Robert Hanson wrote: >Greetings! > >I wish to thank everyone for their testimony regarding this "CentOS on >Compaq Proliant Rackmount Servers" thread. > >The basics have been answered and I am grateful. > >Even though I can fund brand new shiny latest greatest fastest I think it is >a foolish waste of money unless there is a true "need". > > Yup, it's a shame to waste expensive horsepower if you don't need it and most web stuff doesn't use a lot of horsepower.. Buy a bit above your needs. Quality over horsepower as well, has been my philosophy. >Is it currently worth getting used dual PIII 1850R's or should I start with >used dual PIII DL380's and like 1Ghz minimum processor speed? > > I would advise going to the DL380 series. These use only the ultra2 or 3 scsi drives.. not the mix of ultra and wide-ultra. I very nice speed improvement. Also, when buying, watch for drives quanity, size and speed (try to avoid the 7200rpm and get the 10 or 15k units). Compaq ram is not your average street ram, but instead meets much higher specs. Genuine Compaq ram can cost a lot used. Watch for machines with the ram you need. You'll also need a Compaq SmartStart CD to closely match the age of your machine. This is used to program bios's on the machine. You can download some flash updates from HP, but the CD can be pretty rich from Compaq.. Finding units with dual power supplies is a plus as well. Most of these items when included with the machine, are much less than buying them individually. I don't know how many times I've relocated a server without ever taking it down by unplugging one PS, plugging it into an extension cord, unplugging the other... might have to disconnect the cat cables for a bit... move it... and never reboot. I run one PS on my batteries, one on another circuit.. so the load is reduced on the backup system. I then power up the other circuit with generator and am not charging the batteries with the generator.... It's very efficient and all set to go at any time. >I couldn't find used 1850R's on eBay with more than 600Mhz. > > I think that was the ending point for the 1850s. The DL380s are almost the same unit with a lot of parts being interchangable. The 380s are just more modern in terms of processors, circuitry, raids, drives... and pretty much picked up I think at the 600mhtz point and have grown from there. The dual 866s and up to about 1.2 giggers are very reasonble on ebay >Although there are not thousands upon thousands of clients there is A LOT of >bandwidth to service. > > A t-1 is still only 1/6th of a ten base ethernet card... and how much power does it take to deliver products at one sixth of a 10base card? Yeah, I know.... it's more complex than that. Database apps can eat up a lot, email/spam systems can eat up HUGE amounts of processing power. But if you're mostly delivering web pages, it just doesn't take much. >Remember, the goal here is to have a bunch of happy little CentOS boxen >purring away. :) > >I have several custom built units, yet I need more! > > - rh > > I've been extremely happy with all of my proliant servers... heck, I still have one old single 300mhtz running for play! It still runs great! Even has a gig of ram in it. :) I have one dual 333 3000 in use. The next lowest is a single 450 (a colo) and then a single 550 (nameserver only). The rest are duals. Higher up the chain. A product like MailScanner (set up full blown to do about everything it can), processing maybe 20,000 to 30,000 emails a day, will be about all a single 550 can handle (and that's on the dangerous side). Queries on huge databases will eat up processors... the rest doesn't need much in my opinion. Best, John Hinton