needed.

I went to dell website and tried to build a server according to the specs mentioned above, however the cost went to around $5000 !!! I was more or less aiming for around $2500 max. I will be trying to cut down the cost now, going for SATA instead of SCSI.

Do you believe that SATA drives on RAID 1 will hinder performance much ? (The server will be having a Gigabit card and the 10 clients a 10/100 card each, all connected to a server via a 3COM switch with 16 10/100 ports and one gigabit port...)
 
SATA can't read and write at the same time. SCSI is way to go in any server. Put SATA in your gaming box.
 
iparout said:
OK, first of all, thanks for your input.

I'll try to reply to all of those comments.

Regarding the Opterons, they may be better, however I have faced all kinds of problems with many AMD based PCs in the past (from random restarts to overheating e.t.c.), so I have lost faith in AMD, especially for such a critical system as the server. I haven't ruled them out entirely yet, it all depends on how cheaper an AMD based server will be.

I'm planning on going for 1 GB or RAM for starters with the ability to upgrade up to 4 GB in the future years if needed.

I went to dell website and tried to build a server according to the specs mentioned above, however the cost went to around $5000 !!! I was more or less aiming for around $2500 max. I will be trying to cut down the cost now, going for SATA instead of SCSI.

Do you believe that SATA drives on RAID 1 will hinder performance much ? (The server will be having a Gigabit card and the 10 clients a 10/100 card each, all connected to a server via a 3COM switch with 16 10/100 ports and one gigabit port...)
Click to expand...

I can draw several conclusions based upon your responses above. Don't take offense at any of them please. First, the Opteron is easily worth your respect. For you to say "you have lost faith in AMD" and "you had problems with AMD systems in the past" tells me that you either had some severe bad luck that the general IT public doesn't have, or you didn't know how to configure the systems. As well, "an AMD system" can mean anything from the old K5 up to their latest stuff, all of which really have nothing to do with each other. Since the Athlon, AMD has been solid. I'm guessing your stuff stems from the K6 days? So don't stick by your past experience, do some reading and researching and you will find that the Opteron bests the Xeon in most everything, including price, and is easily its equal in stability. Either will be stable or not based upon YOU.

1GB of RAM is a great idea, I was afraid you were going to go with 512MB after all the posters here saying its fine. For SQL I'd definitely do minimum 1GB, its really not much more.

Yes SCSI is more reliable, however drives like the WD raptors have excellent reliablility and speed, and I believe are still cheaper. They also have tagged command queuing on their 74GB raptors, if you make sure to have a controller that supports it. Based on your budget I would recommend them in RAID 1 or RAID 5, whichever you prefer, with RAID 5 still being the recommendation.

Lastly, if you are configuring a server on Dell's site it will be for two reasons. You don't have a lot of experience hand building servers and are maybe a bit hesitant about it? This would agree with your experience with "AMD machines". The other reason would be you recognize the pro that sometimes its worthwhile having a company like Dell that will take care of you, overnight stuff you need, be there for support, etc. This is nice to have sometimes. If you do go with Dell, be aware that they don't do Opterons because of if they did Intel would squash thier nuts and "take their ball and go home." Dells prices are the only thing keeping them #1 I think, and to lose the favors Intel is giving them would put their #1 spot at risk. So they refuse to offer AMD products because they are Intel's B*****.
 
iparout said:
I went to dell website and tried to build a server according to the specs mentioned above, however the cost went to around $5000 !!! I was more or less aiming for around $2500 max. I will be trying to cut down the cost now, going for SATA instead of SCSI.
Click to expand...
You are seiously restricted with only $2500.
I know the entry level HP servers offer Raid 0+1 on EIDE. They start at $600 or so?
You might be able to find a Proliant, eServer, or PowerEdge on eBay for less than 3K?

A slow server (bus, controllers, disk i/o, procs etc) won't be able to push requests out the door fast enough to take full advantage of a Gigabit NIC... if the database instance is creating lots of transaction logs etc...
 
Hand built, price is no problem. OEM-wise, you can still do it, but you will be cutting "quantity" for "reliability/support." HP has Opterion Proliants starting at $1599, with ATA though. There are other "second tier" companies like Appro (can't think of any others right now) that can make that price point as well I think. Tricky though, because when you start adding in the extra drives, etc. the price climbs fast, on either system.

