Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 08:01:27 -0600 From: Chris Fedde <cfedde@fedde.littleton.co.us> To: "Simon Clayton" <Simon@businessmeetings.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Ideal world hardware recommendations Message-ID: <200004171401.e3HE1Rh74614@fedde.littleton.co.us> In-Reply-To: <NDBBLKPMFKLGKCALEBKAIEKGCKAA.Simon@BusinessMeetings.com>
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On Mon, 17 Apr 2000 08:05:58 +0100 "Simon Clayton" wrote:
+------------------
| OK, here's a nice question. I have to build a webserver for a
| large site (moving from NT IIS/ASP/SQL Svr7 to FreeBSD/Apache/
| MySQL - woohoo!).
|
| I could go out and spend a silly amount of money on a Compaq
| ProLiant 8000 or similar but I suspect that at the smallest
| hint of trouble the "sorry we can't support that O/S" excuse
| would be wheeled out.
|
| So my question is - what do you recommend, would you build it
| yourself or buy branded? What about particular hardware, mega
| fast processor? Hardware or software RAID? anything I should
| stay away from? etc.
|
| Any advice/opinion is welcome.
|
| Simon
+------------------
My opinion? Three approaches:
1) Match what you have in the NT server and watch the new box scream.
2) Spend the same ammount of money on the new server as you did on the old
server. Max out everything you can in the price range.
3) Price out the dream system with all the bells and whistles then back off
when the budget breaks.
Use an integrator unless you have the time to do it all your self. I've
had good luck with most of the big guys when it comes to obvious hardware
problems. Some folks specialize in FreeBSD &c I've used ASA Systems
and Telenet Systems both proved very reliable.
Get several quotes for different configs and see what you like best.
Other things to think about?
Raid 5 writes are significantly slower than spindle writes.
Many DBAs prefer a mix of drive types for different table useage
patterns.
Solid State Drives are starting to become affordable.
It is sometimes faster to newfs and recover than it is to
fsck a big disk.
Fail soft is more reliable than fault tolerance.
Well you did ask for opinions :-)
chris
--
Chris Fedde
303 773 9134
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