Q: Guidelines to server configuration
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I need an advice - or a reference on server enterprise configuration. I checked few vendors that supply servers (Dell seems to be fairly good supplier of Wintel machines), and I am confused with their price differences. Basically, you can choose hardware within a range 2K-20K USD, and the difference of ten times smells like you can pay a lot for nothing. Take memory, for example. I discovered that Dell can charge 2-3 times more for standard SDRAM DIMM. When I asked a friend, he suggested that Dell was using DIMMs of much better quality etc. I agree that when you're configuring a Web server, you must pay extra attention to the quality of components, but I would rather not pay extra for the same components :) So basically I would look for some guidelines for Web site server configuration. I've read some articles from MSDN, but those articles are very polite and vendor-neutral. I would like to read some recommendations with concrete (and even biased) examples. Does anybody know some? TIA Vagif Abilov COM+/ATL/MFC Developer Oslo, Norway
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I need an advice - or a reference on server enterprise configuration. I checked few vendors that supply servers (Dell seems to be fairly good supplier of Wintel machines), and I am confused with their price differences. Basically, you can choose hardware within a range 2K-20K USD, and the difference of ten times smells like you can pay a lot for nothing. Take memory, for example. I discovered that Dell can charge 2-3 times more for standard SDRAM DIMM. When I asked a friend, he suggested that Dell was using DIMMs of much better quality etc. I agree that when you're configuring a Web server, you must pay extra attention to the quality of components, but I would rather not pay extra for the same components :) So basically I would look for some guidelines for Web site server configuration. I've read some articles from MSDN, but those articles are very polite and vendor-neutral. I would like to read some recommendations with concrete (and even biased) examples. Does anybody know some? TIA Vagif Abilov COM+/ATL/MFC Developer Oslo, Norway
Hi, I wouldn't say that the price difference is just kinda "pay more for the same" type of thing. When you take a closer look at the spec you'll see that there are usually a lot of things in the more expensive models that are required in an professional environment (redundancy, hot-plug ability, remote monitoring hardware, and so on), without giving you an extra performance boost. Especially those things that keep your uptime high are usually not cheap. -Chris:)
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Hi, I wouldn't say that the price difference is just kinda "pay more for the same" type of thing. When you take a closer look at the spec you'll see that there are usually a lot of things in the more expensive models that are required in an professional environment (redundancy, hot-plug ability, remote monitoring hardware, and so on), without giving you an extra performance boost. Especially those things that keep your uptime high are usually not cheap. -Chris:)
Of course I was exaggerating - you do get different things when you pay different price. What I meant is that very often you can get decent performance and still save a few thousands bucks. Let me give you an example from a world of desktop machines: if you are a developer, then you'll be just fine with standard SB Live Value soundcard (or even SB64), but ask any salesman - they will insist you should buy Game Theater ;) Similarly, if you have a bunch of Web servers, you don't have to invest a lot into RAIDs for them - save RAIDs for database servers. But it is almost impossible to suggest that the shop configures servers for you: salesman without BS is a bad salesman ;) So I am looking for recommendations and site configuration examples. Vagif Abilov COM+/ATL/MFC Developer Oslo, Norway
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Of course I was exaggerating - you do get different things when you pay different price. What I meant is that very often you can get decent performance and still save a few thousands bucks. Let me give you an example from a world of desktop machines: if you are a developer, then you'll be just fine with standard SB Live Value soundcard (or even SB64), but ask any salesman - they will insist you should buy Game Theater ;) Similarly, if you have a bunch of Web servers, you don't have to invest a lot into RAIDs for them - save RAIDs for database servers. But it is almost impossible to suggest that the shop configures servers for you: salesman without BS is a bad salesman ;) So I am looking for recommendations and site configuration examples. Vagif Abilov COM+/ATL/MFC Developer Oslo, Norway
Ok. I missed your exaggeration a little bit. My fault. However, as I see from your post, you are already aware of the basic principles of a web farm configuration (some cheap, i.e. not too redundant, boxes as web front-end, DB-cluster in the back-end). The sizing/number/configuration of these boxes is then more or less solely dependent on your application and its envronment. How to give an estimate without any details on that? If you're looking for examples of the hardware of some sites, try Microsoft HP/MSDN. I can remember that they have some papers of real-life sites (on their tech, of course). Other platforms certainly have sth similar. -Chris
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Ok. I missed your exaggeration a little bit. My fault. However, as I see from your post, you are already aware of the basic principles of a web farm configuration (some cheap, i.e. not too redundant, boxes as web front-end, DB-cluster in the back-end). The sizing/number/configuration of these boxes is then more or less solely dependent on your application and its envronment. How to give an estimate without any details on that? If you're looking for examples of the hardware of some sites, try Microsoft HP/MSDN. I can remember that they have some papers of real-life sites (on their tech, of course). Other platforms certainly have sth similar. -Chris
Thanks for the info! Vagif Abilov COM+/ATL/MFC Developer Oslo, Norway
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I need an advice - or a reference on server enterprise configuration. I checked few vendors that supply servers (Dell seems to be fairly good supplier of Wintel machines), and I am confused with their price differences. Basically, you can choose hardware within a range 2K-20K USD, and the difference of ten times smells like you can pay a lot for nothing. Take memory, for example. I discovered that Dell can charge 2-3 times more for standard SDRAM DIMM. When I asked a friend, he suggested that Dell was using DIMMs of much better quality etc. I agree that when you're configuring a Web server, you must pay extra attention to the quality of components, but I would rather not pay extra for the same components :) So basically I would look for some guidelines for Web site server configuration. I've read some articles from MSDN, but those articles are very polite and vendor-neutral. I would like to read some recommendations with concrete (and even biased) examples. Does anybody know some? TIA Vagif Abilov COM+/ATL/MFC Developer Oslo, Norway
Visit http://www.aberdeeninc.com I have no first hand experience with them, but prices of the rack servers is very attractive --Thomas George