One more thing, are you including the cost of the OS and SQL in this? If not then DAMN, your hardware budget just got a lot smaller. :) Honestly, its not hard to make a good machine to serve up some SQL goodness. There is "server rated hardware" and then there's normal hardware that can actually work just fine if you take care of it and make good hardware choices. I have no problem commisioning an AthlonXP for a server if the budget is really crunched. Just make sure you use standardized parts that can be replaced quickly and easily, use RAID, have a flawless recovery plan, watch your temps, etc.
 
www.abspc.com (a "lower tier" vendor) can get you this for $2,038:

Conquest Server A2 (out of stock, good sign)
Dual Opteron 240
1GB PC3200 RAM (2x512MB)
2x74GB 10,000RPM WD Raptors in RAID1
Usual stuff like floppy, CD-ROM, tower case, 550W PS, etc.

You can upgrade to a better hardware-based RAID5 controller and add another raptor if you want, go higher on the RAM or the proc speeds, etc. Not a bad deal I'd say in terms of high-level hardware for a small business budget.
 
I was helping someone asking the exact same question on the 2cpu forums, here's what i suggested there:

Dell PE 2650
2 x 2.4Ghz Xeon's
1Gb of RAM
2 x 15k 18Gb RAID1 boot
2 x 15K 18Gb RAID1 database & logs

Choose the split backplane option with a dual channel card and give each array the full bandwidth.
Even if you strip the warente down it's still $1200 over your budget.
Yes it's overkill, but it will last a long time.

If you can get a quality AMD machine, it will perform better than an equivilant intel. But alot of exec's like to see a big OEM on the E.A. / P.O.

I would certainly go for more RAM if you can swing it. I would also stay away from IDE for a production SQL server. When you're reading and writing millions of table entries, you need awesome seek times, and even 10K IDE can't do that.
You're also going to need ~$700 for the 2k3 licence, and another $500+ for SQL, plus your antivrus, plus your backup agent/open file agent.
There are alot of other costs than the hardware.

I would also stay away from RAID 5. My companies current SQL server is a Quad 1.9 Xeon box, RAID1 boot, 15k RAID5 data. And it does terribly in the MS transaction/hd performance throughput benchmark. link
 
1. For 10 clients, 80,000 entries (and growing) a dual processor machine is way overkill. The money is better spent elsewhere. Spend the money on RAM, SQL Server is a RAM hog - get 2gb minimum.

To put it in perspective, we run a SQL Server on a single processor 2.4 Xeon with 4GB RAM. The databases total about 42 gigabytes, well in excess of 5 million records, and are under CONSTANT access from 40+ workstations all business day long.

2. SCSI RAID 5 for sure.

3. Windows 2003 is much slicker.

- Qualm
 
@OldPueblo : No offence taken. As a matter of fact, here's the whole deal : I am not an IT, but that's something you may have already figured by the naivity of my posts. I partly own the company and since PCs are my hobby, I am doing a quick research around and see what's suitabe for our needs. Nothing professional, just an estimate of what we might need and how much it might cost, thus the visit in the Dell website among others. Of course we have an IT who works for us and is very good, however he also works for the company from which the hardware will most probably be bought. So, although he is a very honest guy, I just want to make sure that he won't be buying unnecessary stuff just to benefit from it.

Regarding my experience with Athlon XPs (three 2000+ to be precise), I don't think anything will change my mind about that. And I also have a couple friends who were having similar problems with their Athlons. But anyways, let's just not turn this thread into an AMD vs Intel war. Each person is entitled to his opinion based on his experience. ;)

But anyways, back on topic. I spoke to the IT about an hour ago and of course to the developers of the program we will be using and we have decided upon some general guidelines regarding the server : Dual Xeon, 1 GB RAM, double redundant PSUs, Windows 2003 Server, 2 x 70GB SATA on RAID 1. I have the feeling thought that it won't fall within the price range I want it to be, although he will make some good discounts. I'll just wait until the middle of next week and see.
 
I know it limits future upgradeability but

if you try going dual socket A amd processors and a tyan tiger MP with a good SATS raid 5 system you will not spend much at all, get pretty good performance, and if you buy the parts used (what parts you can buy used) youll have enough to upgrade when it becomes nessecary, dont forget you can resell the old parts when yo udo upgrade to recover some of your costs.

Did I say I was a fan of the MPX series of boards? :)
 
Dual Xeon, 1 GB RAM, double redundant PSUs, Windows 2003 Server, 2 x 70GB SATA on RAID 1
Click to expand...

I don't understand your budget allocation choices. They make no sense to me as an IT admin and DBA.

Look, generally speaking a SQL Server box is going to be I/O and RAM bottlenecked way before it's CPU bottlenecked.

You could, if you wanted to, run a 10-workstation multi-gigabyte database on 1ghz P3 processor. The CPU ain't going to be stressed nearly as much as I/O and/or RAM.

