Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2001 15:14:43 -0500 From: "Joseph Gleason" <clash@fireduck.com> To: "Ed Henderson" <Ed.Henderson@Certainty.net>, <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Server MB suggestions? Message-ID: <00f301c0b49f$115ed040$dc02010a@fireduck.com> References: <000d01c0b476$532a5e00$0464a8c0@pnt004>
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I can answer at least a few questions. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ed Henderson" <Ed.Henderson@Certainty.net> To: <freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 10:23 Subject: Server MB suggestions? > I am planning to use FreeBSD as my primary OS for an ISP that I am starting. I am beginning my research for the best motherboard/hardware to use for a production environment. One that is reliable and performs well (with reliable being the number > one priority!). I plan to build the server myself. My background has been in Solaris on Sun equipment so most of the hardware choices were already made for me! > > Here are some questions that I have: > 1. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good MB to use? Or what chipset is the best and most stable with FreeBSD? I plan to use AMD Athlon chips, tower case, IDE drives/peripherals, at least 256MB RAM. Budget is limited since we are just beginning: approx. $1300 per server (not including tape drive which is seperate see #3 below). Servers will host typical ISP apps: DNS, RADIUS, mail, Apache, etc. > > 2. What IDE controllers do your recommend? Or would SCSI be better (but more costly)? I want to use at least RAID1 mirroring for some redundancy. I strongly recommend IBM deskstar drives with Promise IDE controlers. I have had great experience with those. They are fairly cheap and have great performance. If you need any sort of RAID, looks into 3ware ide raid cards (http://www.3ware.com/). Just remember, RAID does not protect you from opperator error or hackers deleting all your files. Since you are also asking about tape stuff, I assume you are aware of this. ;-) > > 3. Any reliable tape drive suggestions? I have budgeted $1500 for a tape drive. I'm not sure about specific hardware (my partner is doing all this work on this project), but I would recommend a single box on your network that has a tape changer and is running amanda (from ports tree). > > 4. I am most familiar with building MSWindows systems and most of the time MB/chipsets require add'l software/drivers to be loaded when installing MSWindows. Since most boards are designed with MSWindows in mind does this present a problem when using FreeBSD as the OS? I have never personally had a problem with FreeBSD not working with any particular motherboards. I'm sure someone else can give a better answer to this question. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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