[CentOS] Slightly OT: which hardware for CentOS file server (Samba, 2 To storage, 50 users)?

[Jobst Schmalenbach]

its always strange to see that people want "cheap servers".
Let me tell you it will NEVER pay off.

50 people will kill a low end thing, especially if
you want to do software based RAID, the throughput
that is required by that data coming in and out will
make you users VERY unhappy and then say CentOS is crap.

You need at least some XEON based motherboard, proper ECC
RAM and HARDWARE RAID, anything else will not work.

That said you can buy decent motherboards from the lower
end of INTEL server boards, put a decent CPU into it and
get one of the 4 channel Adaptec cards, splitting data 
and OS onto separate raid channels, they got 2 GB network
cards so you can split the throughput in half.

I know this works because the small school that I look 
after has that setup.


jobst








On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 05:53:55PM +0200, Niki Kovacs (contact at kikinovak.net) wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The language lab from the local university has contacted me. They'd like 
> to have a low-cost file server for storing all their language video 
> files. They have a mix of Windows, Mac OS X and even Linux clients, 
> roughly 50 machines. The files are quite big, and they calculated a 
> total amount of 2 To of storage.
> 
> I'm not very proficient with hardware, meaning either I'm dealing with 
> remote servers in some datacenter, or otherwise I install CentOS 
> desktops on any hardware people throw at me.
> 
> Since the aim is lowcost, would it be wrong to install that fileserver 
> on a no-name desktop PC with a 64bit processor and enough RAM, and then 
> simply put 2 x 2 To hard disks in it, either with a mirroring RAID (can 
> never remember which does what in 0, 1 and 5) or some rsync script 
> regularly copying over the first disk to the second? Or do you have 
> something more apt to suggest?
> 
> Cheers from South France,
> 
> Niki
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