Building a Server need help

[zaqwsx]

Hey guys so my current project at the moment is building a server that will host a few websites, game server and file sharing. Here are the parts I have to work with.

Asus K8N-DRE Server board
2x AMD Opteron 275 dual core 2.2ghz cpus
16gb if ddr 400 ram
Adata 128gb ssd
3x Seagate 1tb drives

As far as software I have windows server 2012 and a bunch more at my disposal all are legal.

My current internet is dynamic IP FIOS 25down 25up and I'm going to upgrade it to static IP FIOS 50down 25up that will be the coming months once the server is up and running correctly.

So this came from a friend of mine who owns a big company running a bunch of servers:

Mike
"Well if the server is a retail one, I would go with VMware and break stuff up. The web server and games server are both presumable public. By breaking things up on different 'computers' you can cut down on risk of attack and compromise of your important stuff. If he is buying a new OEM server and it is on the HCL this is easy. If he is building from scratch he can look at forums for suggestions on supported parts that you can buy retail that will still work with VMware. I would install VMware on the server to the SSD. I would then load two or three OS's. I would put a really small Ubuntu LAMP server on the SSD for the website. It's very light weight and rocks for web hosting. By breaking this off you can forward one port to the webserver and keep everything else safe. I would then install server 2008 with the "c" drive on residing on the SSD (you should have a good 50gb still for that). Then mount the three TB raid for storage to VMware and hack off a few TB for the DATA disk on the server OS for the files and such. You can use server 2008 as a game server too if you want. What I would do is build a small windows 7 box entirely on the 3tb array. Again assuming that this is public, it isolates it and ensures the best compatibility with the game makers. In my experience most don't support server OSs directly.

If VMware is out of the picture. Server 2008 is going to host files fine, will likely work with more games than any other OS (windows 7 kernel) and has IIS 7 so you can run the latest PHP."

So I am trying to understand all of this just a lot of stuff to take in especially with college but I have my break coming up so I plan on getting it running then just need some advice and help. I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks again guys!

(PICS TO COME SOON)

[kn00tcn]

separating is indeed a nice idea (that & i dont like dealing with website hosting that's not linux)

what specific games & how complex websites?

[zaqwsx]

I'm going to host a minecraft server for my baby brother that's the first game not sure on other ones at the moment.

Website I have one lined up for a pediatric office for my doctor friend. Im probably going to make a blog website from me, My one friend will also make a site for himself too, and we may get his dad to switch his site to our server its a bails bondman website. And probably a few more sites also unsure yet.

[AsRock]

You checked with the FIOS agreement that your not breaking of their rules running dedicated servers ?. I know Comcast has a such rule but not to sure about your FIOS.

[Frick]

Originally Posted by AsRock

You checked with the FIOS agreement that your not breaking of their rules running dedicated servers ?. I know Comcast has a such rule but not to sure about your FIOS.

Wait what? They do that?

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Frick

Wait what? They do that?

Yeah, some ISPs go so far to block new port 80 packets going to your IP address, while allowing outgoing new port 80 packets as well as established or related packets returning to your network. It's a routing thing and it's annoying. Comcast doesn't block port 80 and they honestly don't care unless you start exceeding your bandwidth cap and at that point you really should sign up for business class which gives you better speeds with higher boost speeds and priority when the network fails. They also expect you to be hosting and they don't impose a bandwidth cap. So it really depends on the service you sign up for.

Originally Posted by AsRock

I know Comcast has a such rule but not to sure about your FIOS.

They don't care all that much unless you're using a lot of bandwidth or an exorbitant amount of upstream, but as I said before. At that point you really should be consider business class if you're serious about hosting and if Comcast contacts you and you tell them what you want to do they will help you out.

[Sinzia]

Doctors office stuff? Be aware of HIPAA restrictions and any info that might be stored on that machine from the docs office.

lawsuits suck.

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/

[zaqwsx]

Originally Posted by AsRock

You checked with the FIOS agreement that your not breaking of their rules running dedicated servers ?. I know Comcast has a such rule but not to sure about your FIOS.

I'm not really sure to tell you but I am switching to business class so a few months wont hurt for testing.

Originally Posted by Sinzia

Doctors office stuff? Be aware of HIPAA restrictions and any info that might be stored on that machine from the docs office.

lawsuits suck.

http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/

And I am HIPAA certified for his office I do major work. The website though will not have any info like that it is just for advertisement and mostly about him like a bio.

[zaqwsx]

So I just ordered a new board its the same one except rev 1.05g which has a sata 2 controller any way it came with this extra card the sits in the mini I/o slot. Their is a link below. Was wondering is someone can shed some light on what it might be? Thanks.

http://support.asus.com/faq/list.asp...shedid=n/a&os=

[zaqwsx]

Anyone?

[Aquinus]

It's a management card. It adds functionality in cases where you're going to be managing a lot of systems in a distributed network.

I doubt that you will need it and it isn't worth a whole lot either. I have a 1U server sitting in the closet with dual 3.2ghz xeons that has a bigger version of it.

[amp281]

For what its worth, if your custom server doesn't have the juice ... I always see decent looking commercial servers on craigslist, hp or dell dual xeons etc $300-500.

