Looking into *this* Server Computer

[b4u]

Hi,

I'm looking into the following computer to use as a server in a small office (4 Windows XP Pro /Dual-Core 1Gb Ram computers):

HP ProLiant ML110 G4

- Intel Xeon Dual-Core 1.86GHz with 2Mb cache and FSB 1066MHz
- 512Mb PC2-5300 unbuffered DDR2 SDRAM (667MHz) standard. Supports up to 8Gb
- Integrated Network Gigabit NIC 10/100/1000 with WOL
- Integrated SATA controler (RAID 0/1)
- HD 160Gb Non Hot-Plug SATA 1.5Gb 7200rpm
- Combo Drive (CD-RW and DVD-ROM)
- Operating System: Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2, Standard Edition with 5 CALs Reseller


Price: ?1100 (around $1441)

What do you think of this machine as a server?

I personally dislike the fact that it doesn't have 2 hard drives, 1Gb and a DVD-RW drive ...

About the rest of the system, what beneficts would a Xeon processor bring to a server a regular Dual-Core wouldn't bring?

Thanks

 

[imported_Dekard]

Whats you intended use of the machine? There's no way to answer your question without knowing that.

 

[imported_Dekard]

ok, with 4 users you've got a decent spec. I can tell you from personal experience that this server will start bogging down as soon as any disk activity gets heavy. This may happen for any number of reasons but is actually quite common. If you can live with several minutes to possibly as long as an hour of reduced performance then don't worry about it. The best solution to that is to move to a much faster disk system. I see on the server you are looking at you have the option of SCSI drives in a raid format. That would be HIGHLY recommended along with at least of 1g (preferably 2g) of ram. Your getting a lot more CPU than you really need and could honestly move to the lowest end celeron and probably never know the difference. The Pentium d820 would be the most I'd recommend for this light duty server. You also should be thinking about backing up the machine, tape is expensive but top of the line. USB attached external harddrives are decent but not extremely reliable. Offsite is preferred since it can be scheduled and maintenance free on a daily basis. Look at SyncBack SE + a FTP server at home or hosted for a very low cost method.

Note, if you have plans on adding more users or you have work that will be disk intensive you really must upgrade to the SCSI drives. Also, I hope you are looking at a 3+ year service contract from HP on this? Again, highly recommended since if it goes down you'll be the only one who can fix it otherwise? If this isn't the case then don't get it, but if you are the one doing support on it in a small company you'd be well advised to get the contract.

Finally, don't buy this without shopping the same configuration to at least Dell. Email their small business sales department and they can and will get back to you with lower quotes. The last server I bought came up to $4500 when I built it on the website and I ended up paying $2900 by negotiating for a day or two.

I know I'm telling you to spend twice as much money as you want to but you've got wrap your mind around the fact that a server is nothing like a desktop machine. No one's running applications on a SBS server (right?) but what they are doing is accessing files, backing up, using sharepoint, exchange and the print server. And all thats before you put one piece of software on the machine! Those aren't cpu intensive tasks, rather they consume a lot of time on the harddrive. Getting fast (15,000 rpm and NQC) and reliable (High MTBF and Raid1) means you'll have ready access to the data all the time. All the ram means you spend less time access those disks for best possible performance.

Let me know what you think about all this.

 

[b4u]

Thank you for your opinion, nice points there

Let me tell you about the usage of this system:

Nowadays, the company have a PentiumIII system with 256Mb Ram a single hard drive (with I believe 40Gb) and Windows 2000 Server. It is actually running well, and the upgrade to the hardware is needed because we want to take a step further, since we want to setup email, website and I'm planning on working on a remote desktop access.

At the time, they use the server for regular DHCP for network config and AD for network security. As for work data, we are talking about Word, Excel files (simple local working disk mapping with a loggon script, and a personal disk space for domain users). As for specific software, they have an accounting program that works with a server side service, which has access to a self SQLServer engine instance (first was Access database files, now they moved for a sql engine). We don't have SQLServer, it's some small engine version that does the trick (did I explained correctly? I don't have much more info on that).

So basically the email web access will pull some power of the machine (IIS would be the exchange web server, right?), but there will be some 3 websites, and since they are Java based, I'm planning on testing them in a separate Linux machine for the job (I'm just thinking, yet).


<edit>
Forgot about backups:

Since we are talking mainly about shared files, what I did was an initial disk image for replacing the OS just in case I need to re-format, so all settings are there. The backup of files are made through an ANT script (java based) that compresses and stores data on a separate disk.

We store every backup made on the first day of each month, plus the last 3 days. So we are talking about an image of the OS and simple ZIP files with timestamp. Backups are set to do at 3AM, all workers are sleeping

The backups need space, so the actual disk space is a bit scarce ... each day backup needs 700Mb. They are complete backups, not differential backups.

Server is up and running stable for 2,5 years, backups like I described are up and running for 1 year.
</edit>

 

[imported_Dekard]

When you log into RDP and\or start programs, see a large number of simultaneous visitors to your websites or backup\restore files the users will have a temporary slowdown in their access if you use 7,200 rpm drives. If you get 7,200 rpm drives that support NCQ or TCQ you'll not notice it as much but the 10,000 or 15,000 rpm options will make that invisible. And I recommend raid simply because its really foolish to not have it when the value of the data on the server is more than the cost of the drives\raid array (say $1,000). Its not a question of if the harddrive will go out, its a question of when. Note, SCSI drives are manufactured to a higher standard and have a significantly higher MTBF.

