Building a server - what do i need?

**dj_stick** · Jul 4, 2004, 02:11 AM

Alright, my dad and i have decided to build a webserver to host his company websites (he has several), and also other peoples sites aswell

but what sort of machine do i need for this?
dual cpu?
memory requirements?

also what software do i need to run a webserver… ftp w/ passwords etc…

The_Neon_Cowboy · Jul 4, 2004, 08:31 AM

I'd suggest duel p4 zeons, with raid....2 gb of ram...

as for software there are alot of choices some free some not

whats you buget?

**dj_stick** · Jul 4, 2004, 10:09 AM

not very high budget… just want a cheap solution that can run several low traffic sites

Zardon · Jul 4, 2004, 10:47 AM

save some money get a PIII or if you can stretch it get a dual PIII - some good deals on them and they run cold and unless one of the sites you are going to be hosting is a massive hit taker they will cope just fine.

1 gig of ram is fine, along with a couple of smaller hard drives, one for mirroring and backups which you can set up with a cron job.

software needed depends on what exactly you are going to be running.

**dj_stick** · Jul 4, 2004, 10:50 AM

i *have* an old athlon 750 system i can set up… just require RAM for it, and also hard-drive space
RAID mirroring reccomened?

Zardon · Jul 4, 2004, 10:59 AM

yes, thats a nice cheap option and it should work fine, servers dont need to "do" alot generally so you dont need an overclocked extreme edition - all depends how many visitors you expect, but that setup you mention should be fine, just dont expect lightening responses.

The most important thing is the pipe you are hosting it on........ T line is your best option abeit a tad expensive.

**dj_stick** · Jul 4, 2004, 11:00 AM

currently we are on a slow cable connection… but thinking of upgrading to a higher speed

also what software should i run, such as operating system, server software etc

we want support for FTP uploading with passwords, and also php support

Zardon · Jul 4, 2004, 11:03 AM

well its more, "what software do you know"? I take it you are going to be the admin right? do you know linux? if so a distro of that is much more secure, but alot of people prefer windows for obvious reasons. there are many resources for this on the internet as im sure you already have a fair idea of the OS you want to use, so a little research on the matter is probably your best course of action to learn the various pros and cons of each.

**dj_stick** · Jul 4, 2004, 11:05 AM

good point… i have never used a linux OS in my life… i'll have a look around at software available - cheaper stuff is preferable as long as it works… also wanting to run my own forum aswell

Zardon · Jul 4, 2004, 11:08 AM

getting a cheap server OS is going to be a little hard, thats why people go for linux as well as the security issues. Windows 2003 is a great server OS (i run it on my home server - whereas DH is linux for security) but unless you acquire a copy via "other means" is going to cost you a fortune......

**dj_stick** · Jul 4, 2004, 11:10 AM

im thinking of running off windowsmy dad has several legal copies, or windows 2000

any special hard-drive requirements i should take into consideration?

Spyro124 · Jul 4, 2004, 11:16 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Zardon
getting a cheap server OS is going to be a little hard, thats why people go for linux as well as the security issues. Windows 2003 is a great server OS (i run it on my home server - whereas DH is linux for security) but unless you acquire a copy via "other means" is going to cost you a fortune......

Well you don't have to acquire it via other means actually, there is a windows 2003 version that isn't that expensive compared to the others and it's called Windows 2003 Web Edition, it's just for servers that only host websites, you can't do much else with it, but since the topicstarter said he was on a tight budget he might have that as an option. Since he also said that he has little knowledge of *nix systems.

Quote:

im thinking of running off windowsmy dad has several legal copies, or windows 2000

any special hard-drive requirements i should take into consideration?

I'm personally a fan of Western Digital, but some other ppl might say maxtor or Seagate, just make sure your whole system is properly cooled, that includes your hard drives as well. Also Raid is a good option, allthough not Raid0, but if i'm correct Raid5 is mirroring, so you could go with that.

[edit] I ment Raid1 not 5, but Zardon explained that already

.

Zardon · Jul 4, 2004, 11:16 AM

The first thing I would recommend with a server system is SCSI mirrored but as this is a budget server system and one probably not too demanding - get yourself a PCI raid card if the system doesnt already have one. and get two decent hard drives and set them up in Raid 1 - Raid 5 boards are costly and also it would require more hard drives and more expediture. Size of these depends on your budget of course.

if you know this already then sorry but I figured it might help some people reading this.

