Good Server?

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

I have to select parts for a pretend server for school. I had 150k to spend on 2 servers plus routers, switches, CALS for Server 2k8 and 2k3, and 40 IP phones.

Here is the parts selection I went with for 1 server so far:

Server 1:
Motherboard: SuperMicro H8QG7-LN4F –$929.69
Processors: 4 x AMD Opteron 6386SE 2.8GHz 16- CORE Socket G34 –$5943.56
Case: SuperMicro Tower/4U Rack w/ Redundent 1280W PSU Model CSE-747TQ-R1K28B --$999.09
Hard Drives: 4x HGST 600GB SAS-600 15000 RPM 3.5” – $1050.05
SSD: 1 x OCZ ZD4CM88-FH-1.6TB PCIe 2.0 x8 MLC Z-Drive R4 – $8928.45
RAM: 1TB DDR3 1600MHz ECC Registered Hynix Quad Rank – $29300.48+(12557.44(fall discount))
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard w/SP1 – $706.73
Windows Server 2003 Standard – $200

What do you guys think?

 

[newtekie1]

Is this a public school?

If so, you're doing it wrong. You need to just throw together a couple celeron machines, get a few dumb switches, and pocket the rest of the cash.

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

Is this a public school?

If so, you're doing it wrong. You need to just throw together a couple celeron machines, get a few dumb switches, and pocket the rest of the cash.

This is a class project. As in, I am working for a fictitious company building servers for their fictitious client.

 

[erocker]

Why AMD over Intel?

Why only 3TB of storage?

Why 2 O/S's?

What is your reasoning for the parts you chose? Anyone can throw money at parts and build a theoretical server. I can't believe that that's all your teacher wants. It makes no sense and offers nothing in terms of learning anything.

 

[Compgeke]

Just curious, is there any purpose for the servers? And what kind of load is this (fake) company going to have on their systems? This helps determine what all is needed.

IP Phones are also another issue. You're going to need PoE switches for this. Shoretel phones also use their own custom hardware to connect the phones from the outside world into the network. I'm not sure if this is the same for Cisco and other companies, as I've never worked with those before.

 

[Fourstaff]

Purpose of server? Data storage, or virtual machines? Or hosting internet? Etc?

 

[ShiBDiB]

Why 2 os's? Why the SSD (not necessary depending on what type of server this is)?

Really we can't help you unless you give us some pretend guidelines for what it's for.. right now it looks like you picked random stuff and threw it together

 

[Mindweaver]

Yea, I'm with everyone else, what's the purpose of the server? It's easy to pick shine things, but you need to be sure they are going to do what you need them to do.

 

[Compgeke]

I have nothing better to do, so here's a generic build that could probably handle anything you throw at it. The case has some poor descriptions for the drive caddies, however it should be able to hold everything. If not a little double sided tape has never hurt any SSDs.

Once You Know, You Newegg

There are two extra HDDs and one extra SSD in case of drive failure, keeps downtime shorter.

--

For networking: Is this here going to be a single-floor, single-building workplace or multi-building or multi-floor? This here is important when it comes to making the networking actually work.

For multi-buildings you're going to want to do a switch in each building. Multi-floors a switch for each floor is useful but not always required if it's just a two-story building.

Saying you have a single-floor building for 40 people, this networking stuff here would work alright, saying you're running the DHCP server on one of the physical servers. With the power of the stuff I put together you could virtualize a lot of systems.

Once You Know, You Newegg

--

And now for the phones: That's the hard part. You really can't get a quote on the cost of hardware and phones by just looking online for 20 minutes. You're more than likely going to have to call up someone yourself and find out the cost.

I've installed Shoretel phones in the past and used both Shoretel and Cisco phones. I'm personally a fan of the Shoretel phones. The particular phones I would go with are Shoretel 230 and Shoretel 115. They're basically the same thing except the 115 doesn't have the advanced features of the 230. The 230 is good for full people who constantly use a phone. The 115 is good for people who don't always need a phone at hand, and with the computer software it's easy enough to work with.

 

[brandonwh64]

Start with the network side such as the routers and switches and IP phones.

Cisco 3750X switches and Cisco 1900/2900 series Integrated Services Routers.

IP phones are a different story... They require a PBX or VPBX so I would loo at Cisco Small Business VOIP system and its requirements before just buying VOIP Phones.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Why AMD over Intel?

Why only 3TB of storage?

Why 2 O/S's?