IIS and Exchange have a extremely close relationship and honestly its hard sometimes to tell where one begins and the other ends. Suffice it to say Exchange will be hosting the mail DB and IIS will be providing access to it. Thats grossly simplified and really ignores a lot of the less important points. Either way, depending on how many users you have you'll need better hardware. This is a pretty light demand application *unless* you plan on having mailboxes for your users larger than a few hundred megs or having more than 10~ users.

if you will host the website on this server you really need to be developing under a windows environment, not linux.

Anyway, with a server thats going to see such a varied usage pattern having a lot of ram will be key, for a fully featured SBS server like you intend to run I'd recommend no less than 1.5g of ram. Speed isn't as important as quantity.

 

[jose]

1 - 7200rpm drive .... hope this is for personal use...

Once your users start using this "server", you better start looking for another job...

Just because they call it a server, doesn't mean it's a server...

Here's an entry level server that I build:

http://www.relsyscon.com/projects.htm

checkout the Linux hardware server components..

Good Luck

Regards,
Jose

 

[RebateMonger]

Your listed SBS server should be fine for four "normal" users. We successfully used an SBS 2003 Server with 1.8GHz P4 with 500MB of RAM with a single IDE drive for years (with four users)

However, as you note, I recommend adding a second SATA drive in RAID 1 configuration. If you want, you can likely do it yourself, at a hardware cost of less than USD100. An inexpensive RAID 1 array will greatly reduce the chances of your Server going down.

Additionally, 512MB of RAM is the minimum for SBS 2003. I'd recommend at least 1GB, and I'd install a DVD drive, since more and more software comes on DVD.

Regarding the Xeon, Intel actually is going to be selling low-end Xeons that are, in truth, Core 2 Duo processors. a 4-user SBS Server isn't going to be terribly processor-dependent.

For SBS 2003 backups, I've had really good luck using hot-swap SATA drives in trays, using a separate SATA hot-swap controller. Two or three drives in trays aren't that pricey, and allow you to keep multiple backups offsite. I've installed this arrangement at serveral of my current SBS clients.

 

[b4u]

What are the base requirements for RAID1? I mean, I pickup 2 similar drives, and connect them in a RAID1 config. But what about replacement? :

1# If on drive fails, can I just replace it for another, or does it restricts to capacity, and same "brand"/specs?

2# How does it recover a disk from a crash? I mean, in case of failure, I'll shutdown the machine, change the crashed disk, and just startup? Will the system (at hardware level) copy the contents from on disk to the other?

 

[imported_Dekard]

You need a raid controller card first. That will be an add in card that the hard drives connect to.

1# yes, but the replacement drive must be the same size as the original or larger. If larger the space will be wasted.

2# This varies according to the controller, but you basically replace the drive and then start some type of utility that will move the data from the old, good harddrive to the new, good hard drive. Then you have redundancy and lower risk of data loss.

 

[b4u]

I'm looking into another setup ... looking for some reliability and speed on data (RAID10):

Processor Intel XEON 3070 2.66GHz, 4MB Cache, FBS1066; Socket 775
Motherboard ASUS P5WDG2-WS PRO ChipSet i975 + ICH7R
DIMM 1GB DDR2 667MHz
4 HDDs Western Digital 250GB, SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache, for a RAID 10 config
Combo Drive LG (DVD+CDRW) IDE Black
Floppy Drive 3,5" 1.44MB Samsung Black
Graphic Card ATI RX300SE 128MB PCI-E
Audio 7.1 & Gigabit LAN OnBoard
CHIEFTEC MiniServer Black 550W
MS-Windows 2003 SBS Standard R2 English CD OEM

For around ?1650 or $2200


That board can receive a P4 Dual Core or this Xeon 3070 which is also a Dual Core. I believe that a Xeon would be a better processor for a Server, don't have much info on why would it be, so any opinion will be welcomed

Give your opinion, thanks in advance

 

[imported_Dekard]

Thats a lot closer but your still missing a few things.

1, the processor is way overpowered for what you need... Probably by a factor of 3x - 5x... If you don't care I dont care, I just don't want you to think you need something that powerful for a small server like this. P4 or Xeon doesn't matter, I wouldn't feel bad about getting a Celeron for this system, honestly.

2, you still don't have enough ram. You want at least 2 gigabytes.

3, Your going with large, slow drives again and using on board raid to do it... First, large and slow is not what you want from a server's disk system and second you never, ever, ever should use onboard raid for something important like a SBS server. Get 10,000 rpm SCSI or SAS drives, hot swappable bays and a real, dedicated raid card with at least 64 - 256 ram on board.

4, On board network card is a bad idea when you are talking about a desktop board that been tweaked for workstation use, which is what the P5WDG2-WS PRO is. That is not a server board, its a workstation board which is not the same.

5, Certain models of the video card you selected will steal ram from the system for the video cards use. You certainly do not intend for this to happen, I'm sure.

The HP ProLiant ML110 G4 or a similiar Dell would be better for you, I think. You'll get the hardware you need and a support contract to make sure it all works. I suggest a 3 year\ 4 hour response time unless you can afford better. I've bought similiar equipped servers for $2400 USD more than a year ago so you should be able to do at least as well or better now.

Finally, speak on the phone to a HP or Dell rep. They will discount the price of the unit considerably. Anywhere from 15 - 35% are typical for discounts from a rep.

 

[ECUHITMAN]

Well I am not a networking expert but I would agree with the others above and get at least another drive to run as a backup (raid 1) which most motherboards support out of the box, but you might have to get a RAID card. As far as performance goes the more memory the better 512 is not enough IMHO. Given I play a lot of intense games but I have 2GB on my desktop system, I can't imagine a server having less than that. If you are going to push forward with the SQL stuff, it will require much more than 1GB (at least from my understanding).

I am not sure you can do this but maybe 3 HD's in a RAID 0+1 set up might work so that way you get better performance and a backup copy. Again, not sure about that.