Personal computing discussed

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Philldoe
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Building a Server

Tue Feb 14, 2006 7:18 am

My company has decided to start sponsering local gaming clans by hosting their sites TS and Game Servers.

Now the good stuff..

I need 4 servers, unlimited budget, each server will be TS Site and Game host for each of 4 clans.

2x Opty's are perfered
Tyan or Iwill mobo perfered.

I've never built this kind of server so I'm goin to need your help...yes you too leor...
Fastfreak39: I feel like they should change the phrase "jumping on the band wagon" to "sailing on the pirate ship"
 
pwdrhnd23
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Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:17 am

Well, its really easy I think if you have unlimited budget.

2 x 280(whatever is the highest Opty right now)
2GB per channel per socket to start = 8GB
I would still use SCSI for HDs, I am not sure how much storage you think you will need but most configs will have a mirror set for the OS and essentials with everything else on a raid-5 as most controllers allow for dynamic expansion.

Any board you buy is gonna have GbE so nothing to worry about there, not much else to mention.

Just be sure to have them fold for TR when the loads are light. :lol:
 
Antijr
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Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:22 am

The highest opty is 800 something and its about $5,000 a piece lol. Hopefully by "unlimited budget" you don't mean "spend every last bit of my bosses money" lol.
 
mattsteg
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Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:32 am

Antijr wrote:
The highest opty is 800 something and its about $5,000 a piece lol. Hopefully by "unlimited budget" you don't mean "spend every last bit of my bosses money" lol.
Of course, the 800 series Opterons are identical to the 200 series ones for his purposes.
...
 
lex-ington
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Tue Feb 14, 2006 8:36 am

You should take a look at the socket 940 boards on Monarch's website. Newegg is the site of choice but I find Monarch easier to navigate.

-Supermicro or Tyan would be solid choices for server boards.
-Compare an Opteron 270 to an Opteron 270HE (just to familiarize yourself with what's out there) - see which will fill your role, can start with one and add another as need be to show your boss you are also monetarily responsible. Find the comparable Intel processor as well. You may prefer AMD, but someone else may prefer Intel so your arguments need to be clear as to why you chose a certain one - just in case someone asks.
- ECC Ram
- the on-board video should suffice, unless your boss plans on gaming with the new servers.
- Rackmount or tower case?
- Storage options?
- Controllers?
- OS?
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monts
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Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:10 am

Go the 2x opty280 iwth heaps of ram
tyan mobo

os in raid 1 go sata II raptors
data in raid 5 go sata II

os choice: RHEL or equivalent (or commerical ubuntu?) running in console mode leaving all the power for other tasks


and go rackmount.

Don't forget UPS, and remote machine to send backups too.
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highlandr
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Tue Feb 14, 2006 9:53 am

Just FYI, you may not need all that horsepower, depending on the game. Cain's Lair currently has a dual opty 252 box with 2 gigs of ram, and it was able to serve up a 32 player UT2004 ONS server, AND a 24 player UT2004 CTF server, and both were full most of the time. I'm sure dual opty's of any sort will be able to handle just about any game you can throw at it (maybe not a 64 player BF2 map), and at that point it becomes a question of bandwidth.


Of course, the biggest cost in hosting a game server has always been the bandwidth, not the hardware. Keep that in mind - a T1 is a good start towards a low ping, high player server.
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Philldoe
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 2:56 am

haha I am the boss :) any way..

I have looked around and too your suggestions then I decided on this.

BTW: 2 servers are going to host a 32man private and 64man Public + Clan site and TS/Ventrilo

Other 2 are CS:S 32man pub + Clan site + TS/Ventrilo.

Specs for each server.

Iwill DK88 Dual Socket 940 NVIDIA nForce4 Professional 2200 Extended ATX Server Motherboard - Retail

AMD Dual-Core Opteron 275 Italy 1GHz FSB Socket 940 Processor Model OSA275CBBOX - Retail

4x(per server) Crucial 2GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM ECC Registered DDR 400 (PC 3200) System Memory - Retail

4x 74Gb WD Raptors in RAID 0+1

All data will get backed up on our main server.

Any more suggestions you want to make?

Also I wanted to order through Newegg because our supplier is getting slow with shipments due to the masive amount we make them ship :)

If you have any hardware suggestions I can't find on new egg then can you give me an order link on another site?
Fastfreak39: I feel like they should change the phrase "jumping on the band wagon" to "sailing on the pirate ship"
 
leor
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Re: Building a Server

Wed Feb 15, 2006 3:12 am

Philldoe wrote:
I've never built this kind of server so I'm goin to need your help...yes you too leor...

d00d i got so much half priced server crap around me, just let me know what u need ;-)

and nevermind the raptors, i can probably get u 4x 147 gig SCSI drives for the same price.
 
Philldoe
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 3:45 am

I wish I could order from you man but I need this stuff to be under a good warrenty. If any of it screws up then my Company would be out a lot of money.:( sorry man.