What is your reasoning for the parts you chose? Anyone can throw money at parts and build a theoretical server. I can't believe that that's all your teacher wants. It makes no sense and offers nothing in terms of learning anything.

Agreed. Definitely should be going Intel. Having actually worked on such servers, 99% of them were Intel. And for good reason.

 

[brandonwh64]

Agreed. Definitely should be going Intel. Having actually worked on such servers, 99% of them were Intel. And for good reason.

I have to agree here I have not seen much AMD server machines. We just installed a sun server that had dual X79 xeons running solaris linux.

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

Why AMD over Intel?

Why only 3TB of storage?

Why 2 O/S's?

What is your reasoning for the parts you chose? Anyone can throw money at parts and build a theoretical server. I can't believe that that's all your teacher wants. It makes no sense and offers nothing in terms of learning anything.

We were not given a specific server type to go with. That is the next part. He wants us to get used to selecting parts within a budget. The Two OSes is because we are going to be using a VPS i believe. That and we have not covered 2012 yet. As for the 3TB of storage, again, I do not know the purpose of the server yet so I stuck an SSD in there to take up costs until I know what the server is for.

Just curious, is there any purpose for the servers? And what kind of load is this (fake) company going to have on their systems? This helps determine what all is needed.

IP Phones are also another issue. You're going to need PoE switches for this. Shoretel phones also use their own custom hardware to connect the phones from the outside world into the network. I'm not sure if this is the same for Cisco and other companies, as I've never worked with those before.

I already selected several switches.
CISCO Catalyst WS-C3560X-48P-L Managed

Why 2 os's? Why the SSD (not necessary depending on what type of server this is)?

Really we can't help you unless you give us some pretend guidelines for what it's for.. right now it looks like you picked random stuff and threw it together

I have nothing better to do, so here's a generic build that could probably handle anything you throw at it. The case has some poor descriptions for the drive caddies, however it should be able to hold everything. If not a little double sided tape has never hurt any SSDs.

Once You Know, You Newegg

There are two extra HDDs and one extra SSD in case of drive failure, keeps downtime shorter.

--

For networking: Is this here going to be a single-floor, single-building workplace or multi-building or multi-floor? This here is important when it comes to making the networking actually work.

For multi-buildings you're going to want to do a switch in each building. Multi-floors a switch for each floor is useful but not always required if it's just a two-story building.

Saying you have a single-floor building for 40 people, this networking stuff here would work alright, saying you're running the DHCP server on one of the physical servers. With the power of the stuff I put together you could virtualize a lot of systems.

Once You Know, You Newegg

--

And now for the phones: That's the hard part. You really can't get a quote on the cost of hardware and phones by just looking online for 20 minutes. You're more than likely going to have to call up someone yourself and find out the cost.

I've installed Shoretel phones in the past and used both Shoretel and Cisco phones. I'm personally a fan of the Shoretel phones. The particular phones I would go with are Shoretel 230 and Shoretel 115. They're basically the same thing except the 115 doesn't have the advanced features of the 230. The 230 is good for full people who constantly use a phone. The 115 is good for people who don't always need a phone at hand, and with the computer software it's easy enough to work with.

Agreed. Definitely should be going Intel. Having actually worked on such servers, 99% of them were Intel. And for good reason.

I originally had a QUAD LGA 2011 setup but someone bet me I couldnt make an AMD server so I did. Plus I figured I could add more to the server using AMD.

I have to agree here I have not seen much AMD server machines. We just installed a sun server that had dual X79 xeons running solaris linux.

Thanks for the tip on the IP phones. We have not covered IP phones yet so I was not aware you needed a separate kit of hardware. I assumed you could run a VPS IP PBX.

We were told we could not spend less than the whole 150k. I went 100 over it while trying to get just under it or right on it.
As for the rest of the parts list for the setup, here is what I have selected so far.

Server 1:
Motherboard: SuperMicro H8QG7-LN4F –$929.69
Processors: 4 x AMD Opteron 6386SE 2.8GHz 16- CORE Socket G34 –$5943.56
Case: SuperMicro Tower/4U Rack w/ Redundent 1280W PSU Model CSE-747TQ-R1K28B --$999.09
Hard Drives: 4x HGST 600GB SAS-600 15000 RPM 3.5” – $1050.05
SSD: 1 x OCZ ZD4CM88-FH-1.6TB PCIe 2.0 x8 MLC Z-Drive R4 – $8928.45
RAM: 1TB DDR3 1600MHz ECC Registered Hynix Quad Rank – $29300.48+12557.44
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard w/SP1 – $706.73
Windows Server 2003 Standard – $200

