On Wed, August 29, 2007 4:35 pm, Dave Brenton wrote: > I'm finally, at long last building my Network Operations Center > and would love to hear recommendations from the brave > souls out there that build their own hardware.
I've done this, and I've also done the "buy a pre-built system" thing. The older I get, the more I prefer letting folks that do hardware all the time build the hardware for me. (If you choose to go that route, I recommend eracks.com for your rack-mount needs; reasonably priced, and they'll preinstall your favorite flavor of Linux.) Rackmount gear is especially annoying, especially 1U stuff - way too expensive for what you get. If you only need a few servers, get tower cases and save some money; if you need a lot of servers, get a Fibre Channel NAS and some blades. :) > I must admit I have a bias against Intel-based systems, > but would defer to experience supporting an Intel platform. > I will in every instance be running on flavor or another of Linux > for all my OS needs, should that have a bearing on the response. These days, that's not much of a big deal. Aside from some wireless cards (grr mutter whine) most of the stuff you're likely to use in a server will be supported. If you expect to do anything seriously CPU-intensive, these days, Intel's Core 2 line will give you more cycles per dollar than AMD. This could change tomorrow, though. For most common stuff (assuming you're building things like email or Web or RADIUS servers), there's not much practical difference. None of those will be CPU-bound anyway in most cases; RAM and swapping and hard disk speed will be more important. Even then, unless you've already got a base of hundreds of Web sites and thousands of email addresses, modern hardware won't give you any problems. > My previous experience favors ASUS motherboards, and > good name-brand memory devices. I have lost faith in most > of the Disc Drive makers, however Shugart's 5 year warranty > is tempting me in their direction. Seagate, you mean? :) No matter what brand of stuff you pick, someone will have anecdotal evidence that it's the worst stuff in the world. Go with whatever's on sale this week. :D David Smith MVN.net -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ** Join us at the WISPA Reception at 6:30 PM on October the 16th 2007 at ISPCON ** ** ISPCON Fall 2007 - October 16-18 - San Jose, CA www.ispcon.com ** ** THE INTERNET INDUSTRY EVENT ** ** FREE Exhibits and Events Pass available until August 31 ** ** Use Customer Code WSEMF7 when you register online at http://www.ispcon.com/register.php ** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
