[nycbug-talk] 1U Server Recommendations

[Pete Wright]

On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 07:45:23PM -0500, Charles Sprickman wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> In the past one of the guys I've worked with has been pretty happy with 
> the boxed supermicro servers.  They're basically a SM server board in a 
> pretty decent chassis, so we order that, processors, memory, ZCR card and 
> drives.
> 
> However I'm a bit intrigued by all the new AMD 64-bit stuff.  Since the 
> next box will be doing a fair amount of Postgres work, that might be 
> helpful if only by allowing more RAM.  Also looking at the prices on Xeon 
> chips, AMD looks like a steal.
> 
> Supermicro doesn't offer any AMD stuff, so I'm looking for some general 
> recommendations.  We don't want any homemade beige-box stuff nor do we 
> want to pay a premium for someone else to put together some "it may work 
> with FreeBSD" beige-box stuff. :)
> 
> Suggestions?  Our budget is OK, but not huge.  We're frugal but not dumb.
> 

I have had good luck with both Boxx as well as Penguin Computing.  Boxx tends
to gravitate towards the 3D world so you may not find exactly what you are 
looking for there...anyway they do have a decent 1U offering:
http://www.boxxtech.com/asp/1selectconfig.asp
(too bad it's an ASP page...but the gear is pretty decent for the price)

as far as penguin goes you get a bit more flexibility in options:
http://penguincomputing.com/products/servers/altus_opteron_1u_servers.php
(1U opterons)
http://penguincomputing.com/products/servers/altus_opteron_2u_servers.php
(larger machines)
I have build a backend/renderfarm with penguin gear and felt is really was
the best deal for the money.  They go with Tyan boards (at least w/ the athlon
procs).  I have had gear go down on me and the support was good and they got
replacements out ASAP as well.

Granted, neither of these guy's are BSD specific but I would not see any reason
this gear may not work on *BSD.


anyway just my 2 bits...

-p


-- 
~~oO00Oo~~
Peter Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
www.nomadlogic.org/~pete
917.415.9866