-----------------------------------------------------------

RAID 0
RAID 0 uses a method of writing to the disks called striping. Let's assume you have a server with three drives of 500 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB. Normally a server would treat each of these drives individually. By incorporating striping, the system would see all of the drives as only one drive for a total of 3.5 GB. Big deal, you say. Wait, there's more.

When the system writes data to the disk, the RAID 0 striping kicks in and automatically distributes the data across all three drives. Part of a file (chunks of data) will be written to the first drive, the next part to the second drive, the next part to the third drive and then it starts all over again until the entire contents of the file have been written.

What this does is greatly increase the speed of the reading/writing process. If you have two drives on your server, it increases the speed by about 25%. If you have three drives, it increases the speed about 33%. When you consider that the main task a server is performing is reading and writing data, any increase in speed is highly welcome.

Besides increasing speed, the other benefit is that the drives can be of different sizes.

Because RAID 0 only writes the data once, it does not achieve data redundancy. If one of the drives fails, the entire system has to be restored because all files are split or striped across all drives.

Because there is no data redundancy, there is no loss of disk space.

RAID 1
RAID 1 uses a technology called mirroring or disk shadowing. RAID 1 requires a minimum of two drives that are exactly the same size. Every time a write is executed the same data is written to both drives, i.e. a mirror image. Well, almost a mirror image. The data is not reversed in the same way as when you look in the mirror.

So what you achieve with RAID 1 is data redundancy. If one of the drives fails, the system can continue to run by just writing to one drive. If you have hot swappable drives, you could pull out the bad drive, plug in a new one and the system is back to its normal state. How efficient and easy it is to execute all of this depends on the RAID controller and/or software that is being used.

The disadvantage of RAID 1 is that you loose half of your disk capacity. If you have two 4 GB drives, you don't have a total of 8 GB of space, but only 4 GB. So you are losing half of the capacity of disk space that you paid for. But on the other hand disk drives are fairly inexpensive today. What has to be considered, is what is the cost of downtime if a drive fails on your server. The downtime cost is probably much more than the cost of the additional drive.

Another slight disadvantage is that writing data will result in a slight decrease in performance, as the same data is written twice. But the offset for this is that the reading of data will realize an increase in speed. Basically the slower writing and faster reading offset each other.

RAID 5
RAID 5 accomplishes both techniques of RAID 0 and RAID 1. There are other benefits of RAID 5 but lets leave that discussion to the techies. You'll just have to take my word for it. RAID 5 does require a minimum of three drives and it is recommended that all drives on the system be of the same size. The more drives you have on the server, the better RAID 5 will perform.

RAID 5 is the version most often recommended. Because the price of disk drives have drastically dropped, the cost of implementing RAID 5 is now within most companies budgets. The only time RAID 5 could fail is if two drives were to fail at the same time.

The loss of disk space is basically 100 divided by the number of disk drives. With 3 drives, there is a 33% loss of disk space. With 5 drives, there is a 20% loss of disk space.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zardon · Jul 4, 2004, 11:17 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Spyro124
Well you don't have to acquire it via other means actually, there is a windows 2003 version that isn't that expensive compared to the others and it's called Windows 2003 Web Edition, it's just for servers that only host websites, you can't do much else with it, but since the topicstarter said he was on a tight budget he might have that as an option. Since he also said that he has little knowledge of *nix systems.

ah very cool, I didnt know that, thanks ! His full windows 2000 should do the trick for him though.

**dj_stick** · Jul 4, 2004, 11:23 AM

thanks for all your info

i'm pretty sure the web edition of win2k3 will be sufficient
and probably will have 2 80gb hdd in raid 1
i'll also look for the server software

any recommendations on which software to use to host a forum?

Zardon · Jul 4, 2004, 11:26 AM

stay away from nuke. phpbb is a good option. andrew275 makes his own deluxeportal2..... check that out also but its also pay.

there are better than the freebies of course but they require money (such a vbulletin).

**dj_stick** · Jul 4, 2004, 11:33 AM

i am a member of several phpBB forums, seem quite good, i'll also look into DP2

Driver 7 · Jul 4, 2004, 12:27 PM

Linux is the only option. You cant go wrong. We use Red Hat which I would highly recomend. Also Apache 2.0.50 was just released the other day. Look into that.

We use Tyan for boards. I dont think there is a better maker of server mobo's. Running Dual Opteron's. A Single Opteron Board would probally suit you nicely.

