Another Dell would be too expensive, unless the District wanted to go through with it-and they wont, since they are penny pinching turds. A server that meets minimum system requirements from Dell costs over 2 grand
why not, network load balancing 500 peeps is a fair few. they dont do single cpu w/64bit slots?! u got a link? Or you could just populate one of the cpu slots - no need for 2
thats what i meant. that board has 64bit pci's aswell. http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigermpx.html i suggested the board for the 64 bit pci's, but dont see the need for 2 cpu's, having done dual cpu systems, one faster cpu is enough , unless there is enogh budget left over after buying the rest and then, why not? edit: its been a while since i saw one of those though (i14).
AAHHH Yea, now im with you. Probably get em 2nd hand now, or look at an opteron board? They aint cheap though.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3467550297&category=44941#ebayphotohosting http://search.ebay.com/search/searc...t=1&SortProperty=MetaEndSort&query=tyan+tiger they are still about it seems, the top link seems a good deal, if you want to grab it, i once read somewhere about doing something with the bridges/pins on a thoroughbred to make it an MP by the way.
Ok, we are at a critical point here: what kind of processor power do we need to provide 500 internet connections through one server? This is a key design decision, since at the moment, based on price and availability, we are considering an Asus SK8N motherboard with two gigs of coursair PC 2700 ECC memory with an Opteron 1.6 gigahertz. I need to know if this would be overkill, but I doubt it, considering that we need a 2.4 gigahertz Xeon processor to give us fast dada distribution. Our previous server was running twin Pentium 3 800 megahertz, and the internet chugged a lot of the time. Then again, we werent running a switch network. So what do you guys think? This could also be a major promotion for AMD, since it would let us see if the AMD server processor is a better buy than Intel's server processors. I know that the SK8N doesnt have 64 bit PCI, but since we dont have gigabit LAN, I dont see how this would be an issue. Does anyone want to bring up potential problems with this? Thanks all, youve been a great help! Edit: This system setup would run at $1010 even. The hard drives would run another 180. The rest of the components are readily available (IE CDROM, Floppy, Video Card)
put the money into data storage and the redundancy you ned, if theres enough cash left then yeah that seems fine.
We have plenty of data redundancy, that was a primary concern with the main server. We have tape drives and a striped RAID. What is the most important concern at this time is back up internet connection and access to that backed up data, which shouldnt be too much of a problem since we have a tape drive for the school EDIT: Is it possible to store user data in two computers at the same time, IE have two striped raid arrays and have one be in the first computer and the other in the second, and have both record the same data?
Ok, plannede final specs: AMD Opteron 1.6 gigahertz, ASUS SK8N, 2 gigs corsair registered ECC memory, 2x 120 gig HDDs RAID 0, Radeon 7000, Readily available CD-ROM drive and Floppy disk Drive. Highly Optional but Available: MSI KAX(?) Dual Opteron Motherboard, same above statistics minus video card. THis would raise the price from 200 over the previous setup, but we COULD do more RAM and have a second CPU. So which is more worthwile for the school if we want a second file server/backup internet provider/LAN Party Day PC?
I wish it were all my choice Oh well, since the class has not spent a penny of it's budget that it has to spend or else it doesnt get to use ever We can probably afford to get a little extravagent
if the computer choice isnt really your decision, how can using it for a lan party/gaming server be your decision either. Just my two cents
Because that was already in the plans. This would make a convenient test platform as well. That wasnt my decision in the first place, it was the teachers and organisers.
