[nycbug-talk] Server hardware

[Isaac Levy]

Hi Francisco, All,

On Feb 24, 2006, at 10:49 AM, Francisco Reyes wrote:

> Isaac Levy writes:
>
>> If you end up putting together some boxes by choosing your own   
>> components, I'll reccomend my preferred vendor- General Computer  
>> and  Service, <lee at gcserve.com> or <sales at gcserve.com>.  They're  
>> in  midtown, they deliver in Manhattan, and they've been around in  
>> the  NYC*BUG scene since the beginning
>
> Another vote for GCS.
> Ever since George recommended them I have been buying all my  
> desktops for them, although I have not bought any servers from them  
> yet.

Re. Servers from GCS: I've found they can build whatever the heck you  
want- at really competitive prices.

>
>> diligence on whatever components they sell.  They sell a lot of   
>> Supermicro these days, although my usual with them are high- 
>> density  1u machines comprised of a Tyan mboard in a Chenbro case  
>> (if you  contact them and want similar, ask Lee for the 'ike 1u  
>> special'
>
> What are the dimensions on those?

They are really quite long- 26" deep.

The one's I've come to really love are:
http://www.chenbro.com.tw/usa/product/product_preview.php?pid=68

I especially like the super-minimal SATA hot-swap sleds, they're the  
simplest (and cheapest) design I've seen yet- no fancy mechanisms to  
break.  In heavy production use, they've been great- and they're a  
hair cheaper than Supermicro for similar configurations.

> At work we have been getting Racklogic machines, but I dislike that  
> they are front-wired (ethernet, video and keyboard in the front). I  
> am sure that front-wired sounds like a great idea, but it's messy  
> and just makes it difficult to pull machines out... unless you  
> wired everything nice and neatly (which my pre-decessor did not do).

I'm not a fan of those either-

> The only reason I have not convinced the decision maker to switch  
> off Racklogic is that the machines are pretty small. They are same  
> width and height, but about half the lenght of a regular 1U.

Lee at GCS sold a server to a client who's hosting with me which was  
a very inexpensive pizza-box 1u, about 15" deep, very short compact  
box.  Tell him what your looking for, and I'll bet they can make it  
happen.

>
>
>> you have a working RAID card, it really works with FreeBSD-
>
> What RAID cards you using these days?
> I have been standarizing in 3Ware.

Ha!  You wanna take two '3Ware Escalade 9500S-4LP SATA' cards off my  
hands?  :)  I understand they rock for OpenBSD... But I can't get  
them to boot with FreeBSD- (long thread/sob-story elsewhere).

http://lists.nycbug.org/pipermail/talk/2005-December/007424.html

For SATA Raid, I've found a reliable (but not so modern and fast)  
card is the 'Adaptec 2410SA'.  Rock solid, some of mine in production  
for over 2 years.

If your going to build big disk SATA raid arrays, I'd stay away from  
the same line of Adaptec cards- they are solid, but are bound to lame- 
o 2TB volume limits in the card...  To my understanding, the Areca  
cards can make contiguous volumes over 2TB straight on the card.

There's been talk of Areca cards being good, but I can't say first hand:
"Areca": http://www.areca.com.tw/index/html/index.htm

Best,
.ike