Here is the problem you need to take with your higher-ups. 1) You be in dog-house for higher ups if down more than hr or more. That means they need to spend the $$ on a solution that provides you little or no downtime and the flexibility for maintenance etc etc. They need to understand they can't get something for nothing.
2) Redundancy at each level is needed so you don't have a single point of failure which was already touched on. 3) If they can't provide the funding for(1) and (2) above, then they can't expect a 99% uptime accordingly, without taking some serious risks ( Web-Site gets DOS's or 0wned because you cant bring it down to patch or make other security fixes) and that just starts all that could happen. Z Edward E. Ziots Network Engineer Lifespan Organization MCSE,MCSA,MCP,Security+,Network+,CCA Phone: 401-639-3505 -----Original Message----- From: Chyka, Robert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 11:56 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Web Server Spec Question... This website is for the entire site. Our partner in PA has 2 servers with a load balancing solution. I will find out what they are using for this. We would get hurt and in trouble from the higher ups if it was down for more than a couple hours at most.. Thanks.. -----Original Message----- From: "Jacob" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "NT System Admin Issues" <[email protected]> Sent: 6/6/08 11:47 AM Subject: RE: Web Server Spec Question... Is this website for the entire medaille.edu site? Or just part of the site? How many servers to you currently have at the partner's site? What would it cost medaille.edu if the site was down a day? Two days? A week? With that in mind, you can go from there and determine what you need or not. -----Original Message----- From: Chyka, Robert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 8:39 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Web Server Spec Question... Yes and at this point we cannot afford most of the list..wish we could...I would breathe easier.. -----Original Message----- From: "Kelsay, Mark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "NT System Admin Issues" <[email protected]> Sent: 6/6/08 11:36 AM Subject: RE: Web Server Spec Question... The list below is basically our set-up for our site. All but the virtual machines. Our uptime is basically 100%. Not cheap. Mark -----Original Message----- From: Chyka, Robert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 06 June 2008 16:14 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Web Server Spec Question... Nice list! Well a lot of this isn't going to happen and I think the 99.999% was just thrown out there from a non tech guy. Basically he was saying do what you can with the given budget to make this thing stay up to as close to 100% as we can with our resources and money... _____ From: Jacob [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 9:58 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: Web Server Spec Question... Since 99.999% amounts to only 5 minutes of downtime a year, here is what you will need: (1) At least two ISPs with each one able to handle all your traffic in case the other goes down. (2) A router for each ISP running BGP between the them. (3) Two front end switches right behind the routers. (4) Two firewalls (5) Two Load balancers. I highly recommend hardware load balancers. (6) Two switches behind the load balancers (7) The number of server needed to handle your traffic, times 2. Could probably VM some of the web servers. (8) If database driven, like SQL, Two SQL servers in a active/passive cluster. (9) For web server specs... instead of two big fat servers, go for more smaller servers. No need for redundant power suppliers, hard drives, etc. If one web server crashes, the other web servers in the farm will handle the traffic. If you web servers are going to store and server tons of files, like videos, then I would go with a RAID0 set up for better performance. One HD for the O/S with no RAID. Three HDs for the data in a RAID0 (10) If database driven (SQL server), spec out what you need that will allow the website to run on one database server. Triple that. Then get a second one of the exact same spec. At least RAID1 the O/S and RAID5 the SQL data. (11) UPS. Forget those small UPSs and go for one large one that can handle the entire load. Then, get a second one. (12) Generator. UPSs do not run forever... Then if you really want 99.999% uptime, take everything above and double it. But it in another location on the opposite side of the country (Ok, I admit we do not to this, but we do 1 to 12). For course, this does not take into account developers changing coding on a Friday afternoon and not testing their code... From: Chyka, Robert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 5:42 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Web Server Spec Question... We currently have our web site hosted off site on a partner's network. We are now brining it to our site for hosting. We have to buy a web server etc. it is going to run under IIS and needs 99.999% uptime. Would you cluster the server, just rely on redundant power, raid on the hds etc, or ???. Alos is it best to have the content be on a Raid 1 disk set? Just looking for some opinions etc. Thanks..Bob ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ ****** This email is sent for and on behalf of Inspop.com Limited ****** Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. Registration no. 310635. Inspop.com Limited (also trading as "Confused.com") is registered in England and Wales at 2nd Floor, Friary House, Greyfriars Road, Cardiff, CF10 3AE (Reg. No. 03857130 ). Any opinions expressed in this email are those of the individual and not necessarily the company. This email and any files transmitted with it, including replies and forwarded copies (which may contain alterations) subsequently transmitted from the Company, are confidential and solely for the use of the intended recipient. 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