I would second the 'buy a pre-built system' option. I have built my own
servers for over 10 years and honestly for production servers I would
rather buy a dell or a compaq rackmount with redundant power supplies,
true hardware raid and hot swap drives.
If you are just starting out and on a budget I would look at ebay for
older rack mounts. I have gotten DL380s for a reasonable prices and if
you aren't a large ISP a DL380 dual processor P3 or P4 will easily meet
your webserver, mailserver, dns server or radius server needs. They have
dual power supplies, and true hardware raid with hot swap scsi drives.
If you get several and use xen virtualization then total machine failure
is pretty easy to deal with as well.
Sam Tetherow
Sandhills Wireless
Ryan Langseth wrote:
While I would free comfortable building my own servers (the OS setup
is custom). I buy hardware from Dell. Its solid server equipment and
very easy to work with.
I would recommend checking into buying servers prebuilt. While
building your own seems to be cheaper. there are numerous added
benefits features that are found by buying prebuilt.
I would suggest looking at getting a vendor account with dell, you can
gain some discounts. The design of Dells rackmount hardware is
terrific. Almost Hot Swap everything, tool-less (quick to replace
something if you need to do it as down time), smart systems to handle
cooling, remote management cards, and clear upgrade paths. Do not buy
1U imo, its expensive and you only gain 1U and an unupgradeable
server. Plan your systems to last 3-5 years. Look at using some
virtualization software, in the long run it will be helpful, there are
numerous free versions.
If you buy rack mount hardware make sure to look at the mounting
rails, Dell's rails are the best I have seen.
I would suggest buying a square hole rack. they are the most flexible
for mounting methods.
Remember to look at how you are going to run cables, you will have
more than you expect.
Don't forget room for backup power / batteries.
Find a generator that can be powered by dual fuel (propane / Diesel)
If you plan on building a data center to support sell space to
business, look at cages. and a method for 24 hour access.
Depending on how many servers you are planning on buying, and if you
buy from a vendor. See what you can get for free from them.
There is a good chapter in Oreilly's "Network Warrior" about power and
cooling planning.
As for the OS:
1) centralize the following
- Logging (syslog)
- Authentication (AAA)
- Security (tripwire)
2) Look at putting config files in revision control (will make it easy
to reverse changes)
3) Do not make Backup systems an afterthought
4) Design it with two networks (management and external)
5) Document everything, I would suggest having a Ticketing system in
place for any change that gets made, nothing gets changed without a
Ticket, even if you are the only person that makes changes.
6) Trending, anything that can be monitored, do it. Troubleshooting is
much easier if you know what has changed.
Debian is by far my favorite choice of distros. FreeBSD/OpenBSD is
great for firewalls with pf and carp for redundancy. Ubuntu LTS server
for anything I that I need more up to date software. Fedora has Red
Hat's Directory Server (with an excellent management interface)
Again, Documentation is going to be your best friend....
Hope that helps,
Ryan
On Aug 29, 2007, at 6:02 PM, Jory Privett wrote:
You can get racks from lots of places. I would check with someplace
local since shipping them can get expensive. For rackmount cases any
good PC parts retailer should have them from 1U up to match any
configuration you might want. I would suggest getting something with
a common power supply. Some of the smaller units have custom ones
that are not readily available if it dies.
I run all of my server on the AMD platform and have for over 7 years
now. I still have a couple of my original servers in production and
they still perform well for their job. Compared against the Intel
they perform just as well and are much cheaper. For Disk drives I
would suggest Seagate or Western Digital, I am not a fan of anything
else out there. Asus makes a good product but so does Gigabyte, MSI,
and any other main stream manufacturer.
For the OS I would run Debian. It is very flexible and secure and has
lots of packages available. It is simple to install BIND for DNS,
FreeRadius for AAA, Freeside for billing, and Cacti for
monitoring/graphing and all of the background apps that are required.
FreeBSD and Fedora are also very popular.
Jory Privett
WCCS
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Brenton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 4:35 PM
Subject: [WISPA] DIY Server Questions
Hi Gang!
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'm looking for recommendations for motherboards,
rack-mount case vendors, Rack vendors, etc.
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.
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.
Any thoughts, comments, etc are welcomed.
If appropriate, you may contact me of list.
Dave Brenton
General Manager
Rural Tennessee Wireless Broadband, LLC
3430 Highway 49
Dover TN 37058
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
931.232.0914 (office)
931.827.4181 (home)
931.627.1142 (cell - when not in cell-hell)
Livin' on Central Stupid Time ('til October)
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