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We are setting up a small server at work that will have approx 200 remote
pc's connecting to it. They'll be downloading encrypted music files. The
server will also have to do a lot of searching through and amending
databases locally.
What would be the ideal spec for this, ignoring the costs? ie. P4, Xeon,
Opteron, Dual cpu, decent motherboard etc?? It'll be running on Win2K3 and
it will need mirrored Raid.

cheers,

matt.

"Matt" <> wrote in
news:41b04bf8$0$52971$:

> What would be the ideal spec for this, ignoring the costs? ie. P4,
> Xeon, Opteron, Dual cpu, decent motherboard etc?? It'll be running on
> Win2K3 and it will need mirrored Raid.
>

Opteron for CPU

Jim Berwick wrote:
> "Matt" <> wrote in
> news:41b04bf8$0$52971$:
>
>
>>What would be the ideal spec for this, ignoring the costs? ie. P4,
>>Xeon, Opteron, Dual cpu, decent motherboard etc?? It'll be running on
>>Win2K3 and it will need mirrored Raid.
>>
>
>
> Opteron for CPU

For the mirrored raid consider 4 x western digital 74GB SATA Raptors if
you need more storage than that you could also use "Maxtor 6B300R0
Diamondmax 10, 300GB, 7200rpm,ATA133,16mb Cache" It isn't sata but with
the 16Mb cache and because the 300gb are on 3 platters it reduces the
access times so it is the same speed (according to the reviews I've
read) as the Western digital 36.5GB sata hard drives its also allot cheaper.

also consider a "Adaptec 2410SA" raid card it is 4 port`s and allows
Raid 0, 1, 5, 10, and JBOD it also has good support with windows and
Linux/Unix

what OS are you considering using ?

Windows 2003

Can you suggest a good motherboard? We had a Tyan Thunder dual opteron board
for a few days but it was very unreliable.

"JD" <x@x> wrote in message news:41b5fd59$0$1078$...
> Jim Berwick wrote:
> > "Matt" <> wrote in
> > news:41b04bf8$0$52971$:
> >
> >
> >>What would be the ideal spec for this, ignoring the costs? ie. P4,
> >>Xeon, Opteron, Dual cpu, decent motherboard etc?? It'll be running on
> >>Win2K3 and it will need mirrored Raid.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Opteron for CPU
>
> For the mirrored raid consider 4 x western digital 74GB SATA Raptors if
> you need more storage than that you could also use "Maxtor 6B300R0
> Diamondmax 10, 300GB, 7200rpm,ATA133,16mb Cache" It isn't sata but with
> the 16Mb cache and because the 300gb are on 3 platters it reduces the
> access times so it is the same speed (according to the reviews I've
> read) as the Western digital 36.5GB sata hard drives its also allot
cheaper.
>
> also consider a "Adaptec 2410SA" raid card it is 4 port`s and allows
> Raid 0, 1, 5, 10, and JBOD it also has good support with windows and
> Linux/Unix
>
> what OS are you considering using ?

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:24:33 -0000, "Matt" <> wrote:

>Windows 2003
>
>Can you suggest a good motherboard? We had a Tyan Thunder dual opteron board
>for a few days but it was very unreliable.

We have that combination running extremely well here with XP sp2?
Have you had the motherboard replaced?

the board is a Thunder K8S Pro S2882 and we've tried 3 of them, its got one
of those ZCR slots to convert the onboard raid into scsi raid we tried the
Adaptec 2010S which is recommended for that board but it was a nightmare to
set up. In the end, whenever the pc is rebooted the bios boot settings would
revert back to "1st boot device - Floppy" instead of "I2O" which is the raid
card, so it has to be changed every time it reboots.
As well as that, we had to go through 4 different types of Kingston ECC Ram
before we got one type that worked without freezing up.
We've waited months for a bios update from Tyan but its still on the same
version, not looking good.
So a different manufacturer would be ideal...

matt.

"derek / nul" <> wrote in message
news:...
> On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:24:33 -0000, "Matt" <>
wrote:
>
> >Windows 2003
> >
> >Can you suggest a good motherboard? We had a Tyan Thunder dual opteron
board
> >for a few days but it was very unreliable.
>
> We have that combination running extremely well here with XP sp2?
> Have you had the motherboard replaced?
>

On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 10:12:40 -0000, "Matt" <> wrote:

>the board is a Thunder K8S Pro S2882 and we've tried 3 of them, its got one
>of those ZCR slots to convert the onboard raid into scsi raid we tried the
>Adaptec 2010S which is recommended for that board but it was a nightmare to
>set up. In the end, whenever the pc is rebooted the bios boot settings would
>revert back to "1st boot device - Floppy" instead of "I2O" which is the raid
>card, so it has to be changed every time it reboots.
>As well as that, we had to go through 4 different types of Kingston ECC Ram
>before we got one type that worked without freezing up.
>We've waited months for a bios update from Tyan but its still on the same
>version, not looking good.
>So a different manufacturer would be ideal...
>
>matt.

Supermicro