Re: [SLE] Recommended server hardware for a LAMP server

Rob wrote regarding 'Re: [SLE] Recommended server hardware for a LAMP server' on Mon, Jan 24 at 10:05:

Quoting Per Jessen :

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Rob, I'd be interested to know your reason for going for colo rather than just renting a dedicated server (or a few).

My employer is allowing me to mount a server in their rack; they do not have servers to rent. They have a big pipe, and the rack in in close vicinity to my desk.

That's a good reason. :)

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I think it will be difficult giving you any sound advice without knowing the load on the box, the expected reliability, availability etc.

The load is light but will be increasing; of course I don't want it to ever go down ;). But when it comes down to it, brief periods of downtime will probably go unnoticed, but this will not be a unit I expect to be intentionally taking offline for frequent upgrades or anything. There will be paying customers, but nothing mission critical.

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I'd like to hear what the consensus is on the various elements of server selection; importance of various components, brand name vs. generic, Intel vs. AMD, ATA vs. SCSI, value of extended warranties, etc.

It sounds like you'd be well-served with a commodity-type machine. If I were doing this, I'd probably go out and get a dual AMD machine - choose the chip based on your available funds. You mentioned MySQL, so it's fairly important that you get enough memory to hold your most commonly used tables in memory (if possible). So, first, figure out a budget. Next, figure out how much space you'll need. If you can fit everything you need on a single ATA disk (about 200GB), run a RAID-1 with at least 2 disks. If you need more than one disk, figure on RAID-5. Then use a 3Ware controller (yeah, software RAID is good, but just spend the extra hundred bucks - for the ease of connectivity if for no other reason). The redundancy will eventually pay off when a drive fails, and you get a nice little speed boost the rest of the time. So, now you have a 64-bit PCI card and some drives. Next, figure out which processor option will allow you to buy the most RAM. It'll be a balancing act, but I'd definately go with more memory before I'd go with more processor (to a point). And get memory that supports ECC. It's slightly slower, but you won't notice, and it's nice to have that extra assurance against errors at high clock speeds, IMHO. At that point, you should be able to fill in the blanks with a cheap AGP video card, a real name-brand NIC (Intel or 3-Com are the only players, in my world - possibly two if you're feeling paranoid), and some hot-swap enclosures for those hard drives you picked out. The enclosures are cheap, and since a drive's the most likely thing to die on your box, it'll save you a pain later. I stick with brand names for NICs, hard drives (Seagate), and motherboards. I get generic video cards and memory, but I generally run memtest86 on new memory for a few days. I also get Vantec fans, as a dead/noisy fan sucks. Oh, and I'd reccomend getting a good power supply separate from the enclosure. Sure, it's another $50 or more, but it'll help you sleep better. --Danny, presuming "build it myself" is an option...