Server recommendations

[George Toft]

Hi Jason,

Lots of input already - I'll toss in my $0.02 . . .

The hardware you spec'ed out is too expensive.  I've seen Dell 
rackmounts quad Xeons with hardware raid for about that price.

I suggest using RAID 1.  RAID 5 is a royal biatch to recover from.

I also prefer software RAID - not for the speed (depending on the 
source, some say software RAID is faster) but because it is much easier 
to manage and detect broken mirrors.  If you get hot-swap SCSI drives, 
you should be able to replace a failed drive without shutting the server 
down - don't know if uptime is an issue here.

I would also like to point out that many large corporations use software 
RAID in their Unix servers.

I agree with the CentOS recommendation.  Fedora Core is essentially Red 
Hat Enterprise Linux Beta.  CenOS is RHEL with all the logos and 
trademarks removed.  CentOS is also current on security updates (with a 
slight delay as they get the source packages after RH releases the 
patch).  Since RHEL is rock solid (on good hardware), CentOS is, too.

George Toft, CISSP, MSIS
623-203-1760




Jason Etchason wrote:
> My company is currently looking to purchase a Linux server for a web
> app that comes with the specs listed at end
> 
> My questions are:
> 
> Does this sound reasonable for a LAMP stack w/ additional resources
> used for a backend app?
> 
> Is Fedora a descent distro?  I'm only familiar w/ slack for toying
> around at home.  Unfortunately I'm the guru here, which says naught
> for the company.  Which leads me to the next question...
> 
> Any recommendations for support on this stuff?  We're located on the
> west valley, 59th & Bell.
> 
> Here are the specs:
> 
> Intel Xeon 1.6 GHz with 2 Gb. (Minimum) 4 Gb. (Recommended) Memory
> * Recommend SuperMicro motherboard.
> 
> Seagate 36 Gb. SCSI hard drive with Adaptec SCSI Controller)
> * SCSI Controller comes standard with SuperMicro motherboard
> 
> Standard CD Rom for installing Red Hat Linux Enterprise 3.0 or above or
>  Fedora Core 1
> 
> Standard 1.44 Floppy
> 
> 3Com 10/100 base Ethernet Card
> * (2) 1 gigabit base TCP/IP ports (standard on SuperMicro motherboard)
> 
> Standard AGP video card
> * Standard on SuperMicro motherboard
> 
> Estimated Total Hardware
> 
> System cost: approx. 							$6300.00
> 
> With RAID 5 system							$8800.00
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