At my school, we are currently running only one server; a Dell Xeon server operating at 2.2 gigahertz with lotsa hard drive space and nifty features. We got it for free since my District is in a licensing agreement with Dell to get only Dell PCs... ah well... Well, we used to have 3 other servers running at the school in total,and they all have broken down over the years... Now we have no backups for our 500+ computers on the network at school and only one server that we have to depend on. So, I am considering asking my computer class to make a new server for two purposes: 1. Serve as a backup in case the main server fails and 2. Its going to be LAN Party day at the school soon and unfortunately, none of the computers at the school that are available have the necessary processing power to be a dedicated gaming server for 6+ games. Thats why I want the new one, mostly So, what kind of specifications would you reccomend for a machine that will be running as a dedicated server for the following games: Counter Strike, Halo, Battlefield 1942, Starcraft(?), and various others that I unfortunately cannot think of at this time... (Its still kind of early here) So what kind of specs will I be needing for this machine? Remeber, the budget for this project is only about $1800 I need reccomendations of parts and where the most money should be allocated for the server. Ill appreciate all help! THanks alot guys!
A gaming server at school... may I ask WHY? Anyways, just as long as you're running a dedicated (where the game doesn't actually play) server, you usually don't have to have the specs of a system needed to play the game... 512MB of ram is almost a no-brainer... I just don't know why you'd want a gaming server (or why they'd even allow you) at school.
My sentiments exactly - just get one of the organisers to bring in a PC from home, im sure you have the kit to borrow. As for a gaming server, ive only done 1 game at a time but you can run em on next to nothing, the only thing it needs is enough mem to load maps and a fast disk so as inter-map changes arent too long. As for in-game load, from experience its about 5-10% average on a 1.266ghz cpu w/ 1gig PC100 mem. As for a school backup - get a decent RAID 1/10/5 card and setup some redundency. Also, get a tape backup or DVDRW drive for something solid state incase of fires etc.
In computer engineering class last semester I braught in my server and hotwired it to the school network. For the last 3months of the class all we did was game; one LAN Party day doesnt seem all that thrilling to me.
put most of the money into RAID, use a PCI card, and some sort of redundancy, as for serving games, any cpu over 2gig with 512megs of ram should be fine. Using a pci raid card over onboard means that the array can be directly transplanted into another pc, should the rest of the pc fail. Fit good cooling and DUST FILTERS on all intakes, make sure you have a decent quality PSU, antec, enermax etc.. I would spec along the lines of: Cheiftec dragonc case, full tower Barton 2500+ thermalright slk900 or better decent fan (papst?) 92mm crucial/kinsgton pc2700 ram (lifetime warranty) antec/enermax 420watt+ psu standard agp graphics abit nf7 which - ever optical drive you need 2 or more hdd's if you intend to use RAID 1 3 or more if you intend to use RAID 5 (better) if you intend to use raid 5 i think you will need an sata raid controller and sata hdd's. deck it out with papst fannage dont know of US prices sorry, see how much that lot comes to, and which raid cards are available to you. EDIT: on that budget i would go for a dvdwriter over a tape drive for backups, as the cost is much less per meg, my pioneer 106 cost me £80, and the media costs me about 50-70p for 4.7gigs on a disc.
Also, if you can stick the RAID in the server youll have the benefit of 64bit/66mhz slots by the sounds of it = uber bandwidth. Also, the better PCI RAID cards have XOR hardware too. DVDRW drives maybe cheaper, but exactly how big are the essential files? >4.3gig? you want to keep it to as few disks as possible to ensure possibility of loss is minimised and ease of use is increased. I hope you're speccing that 2gig cpu for that 6 game server
True, but a decent capacity tape drive would take up most of that budget wouldnt it? Else i would have suggested a dlt. I used to run 5-6 counter-strike and rtcw servers on a duron 1200 (running redhat), so an xp2400/2500+ would be fine.
tape drives are a lot of money, only worth it for large companies really that can afford to buy a proliant to put it in.
We already have a tape drive at school, so that is not a concern. The most important features would involve providing internet access and such if the main server decides to keel out for the long term. Also, dont forget that the server would be serving approximately 300 internet connections at any one time, spiking up to 500.
This is what im thinking Anyhow, its gonna need GbE between the box and the router if its a fast connection. And if you're gonna have RAID and GbE in it you're gonna need a server mobo with 64/66 slots cause a standard PCI-33/32 bus aint gonna be enough imo.
The Internet connection speed is T1 (The school actually has 1.5 T1s dedicated to it from the district network) The School Network is a switched 10/100 network, serving a total of 520(+/-15) computers and 1250 students, with firm backup being provided by a tape drive. Primary data storage and internet connection are provided over a Gigabit LAN and a SCZI array. The primary concern at this point is providing those needs in case the main server goes down (And knowing Dell, it eventually will ) So the system needs to be able to provide for those needs. Also, we want it to be able to be used as a dedicated server on Lan Party day for my TIP class with 32 computers being used for gaming. Sorry for not including this in the original post-I didnt think of this at the time Thanks for your help so far guys, youve been a big help! Also, no need to consider a Video Card, there is a spare Radeon 7000 that we can use
considered spec-ing one of these? http://vsmbstore.zcce.compaq.com/ds...9539&oi=E9CED&BEID=19701&SBLID=&AirTime=False edit, you may want to spec the dell equivelent. edit2: if you were to buy in another server, the proliants seem a better option. could you tell me the prices of the components i listed abovein $ from your chosen supplier please?
It would probably be easier to find the costs with a currency converter on google or something like that... We dont want to get a prebuilt server either; the plan is to build the server from scratch at stores (Most likely Fry's Electronics) Right now, I am considering going with a multi-cpu board from MSI, and those would cost about $180 US dollars (147 Euros) The currency conversion rate is at this time about 1.244 Dollars for each Euro.
The server appears like a semi-attractive offer, but due to contracting agreements, if we were to preorder a server, it would have to be a Dell server. Either way, you never know what Compaq packs in to a computer, either. ALthough 1275 is a very good offer... I think I might be able to do better custom in the end, however.
Get another Dell then, they arent that bad. When they work they work well, but when they go down its only the customer service that you have to fight the devil to get somewhere. Get a basic kit, then install some stuff yourself - RAID etc depending on your needs.
RAM is the biggest factor on server performance. Attended a LAN recently where I brought all the game servers in. The quake3 server was a duron @ 1ghz with (at first 64MB pc100 RAM). With just six players, pings were in the 40s. Why? cos I put the wrong stick of RAM in the board... upped it to 512 and pings were between less than 1ms and 4ms. RAM RAM RAM! edit, the UT2k4 and HLDS server I ran was running 1*UT2k4 and 2* HLDS processes at around 10% load - tbird @ 1533 + 1gig DDR2100, running on slackware linux.
i'd say ram is only a factor when you dont have enough to run all of the processes, cpu is the main factor, i once "downgraded" my lan server from a duron 1200 to a p3 800eb, and my pings went up slighlty, both setups had 512meg pc133. Also, if you intend to serve any halflife based games under windows look up winHLbooster, it can really help the pings, as the hlds process has a 10ms pause between operations (hence displaying 100fps) winhlbooster changes that pause and our pings were <5ms on a 12 player server