RAID 1 is fine for redundancy, but it's actually slower than writing to a single disk, because every write operation (even queries building temp tables write to disk, log files, etc.) is done to both disks. Furthermore, as Yoblad pointed out, SATA disks can't read and write at the same time, so they aren't really appropriate for server use. A 4 drive SCSI RAID array isn't *that* expensive these days.

SQL Server + Windows 2003 Server is going to fill up that 1 GB of RAM like a fat man in your little sister's panties. You really need more.

- Qualm
 
Qualm said:
I don't understand your budget allocation choices. They make no sense to me as an IT admin and DBA.

Look, generally speaking a SQL Server box is going to be I/O and RAM bottlenecked way before it's CPU bottlenecked.

You could, if you wanted to, run a 10-workstation multi-gigabyte database on 1ghz P3 processor. The CPU ain't going to be stressed nearly as much as I/O and/or RAM.

RAID 1 is fine for redundancy, but it's actually slower than writing to a single disk, because every write operation (even queries building temp tables write to disk, log files, etc.) is done to both disks. Furthermore, as Yoblad pointed out, SATA disks can't read and write at the same time, so they aren't really appropriate for server use. A 4 drive SCSI RAID array isn't *that* expensive these days.

SQL Server + Windows 2003 Server is going to fill up that 1 GB of RAM like a fat man in your little sister's panties. You really need more.

- Qualm
Click to expand...

Well, I've been taking your post deeply into consideration. I'll be waiting for the IT's offer and then most probably gonna change some parts of it so as to suit my needs better. That's why I started this thread... So as not to be depending on one man's estimation, who might as well be a little biased in favour of this or that component.

I'll suggest a single Xeon box and spend the difference on half a gig of RAM more and *perhaps* some SCSI RAID array. By what I understand from your post, are you suggesting RAID 5 ?

And last but not least, just to straighten things out, we are not that huge of a company. Actually, only 9-10 clients tops will be run on the server and it's quite impossible for more than 3-4 of them to be requesting/sending data to the server simultaneously. Hell, the server we are now running was built in 1999 and has a single Pentium CPU and IDE drives only !!! It has become very slow over the last couple years though, but we could keep working with it for 3-4 years more if we wanted to. Bottom line, maybe you have misjudged our needs on the server... We just want something to be reliable and fast without having to spend a whole fortune on it.
 
iparout said:
And last but not least, just to straighten things out, we are not that huge of a company. Actually, only 9-10 clients tops will be run on the server and it's quite impossible for more than 3-4 of them to be requesting/sending data to the server simultaneously. Hell, the server we are now running was built in 1999 and has a single Pentium CPU and IDE drives only !!! It has become very slow over the last couple years though, but we could keep working with it for 3-4 years more if we wanted to. Bottom line, maybe you have misjudged our needs on the server... We just want something to be reliable and fast without having to spend a whole fortune on it.
Click to expand...
I admit I missed the part of your post that idicated 10 users on your lan; so I would say your needs may be more modest.

I suggest a new IBM xServer 225 or HP Proliant ML 330.
Both start at $1000, are easily customized, and come with good warranties. You can go direct or from a place like CDW. If you don't do routine backups of the database I would recommend that you try to swing Raid 5, otherwise Raid 0+1 would fit your budget.
 
I have to stress that SCSI RAID 5 will be a better investment than a fast CPU. 1GB of RAM will do fine, especially if all it's running is SQL and maybe a few other things. It's better to start small and get a baseline of how it performs and add if you need to than overspend and find out you only use about 20% of the server at any given moment. That "IT guy" you spoke to is milking your cow.
 
Well if you want reliability and have that 'small' a load, I would suggest getting an a64 system that can deal with a large amount of RAM and getting a single processor TYAN board for it, those are designed to be server boards. Only reasons I reccommended the a64 is 1) throughput CPU<->RAM 2)RAM amounts. Tyan builds server boards, and has for a very long time. they have a very good reputation for reliability coupled with performance. If you want reliability with a low budget and to be able to stick a lot of ram in the system. While ive not specifically looked at the a64 tyan boards' top ram amounts, I imagine it could be high considering the A64 proc.

And the whole thing about writing while reading is BS. a drive cannot have its head in two places at once. However the logic built into the SCSI system, drives, card, and eveyrthing, is far far superior, and because of that they can handle multiple simultaneous requests for data MUCH better then IDE could. IDE was not designed to 'multitask' while SCSI was.

I have had a single drive 10k rpm barracuda mated to an adaptec 19160 card.