Hey I tell ya what I'm getting a few thousand back on my Taxes and I'm going to need a good Home server(my old rig is going to my brother insted) I'll shoot ya a PM when I get ready to build it.
Fastfreak39: I feel like they should change the phrase "jumping on the band wagon" to "sailing on the pirate ship"
 
IYagami
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 5:25 am

What about buying directly from Sun or HP? They offer several Opteron Servers...

Sun:
x4200: 2 Model 275 (Dual Core), 4 GB (4 @ 1-GB DIMMS): $6,295.00
 
Philldoe
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 5:48 am

haha We don't buy from OEM's we build our own Comps/Servers. They are cheaper Faster and more flexable to work with.
Fastfreak39: I feel like they should change the phrase "jumping on the band wagon" to "sailing on the pirate ship"
 
computron9000
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 6:13 am

what OS are you using and how do you expect to come anywhere near 2GB+ / server in RAM use? will the OS you use even be able to address more than 4GB of RAM?

don't be silly here.

i've built a lot of servers.

the key is to get reliable components and meet requirements without just throwing hardware at the thing.

what kind of internet connection do you have?

have you considered what kind of NICs you will use (based on prior question).

I would most definitely use SCSI 15K RPM drives (4 of them or 3 with a hot spare) in a RAID 5 volume with a 128MB cache RAID 5 controller. Why in the world are you spec'ing out SATA Raptors? That's borderline ghetto for a proper server.

I'm still confused about the 8GB. Anyone got any actual numbers on memory usage for these servers? I haven't seen one since BF1942.

....

i'm sorry, but an 'unlimited budget' server for this application is not Raptors in 0+1 and dual optys w/ 8GB. that's like some sort of amd-fan-boy dream rig made of hardware the mostly won't be used.

you should be focused on where the servers will be (in a rack?), getting dual power supplies, proper network cards (possibly teamed for redundancy to multiple switches), RAID 5 SCSI with an awesome SCSI add-in card, 15K RPM SCSI drives, etc. And really, the bandwidth, peering & latency of your internet connection is the biggest variable here. i'd like to see your SCSI card have hot spare capability, and you have a spare drive or two. i'd also like to see some very nice UPS setups. an efficient backup system (either to tape or to another networked device). ........ so many other things than just processors and an absurd amount of ram. who will be supporting it and running it? is that cost irrelevant too?

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/produc ... ached+SCSI

check out that adaptec card. very nice for server application.
Last edited by computron9000 on Wed Feb 15, 2006 6:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
 
Philldoe
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 6:42 am

The 2 most important servers are hosting BF2 ;) which is a resourse hog. eventually I'm sure thease clans will move to an even more demanding game once BF2 becomes out dated/replaced with BF3 and I would like to jsut install the server files and not have to upgrade anything unless its needed.

Back up power is already taken care of as is most other things.

Net connection? Alltel Business Connection so latency/Bandwith isnt a problem...I would have better but better is nearly impossible in this area of the state.

As for the raptors I'm ditching them for 4 Atlas 15kRPM drives and we already have some SCSI cards in stock.

AMD-fanboy? me? never... :wink:
Fastfreak39: I feel like they should change the phrase "jumping on the band wagon" to "sailing on the pirate ship"
 
computron9000
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 6:58 am

Ok, so what OS? Can it even address more than 4GB of ram? Otherwise you are wasting $$ and hardware.

I like the move to SCSI drives. definitely get a good card w/ hotswap and spares on-hand if possible.

what kind of PSUs are you using? cases? are these rackmount?
 
monts
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 7:05 am

Is it worth building them one a time, so you can build one and assess whether it is able to meet the requirements or is overkill.

That way you don't over or under spec the servers
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pwdrhnd23
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 8:09 am

computron9000, is the idea of Win2k3 x64 so far out of the question?

All that hardware will run a 64bit os and will then support all that ram. It just seems you are crying foul way too early.

I am glad he decided on a SCSI subsystem, the idea of having a hot spare is a real good one.
 
Flying Fox
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 8:25 am

He never said which OS he was considering, that's why he asked. OS is also an important component when it comes to servers. You don't wipe the OS every 3 months. :P
 
leor
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 1:52 pm

Philldoe wrote:
I wish I could order from you man but I need this stuff to be under a good warrenty. If any of it screws up then my Company would be out a lot of money.:( sorry man.

no worries man, the stuff isn't mine, but i have a client who has upgrade fever, and gets rid of a lot of his stuff (some of it brand new) for silly cheap.
 
Philldoe
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Wed Feb 15, 2006 2:25 pm

If you knew me like some other TR eople here do you would know that Win Server 2k3 x64 would be my ONLY choice. :)


leor wrote:
Philldoe wrote:
I wish I could order from you man but I need this stuff to be under a good warrenty. If any of it screws up then my Company would be out a lot of money.:( sorry man.

no worries man, the stuff isn't mine, but i have a client who has upgrade fever, and gets rid of a lot of his stuff (some of it brand new) for silly cheap.


haha sounds like me with my home PC...and work PC...and friends PC's...and my home server...and my parents/brothers PC...ect :lol:
Fastfreak39: I feel like they should change the phrase "jumping on the band wagon" to "sailing on the pirate ship"

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