Sorry BrutusM, please don't take any offense by my rebuttal. I'm not trying to single you out, I just happen to have some strong opinions regarding this that are opposite of what you posted. I hate it when people quote snipe, but I really want to address two points you brought up that I feel will hamstring performance, inflate the budget, and risk losing 24/7/365 availability.
BrutusMaximus said:
I agree. Personally think 8 gig of ram is entirely too much. Think 4 gig would be plenty, but just make sure you use 2 gig sticks,
2Gb Modules would be a complete waste of money. If the plan is to build a dual-Nacona chipset Xeon server, the RAM will have to be PC2-3200 DDR2/ECC/Registered. The only way to have a motherboard that supports dual-Xeon and not require this RAM is to use a non-Intel chipset, like SiS or Via for example, which would be nothing short of disasterous for this application. 1Gb modules to this spec are under $299, but 2Gb modules are well over $900. A good motherboard will have at a minimum 8 slots for RAM, so I say start with 4Gb using 1Gb modules, add 2 more 1Gb modules later if necessary, and if the site really grows than swap out to 2Gb modules and pawn the pulled 1Gb modules on eBay to defer some of the upgrade cost, but only once the 2Gb have come down in price as 4Gb modules begin to emerge on the market.
e.g.: using 4x1Gb modules instead of 2x2Gb modules saves
at least $600.
However, all that said I don't expect the site needs anything over 4Gb.
BrutusMaximus said:
Dont see why you need a raid 5 setup either. 2 73 gig scsi's, mirrored would be fine.
No, it wouldn't. 73Gb of disk space would be grossly undersized. At least 10Gb of the disk is already going to be claimed for swap, /tmp, and OS, and the remaining 60-some Gb wouldn't be nearly enough for all the data, attachments, audio, and video. I don't know what the disk footprint is for this site, but I can only imagine the picture attachments and multimedia disk space consumption is obscene (or at least will be once Mili's done
)
Building a server system with anything other than RAID-5 would be, IMO, foolish. A RAID-5 configuration utilizing 5x37Gb Seagate Cheetahs would yield > 100Gb of disk space and support the site even in the event of 2 drives failing (40% of disk resource). Also, with an Adaptec 2010S daughtercard in a SuperMicro X6DH8 series board, the site can easily be expanded to larger capacities on the fly as disk consumption continues to grow provided the initial configuration is in RAID-5. My recommendation, at the bare minimum, is a 4 disk array + 1 hot spare.
In the original specs I posted on the preceding page, buying things NIB or OEM from NewEgg, the drive cost was a substantial portion of the investment. An alternative, which would provide the same core system I've outlined but could potentially save another $500 would be to buy the drives either open-box or refurb from eBay or Overstock.com. You can save at least $100 per drive buying Cheetah's refurbed on Overstock, and I've never had a problem with the refurb OEM drives ... they've still got a 1-year manufacturer warranty from Seagate.
BrutusMaximus said:
Would save ya about 2k if we do it ourselves.
On this point I agree 100%. I've already listed my specs simply by shopping at NewEgg. I know I can build a superior system to everything else listed
and I can do it under $4500. I'm not speculating ... this is my job, I've done this specific type of system build for database applications numerous times before, and the databases we're running here in my office hold well over 200 million records: Equifax's database for example; the USPS CR-RT database would be another example.
IMO, if the server winds up costing anything over $5000, it had better come with a tub of Vaseline.
