Drew Wutka
DWUTKA at marlow.com
Mon Mar 3 10:49:00 CST 2003
Nope, you don't need a hefty machine at all. You app isn't going to use many resources at all, just file sharing. I would recommend, if they are concerned about money, for them to just get a Pentium III or IV desktop. (I'd say at least 256 to 512 megs of RAM). Get three hard drives. (SCSI...but that may be a bit expensive....), Mirror the OS, and RAID a data drive (you can do all of that in Disk Management...with Windows 2000, no RAID controller necessary.) If you don't want to setup a domain, then you can stick with Windows 2000 Pro. If you want to setup a domain, then you'll need Windows 2000 (which ups the price, but you already knew that). Drew -----Original Message----- From: Rocky Smolin - Beach Access Software [mailto:bchacc at san.rr.com] Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 10:25 AM To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com Subject: Re: [AccessD] OT: Server Needed Drew: This site will have no web or domain function. Email is through an ISP. Little hard data crunching. My app is the main app on the system and it is FE/BE (A2K) with the FEs on the client machines. Change anything in your opinion? Rocky ----- Original Message ----- From: Drew Wutka <mailto:DWUTKA at marlow.com> To: 'accessd at databaseadvisors.com' <mailto:'accessd at databaseadvisors.com'> Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 7:20 AM Subject: RE: [AccessD] OT: Server Needed Rocky, it is a common misconception that you need a rocking CPU for a server. That is absolutely not true. There are a few 'purposes' of a server, and not all of them require massive processor speeds, or tons of memory. 1 - File Sharing 2 - Domain Control 3 - Network 'Service' Server (Proxy, Email Server, Web Server, etc). 4 - Server Computing (Hard data crunching) 5 - Server Side databases. You need to realize the real limiting factors on a server. First is network bandwidth. a 100 megabit line is roughly 12 megabytes per second. That is not a lot. It is a fraction of the speed of a typical IDE drive. If you go to a gigabit line, then you have a much larger data transfer rate (10x, so you are talking roughly 120 megabytes per second...which is faster then your typical IDE drive, but it is still less then a SCSI Raid configuration). So, if you are just setting up file transfers, then you don't need much of a machine to do it. It can have minimal CPU Speed (even Pentium or Pentium II....though I personally wouldn't go lower then a Pentium III to be on the safe side), and memory doesn't have to be whopping (256 megs would do). This is because the file sharing is going to be slower then actual file usage used locally (do to the pipe the data is going through). A faster CPU or more memory isn't going to push the data through faster. Domain Controllers don't need to be whoppers either. I think we are running a Pentium II (desktop) for a Primary Domain Controller here. No problems. It doesn't have to do all that much as far as processing goes. Network services. Well, it depends. We run everything but our mail server on Pentium III desktops. (Proxy, web, intranet, etc.). It all runs fine. Again, it is going to boil down to the network tunnel involved. With a webserver, a common misconception is that you need to have a huge machine to handle massive transactions. Absolutely not true. In a web server, you have an even smaller pipe (we have a T1 here), so the data is being sent through an even slower connection. Now, if you have a lot of Server Side scripting, where the server is creating pages on the fly, then you do need a decent CPU, and the more ram you have, the more pages that are 'cached'. But again, you don't need a Cray. Email servers can require a bit more power though. We use an Exchange Server. It's got a dual processor, with 2 gigs of RAM. The real catch is how heavy it is used internally. (for in house comms). Server Computing. This is where the most power is needed. There are software packages out there that use server CPU time pretty heavily. For example, we have a package called FlowTherm, and FlowStress. These packages perform massive heat calculations, over and over and over. If you run this software on a server, obviously the more CPU and memory you have the better. Server Side Databases. You do need power on these. But again, you are limitted by your network speed. However, your processor is going to do a lot of work independant of the network traffic, so it probably should be pretty fast, with lots of memory to boot. Just my two cents. Drew -----Original Message----- From: Rocky Smolin - Beach Access Software [mailto:bchacc at san.rr.com] Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 12:06 AM To: AccessD at databaseadvisors.com Subject: [AccessD] OT: Server Needed Dear List: Excuse the OT please but I know someone will know the answer: I have a client who wants to upgrade the server on his network. There's about 10 seats on his network, of which maybe 6 are being used. Seems to me that he could use any good, fast P4 box with 1/2 gig of RAM , etc. Which is well under $1000 these days from dell, or gateway, with three years on-site. A local, old, fairly reputable company in San Diego - Datel - is quoting him $1457 for and Intel entry level server with a P4 (speed unknown), 512MB RAM, 80GB HD, with DUAL LAN RAID - whatever that is. Plus another $775 for "WIN 2000 SVR W/5 CLIENT SP3 OEM-CD". Plus something between 5 and 10 hours of installation charged at a price unspecified in the quote. Right now his "server" is an old Win98 box, slow, but effective. My question is, what is the difference between a box that someone like Dell calls a server and an ordinary computer? Does he need a server? MTIA, Rocky -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://databaseadvisors.com/pipermail/accessd/attachments/20030303/e1768d97/attachment-0001.html>