Zardon · Jul 4, 2004, 01:10 PM

he is working on a budget, an opteron, new motherboard and memory is more than likely outside his proposed range.

Driver 7 · Jul 4, 2004, 02:40 PM

lol. When I see the word $erver I $tart $eeing dollar $ign$. I diden't read the whole thread. In that case, there is really nothing that can not be used. I have a server in my closet that I basically use for my fun stuff. It holds my mail and my PC site live there along with a few other things. It's basically my old soltek mobo with an athlon 2200 in it. The only thing I spent any extra money on was the hard drive.

Accually. heres a tip fpr ya. If ya take a look at my rig link in my signature. The cool air case, Which is the little case to the left of my pc, it's really a server case I picked up in an electronics store for $25.oo. I added the window. Most electronics stores will have something similar.

Jul 4, 2004, 08:31 AM	#2
The_Neon_Cowboy HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: U.S.A. Posts: 16,009 Rep Power: 90 System Specs	I'd suggest duel p4 zeons, with raid....2 gb of ram... as for software there are alot of choices some free some not whats you buget? __________________ Last edited by The_Neon_Cowboy; Jul 4, 2004 at 08:38 AM.

Jul 4, 2004, 12:27 PM	#18
Driver 7 Discombobulated NVidiot Join Date: May 2003 Location: Vancouver, BC - CANADA Posts: 1,015 Rep Power: 0	Linux is the only option. You cant go wrong. We use Red Hat which I would highly recomend. Also Apache 2.0.50 was just released the other day. Look into that. We use Tyan for boards. I dont think there is a better maker of server mobo's. Running Dual Opteron's. A Single Opteron Board would probally suit you nicely. __________________ [COLOR=Black]Asus A8N Deluxe SLI, AMD64 4200 X2 Dual Core, 2x 6800's, Corsair TwinX PC4000 DDR500, Yamaha F1 cdrw, Soundblaster Audigy 2, 2 SATA 120 gig Maxtor HD's, Raid 0 array, Altec Lancing 5.1 Surround Speakers, Thermaltake Xaser III Case, Stealth 470w Power supply, 21.3" Samsung widescreen, MX1000 Lazer mouse.[/COLOR]

Jul 4, 2004, 02:40 PM	#20
Driver 7 Discombobulated NVidiot Join Date: May 2003 Location: Vancouver, BC - CANADA Posts: 1,015 Rep Power: 0	lol. When I see the word $erver I $tart $eeing dollar $ign$. I diden't read the whole thread. In that case, there is really nothing that can not be used. I have a server in my closet that I basically use for my fun stuff. It holds my mail and my PC site live there along with a few other things. It's basically my old soltek mobo with an athlon 2200 in it. The only thing I spent any extra money on was the hard drive. Accually. heres a tip fpr ya. If ya take a look at my rig link in my signature. The cool air case, Which is the little case to the left of my pc, it's really a server case I picked up in an electronics store for $25.oo. I added the window. Most electronics stores will have something similar. __________________ [COLOR=Black]Asus A8N Deluxe SLI, AMD64 4200 X2 Dual Core, 2x 6800's, Corsair TwinX PC4000 DDR500, Yamaha F1 cdrw, Soundblaster Audigy 2, 2 SATA 120 gig Maxtor HD's, Raid 0 array, Altec Lancing 5.1 Surround Speakers, Thermaltake Xaser III Case, Stealth 470w Power supply, 21.3" Samsung widescreen, MX1000 Lazer mouse.[/COLOR]

Jul 4, 2004, 10:47 AM	#4
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	save some money get a PIII or if you can stretch it get a dual PIII - some good deals on them and they run cold and unless one of the sites you are going to be hosting is a massive hit taker they will cope just fine. 1 gig of ram is fine, along with a couple of smaller hard drives, one for mirroring and backups which you can set up with a cron job. software needed depends on what exactly you are going to be running.

Jul 4, 2004, 10:59 AM	#6
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	yes, thats a nice cheap option and it should work fine, servers dont need to "do" alot generally so you dont need an overclocked extreme edition - all depends how many visitors you expect, but that setup you mention should be fine, just dont expect lightening responses. The most important thing is the pipe you are hosting it on........ T line is your best option abeit a tad expensive.

