how would you spend $1000 on a server?

[Digimer]

On 10-07-09 02:18 PM, Matt Price wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Digimer<linux-5ZoueyuiTZhBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>  wrote:
>
>> On 10-07-09 01:40 PM, Matt Price wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have about $1000 budgeted for a box that will mostly host a bunch of
>>> probably-low traffic websites, based on wordpress or maybe sometimes
>>> drupal,
>>> and some mailing lists.  I'm just wondering what sort of features I should
>>> aim for in such a box, if I want the hardware to last a couple of years:
>>>   is
>>> onboard RAID important?  Is a Xeon processor a big plus, or DDR3 memory?
>>> Should I be building the box myself&   handpicking the hard drives etc., or
>>> are there particular manufacturers/retail outlets I swhould just trust?
>>>
>>> if i can come in somewhat under $1000, that gives me a little extra money
>>> for a backup system and/or UPS, which I might or might not have to
>>> purchase
>>> out of this budget.
>>>
>>> Appreciate all the help, as always.
>>> Matt
>>>
>>
>> Pedestal or Rack?
>> What Linux distro/ver?
>> How much anticipated storage space do you need?
>> I/O intensive (sounds like no)?
>> etc.
>>
>
> Pedestal.  Probably running Debian or Ubuntu unless there's a compelling
> reason to go to something else.
>
> Hard to believe we need more than a couple of hundred gigabytes of storage,
> esp. if most media are hosted on the big social media sites (vimeo, youtube,
> flickr, etc).
>
> I don't think super i/o intensive.
>
>   share your anxieties about the cloud servers, though ted may be right that
> it's the easiest solution.
>
> thanks,
> matt

Perhaps something like this:

* Antec or Silverstone chassis + PSU (both make nice looking cases and 
have quality PSUs). I'm particularly fond of Antec's Sonata line.
* ASUS ASUS M4A785T-M/CSM (the CSM suffix just indicates that it's 
guaranteed to be available for a year+).
* AMD Athlon 2 X[2..6]. Any part with an 'e' suffix (ie: 600e) is 
"high-efficiency) and will run at 45w. Personally, I used the Athlon 2 
X4 600e. Doubt you want/need quad core though, so any dual-core ###e 
would be great.
* 2x Seagate 1TB drives (ST31000341AS) or 1.5B (ST31500341AS) in 
*software* RAID 1. There is no benefit to hardware RAID 1 and it binds 
your array to the hardware. Software you can recover on any machine.
* Kingston KVR1333D3N9K2/4G (2x2GB DDR3-1333). If you want 8GB, get two 
of these. The 8G kit is substantially more expensive that 2x 4G kits.

That should fall well under your $1000 range. I know the above hardware 
works flawlessly under CentOS 5.5, which is about the same vintage as 
Debian 5.

-- 
Digimer
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