I now own a DPT PM2865U3 ultra 160 SCSI card mated to 8x 9GB 7200 rpm SCSI drives in raid 50 configuration.

I like to download a bunch of files at once which plays hell with the seek times on drives (which is another thing SCSI drives have better then IDE is lower seek times) and also at the same time run other things, ie games etc. this just totally KILLS IDE drives. they cant keep up and the system goes to a crawl. even that single 10k rpm 'cuda FLEW when I did that while the IDE ones ive used just...choked and gagged.
This is similar to what any server setup will be doing loadwise on the drive subsystem, and why I run a server class storage solution in my workstation.
 
Qualm said:
SQL Server + Windows 2003 Server is going to fill up that 1 GB of RAM like a fat man in your little sister's panties. You really need more.
- Qualm
Click to expand...


ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
</thread>

:p :D
 
You guys are quoting a server that is way overkill for what he needs to do with it.
Just go and get the lowest proc speed Xeon with 512 to 1GB of RAM.
This will handle everything you need.

For the disk subsystem

Two SATA drives in RAID 1 should be fine for your needs.

Three SATA drives in RAID 5 would be even better.

Two SATA Drives in RAID 1 for the OS and Three SATA drives in RAID 5 for the data would be best.

Don't listen to the rest of the posts in here. You aren't running anything that requires that much horsepower. You have to realize that this is the [H]ard and we overkill everything.
 
jaqie said:
I like to download a bunch of files at once which plays hell with the seek times on drives (which is another thing SCSI drives have better then IDE is lower seek times) and also at the same time run other things, ie games etc. this just totally KILLS IDE drives. they cant keep up and the system goes to a crawl. even that single 10k rpm 'cuda FLEW when I did that while the IDE ones ive used just...choked and gagged.
Click to expand...

Unless you have a 100Mbps Internet connection the downloading files doesn't even touch the throughput of any drive. So that has no effect on your drive performance.

If you used one of the newer 7200RPM, 8MB cache drives you would be very hard pressed to tell a difference between a SCSI and IDE.
 
Doc Holiday said:
If you used one of the newer 7200RPM, 8MB cache drives you would be very hard pressed to tell a difference between a SCSI and IDE.
Click to expand...
::Scratches head::
Well, i just picked up 2 Maxtor 250Gb 'Special Editions' for a RAID1 array and before i set them up i played a little bit just to see if IDE had moved along much. I was still dissapointed with their performance against my other U320 R1 array of Atlas 10k IV's. Overall they just felt slower, things didn't open as fast, common things took longer to complete, just an overall sluggish-ness.
For me, IDE's for Raid1 array of data, not booting.
 
ambit said:
::Scratches head::
Well, i just picked up 2 Maxtor 250Gb 'Special Editions' for a RAID1 array and before i set them up i played a little bit just to see if IDE had moved along much. I was still dissapointed with their performance against my other U320 R1 array of Atlas 10k IV's. Overall they just felt slower, things didn't open as fast, common things took longer to complete, just an overall sluggish-ness.
For me, IDE's for Raid1 array of data, not booting.
Click to expand...

Nice read: http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200406/20040625TCQ_1.html

Conclusion here: http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200406/20040625TCQ_6.html
 
Doc Holiday said:
Unless you have a 100Mbps Internet connection the downloading files doesn't even touch the throughput of any drive. So that has no effect on your drive performance.

If you used one of the newer 7200RPM, 8MB cache drives you would be very hard pressed to tell a difference between a SCSI and IDE.
Click to expand...
Sure if you are downloading only one file at a time or maybe two

try loading down an ide drive with multiple (read: 10 to 30 at once) downloads and other things at the same time.

My point was it was dogging when I tried starting other apps because it was so busy seeking here-there-everywhere for all of those files I was downloading at the same time. Look at seek times for IDE drives. then look at them for SCSI drives. I did and still do notice a big diff between IDE and SCSI when I do things like this which is rather often. Point.
 
jaqie said:
Sure if you are downloading only one file at a time or maybe two

try loading down an ide drive with multiple (read: 10 to 30 at once) downloads and other things at the same time.

My point was it was dogging when I tried starting other apps because it was so busy seeking here-there-everywhere for all of those files I was downloading at the same time. Look at seek times for IDE drives. then look at them for SCSI drives. I did and still do notice a big diff between IDE and SCSI when I do things like this which is rather often. Point.
Click to expand...

Even if you are downloading 100 files at a time. The hard disk will still write sequentially. Any your bottle neck is the Internet Pipe.
 
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