Jul 4, 2004, 11:03 AM	#8
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	well its more, "what software do you know"? I take it you are going to be the admin right? do you know linux? if so a distro of that is much more secure, but alot of people prefer windows for obvious reasons. there are many resources for this on the internet as im sure you already have a fair idea of the OS you want to use, so a little research on the matter is probably your best course of action to learn the various pros and cons of each.

Jul 4, 2004, 11:08 AM	#10
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	getting a cheap server OS is going to be a little hard, thats why people go for linux as well as the security issues. Windows 2003 is a great server OS (i run it on my home server - whereas DH is linux for security) but unless you acquire a copy via "other means" is going to cost you a fortune......

Jul 4, 2004, 11:16 AM	#13
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	The first thing I would recommend with a server system is SCSI mirrored but as this is a budget server system and one probably not too demanding - get yourself a PCI raid card if the system doesnt already have one. and get two decent hard drives and set them up in Raid 1 - Raid 5 boards are costly and also it would require more hard drives and more expediture. Size of these depends on your budget of course. if you know this already then sorry but I figured it might help some people reading this. ----------------------------------------------------------- RAID 0 RAID 0 uses a method of writing to the disks called striping. Let's assume you have a server with three drives of 500 MB, 1 GB and 2 GB. Normally a server would treat each of these drives individually. By incorporating striping, the system would see all of the drives as only one drive for a total of 3.5 GB. Big deal, you say. Wait, there's more. When the system writes data to the disk, the RAID 0 striping kicks in and automatically distributes the data across all three drives. Part of a file (chunks of data) will be written to the first drive, the next part to the second drive, the next part to the third drive and then it starts all over again until the entire contents of the file have been written. What this does is greatly increase the speed of the reading/writing process. If you have two drives on your server, it increases the speed by about 25%. If you have three drives, it increases the speed about 33%. When you consider that the main task a server is performing is reading and writing data, any increase in speed is highly welcome. Besides increasing speed, the other benefit is that the drives can be of different sizes. Because RAID 0 only writes the data once, it does not achieve data redundancy. If one of the drives fails, the entire system has to be restored because all files are split or striped across all drives. Because there is no data redundancy, there is no loss of disk space. RAID 1 RAID 1 uses a technology called mirroring or disk shadowing. RAID 1 requires a minimum of two drives that are exactly the same size. Every time a write is executed the same data is written to both drives, i.e. a mirror image. Well, almost a mirror image. The data is not reversed in the same way as when you look in the mirror. So what you achieve with RAID 1 is data redundancy. If one of the drives fails, the system can continue to run by just writing to one drive. If you have hot swappable drives, you could pull out the bad drive, plug in a new one and the system is back to its normal state. How efficient and easy it is to execute all of this depends on the RAID controller and/or software that is being used. The disadvantage of RAID 1 is that you loose half of your disk capacity. If you have two 4 GB drives, you don't have a total of 8 GB of space, but only 4 GB. So you are losing half of the capacity of disk space that you paid for. But on the other hand disk drives are fairly inexpensive today. What has to be considered, is what is the cost of downtime if a drive fails on your server. The downtime cost is probably much more than the cost of the additional drive. Another slight disadvantage is that writing data will result in a slight decrease in performance, as the same data is written twice. But the offset for this is that the reading of data will realize an increase in speed. Basically the slower writing and faster reading offset each other. RAID 5 RAID 5 accomplishes both techniques of RAID 0 and RAID 1. There are other benefits of RAID 5 but lets leave that discussion to the techies. You'll just have to take my word for it. RAID 5 does require a minimum of three drives and it is recommended that all drives on the system be of the same size. The more drives you have on the server, the better RAID 5 will perform. RAID 5 is the version most often recommended. Because the price of disk drives have drastically dropped, the cost of implementing RAID 5 is now within most companies budgets. The only time RAID 5 could fail is if two drives were to fail at the same time. The loss of disk space is basically 100 divided by the number of disk drives. With 3 drives, there is a 33% loss of disk space. With 5 drives, there is a 20% loss of disk space. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jul 4, 2004, 11:26 AM	#16
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	stay away from nuke. phpbb is a good option. andrew275 makes his own deluxeportal2..... check that out also but its also pay. there are better than the freebies of course but they require money (such a vbulletin).

Jul 4, 2004, 01:10 PM	#19
Zardon DriverHeaven Founder Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 32,480 Rep Power: 177	he is working on a budget, an opteron, new motherboard and memory is more than likely outside his proposed range.