[zaqwsx]

Thanks guys!

Another question so I installed windows server 2012 and installed VMware player and I am going to install Ubuntu LAMP in VMware player. Their are some network settings though that I am unsure off.

Bridged, NAT, and Host-only.

Which one should be used for 24/7 web server and to give me protection in my internal home network.

Thanks again guys!

[zaqwsx]

Not sure what you mean?

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by zaqwsx

Another question so I installed windows server 2012 and installed VMware player and I am going to install Ubuntu LAMP in VMware player. Their are some network settings though that I am unsure off.

Bridged, NAT, and Host-only.

Which one should be used for 24/7 web server and to give me protection in my internal home network.

The CPUs you picked out do not support hardware virtualization (at least from what I read,) if you're going the VM route, then you should get better hardware.

For hosting you want bridged, unless you have a dedicated Ethernet or network adapter for it. It's the only option where your VM gets an IP on your network. NAT and Host-Only do exactly as they say they do. NAT puts you on an internal network inside the computer that uses NAT to resolve addresses (can't host off it,) and Host-Only is an internal network that only VMs and the Host can communicate with. This is nice if there is a lot of communication between the VM and the host or the VM and other VMs.

[Geofrancis]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

The CPUs you picked out do not support hardware virtualization (at least from what I read,) if you're going the VM route, then you should get better hardware.

For hosting you want bridged, unless you have a dedicated Ethernet or network adapter for it. It's the only option where your VM gets an IP on your network. NAT and Host-Only do exactly as they say they do. NAT puts you on an internal network inside the computer that uses NAT to resolve addresses (can't host off it,) and Host-Only is an internal network that only VMs and the Host can communicate with. This is nice if there is a lot of communication between the VM and the host or the VM and other VMs.

Yea I just checked them out the processor he is using is a first generation K8 opteron based on a 939 Athlon 64 x2 this was a generation before AMD-V hardware virtualisation.

The problem with this is the virtual performance will be a fraction of your processors performance due to the huge overhead because Without hardware acceleration your essentially emulating the processor hardware in software.

Most socket am3 motherboards also support ecc ram. You would have been easier to just go with a basic am3 box, quad and a few gb of ecc ram. It would support VMware or any other flavour of virtualisation and out perform the server you have now.

[Aquinus]

Originally Posted by Geofrancis

Most socket am3 motherboards also support ecc ram.

This is the first time I've heard this. Where did you find this? I'm a bit skeptical to say that this is true.

Also, it's not about the motherboard supporting it as much as it is about the CPU and the IMC supporting it.

[Geofrancis]

Originally Posted by Aquinus

This is the first time I've heard this. Where did you find this? I'm a bit skeptical to say that this is true.

Also, it's not about the motherboard supporting it as much as it is about the CPU and the IMC supporting it.

All am3 processors support ecc unbuffered ram but its up to motherboard manufacturers support it In the bios. My asus board and my last Foxconn am3 board supported it I just wish my servers MSI 890fx-GD70 did.

Only intel makes the distinction that celeron,pentium,i3,i5,i7 has no ecc and that you have to pay for server parts and a Xeon to get ecc.

[zaqwsx]

I had VMware workstation running with both Ubuntu and server 2012 and it was running pretty fast. But I had to pay for it so I then switched to windows server 2012 and installed VMware player. As far as it doesn't support is that something internal in the cpu?

[zaqwsx]

Also if I cant do virtualization could I just host through server 2012 what are the drawbacks compared to Ubuntu LAMP?

[Geofrancis]

Originally Posted by zaqwsx

Also if I cant do virtualization could I just host through server 2012 what are the drawbacks compared to Ubuntu LAMP?

vmware player is just the same as workstation minus a few features but the performance should be the same. if all your doing is hosting a couple of pages on the vm it should be fine but it will struggle with anything cpu intensive.

[zaqwsx]

Well as far as windows software I can get most of what I need for free do to the agreements between Microsoft and the college I got to.

So know I was thinking if I should just stick with windows server 2012 and just do everything from their?

How intensive can a website get plus a game server.

One thing that is going to run for sure is a minecraft server will have maybe 50 to 100 people logged into it and a website for the mincraft server. Hopefully that can give you a better idea?

[theoneandonlymrk]

Originally Posted by zaqwsx

I had VMware workstation running with both Ubuntu and server 2012 and it was running pretty fast. But I had to pay for it so I then switched to windows server 2012 and installed VMware player. As far as it doesn't support is that something internal in the cpu?

It is internal of the cpu, later architecture cpu accelerate virtual environments instead of emulation so are much faster they have specific abstraction layer api's that virtualize the hardware layer , you already mentioned alternative plans that might perform whilst not being quite so secure so its a tradeoff , and one I know nothing of as four os, s might still run ok on your system idk.

[zaqwsx]

Thanks, I going to skip the whole virtualization stuff and stick to server 2012 just wondering know on what I need and how to make it secure and safe.

[zaqwsx]

Looks like I'm back to plan A. I got the Ubuntu LAMP server running in VMware player. I have 2gb ram and 2 cpus assigned to it with 20gb hd space. What other things do I need at this point?