[sllug-members]: Hosting Box

[Mac Newbold]

Today at 11:44am, Doran L. Barton said:

> Adam Barrett wrote:
>> Is there anywhere in town that you suggest for purchasing server parts?
>> PCClub is where I do most of my purchasing but they dont carry server
>> stuff in most stores.
>
> The best local outlet for server hardware would be Universal Systems
> <http://www.usicomputer.com/>. I think I remember that Universal Systems is
> a SLLUG sponsor.
>
> For online parts, I use NewEgg.com, eWiz.com, and Directron.com. 8anet.com
> is a good supplier of Chenbro rackmount cases too.

You might also want to compare ordering a server that is all ready to go. 
When you consider what your time is worth, among other things, sometimes 
it can be a significant savings, plus you know the hardware is all 
compatible, etc, and you only have to place one order for everything.

We've ordered four of our 1U servers from abmx.com and aaronix.com (which 
appears to be a reseller for abmx hardware), and have liked all of them.

For what it's worth, in the time we've been doing hosting and colocation, 
we've found that the low-to-medium powered CPUs do fine, and the resources 
we've been most in demand for have been RAM and hard drive space in one or 
two cases. Even on shared hosting servers that run a whole lot of sites 
and to quite a lot of traffic, CPU loads stay very low, usually less than 
5% and rarely over 10%.

I'll also echo what others have said about size of your box. If you're 
rack mounting it at a colocation center, you'll pay a lot more over the 
life of the server for that extra 1U-3U of space, and really not get a 
whole lot for it usually. If you can go with a 1U, by all means do it. 
None of our servers have more than 2 hard drives in them (RAID 0 
mirroring), and the only one we've ever wished had more disk space was the 
one running backups of 4-5 of the other servers. I don't know why 250GB 
seemed like plenty of space for that one at the time...

The other day I was talking with someone at abmx.com about the new 
"perpendicular" 750GB seagate drives, and they mentioned some problems 
they'd been having with them. Does anyone else have any experience yet 
with their 500-750GB drives?

Thanks,
Mac

--
Mac Newbold		MNE - Mac Newbold Enterprises, LLC
mac at macnewbold.com	http://www.macnewbold.com/