Server 2:

Motherboard: SuperMicro H8QG7-LN4F –$929.69
Processors: 4 x AMD Opteron 6386SE 2.8GHz 16- CORE Socket G34 –$5943.56
Case: SuperMicro Tower/4U Rack w/ Redundent 1280W PSU Model CSE-747TQ-R1K28B --$999.09
Hard Drives: 4x HGST 600GB SAS-600 15000 RPM 3.5” – $1050.05
SSD: 1 x OCZ ZD4CM88-FH-1.6TB PCIe 2.0 x8 MLC Z-Drive R4 – $8928.45
RAM: 1TB DDR3 1600MHz ECC Registered Hynix Quad Rank – $29300.48+12557.44
Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard w/SP1 – $706.73
Windows Server 2003 Standard – $200


Router 1:Cisco Systems, C3945-VSEC/K9
$9665.00


Router 2:Cisco Systems, C3945-VSEC/K9
$9665.00


Switch 1: CISCO Catalyst WS-C3560X-48P-L Managed 10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet
$4548.00



Switch 2:CISCO Catalyst WS-C3560X-48P-L Managed 10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit Ethernet
$4548.00



Phones: Cisco CP-7970G-IM Unified IP Phone 40x $190/phone
$7600

CALS:
50 Server 2008 CALS: *$1399.99 -100 CALs Server 2008 CALS
10 Server 2003 CALS: $458.95 - 20 CALS Server 2003 CALS

Total: $150,185.77

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

How about this build for a Massive Storage Server with the IP Phone setup?

View attachment Newegg2.pdf


The Drives would be running in a ZFS RAID 60 Array.
The SSD is for Caching.
Public Wishlist

In RAID 60, the 45 4TB drives would net a total space of 167936 GB or 164 TB of Space.

 

[erocker]

I do not know the purpose of the server yet

Who in their right mind would make an extravagant server setup without a purpose?! Tell your "teacher" that you "give all the money back to the client, ask them what their needs are and build a server based on that". Maybe you'll get an A.

 

[Frick]

If the assignement poses no purpose for the server, literally anything will do.

I'd go with a vintage setup.

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

Who in their right mind would make an extravagant server setup without a purpose?! Tell your "teacher" that you "give all the money back to the client, ask them what their needs are and build a server based on that". Maybe you'll get an A.

well, im guessing it will be a VPS server since we had to get ~60 CALS and 2 server licenses. Most likely will be running applications remotely.

 

[Aquinus]

Who in their right mind would make an extravagant server setup without a purpose?! Tell your "teacher" that you "give all the money back to the client, ask them what their needs are and build a server based on that". Maybe you'll get an A.

This, the project sounds a bit vague. You can't really build a good server tailored to the needs of a company unless you know what their needs are. Also you need some hardware if you plan on running a software PBX and you're going to be using physical phone lines. Is it 40 VoIP clients on the network, or 40 land connections going into the PBX? If it's 40 land connections, you're going to need something like two of these: Digium TDM2400

I would go back and tell the teacher that the instructions are too vague and that you can't properly build a server for a client unless you know a bit more about their needs. Just because you have so much money doesn't mean you spend it all either which puts you in the position of "getting the best and most expensive you can" because you don't know what they need.

From a business perspective, saying "Here is X amount of dollars, go buy us some servers," is dangerous. Where saying, "Find what we need, and tell me how much it will cost," yields better results as it keeps the needs and a fiscal constraints in mind without actually being constrained so the focus is mainly on what they need. Also, unless you're going to run in free software land, I would stick with Intel. Not because they're bad, but more often than not, you'll get better performance unless you're running software that takes advantage of more cores, or if there are a ton of clients.

So really: Do whatever you want. It doesn't sound like the teacher really cares enough to give a real situation that would take everything into consideration. Whatever you do will get you an A.

 

[dorsetknob]

No one seems to have considered the other implied costs of this project
ok so you budget for the hardware
what about the service /maintenance / running costs +software and license costs
Will your Virtual bushiness have an IT Support Dept or are you going to outsource such support ?

More for you to think about and piss off your Teacher when you seek further information from them.
After all you cannot run any IT project without Technical Support (and Technical Support cost Money)

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

This, the project sounds a bit vague. You can't really build a good server tailored to the needs of a company unless you know what their needs are. Also you need some hardware if you plan on running a software PBX and you're going to be using physical phone lines. Is it 40 VoIP clients on the network, or 40 land connections going into the PBX? If it's 40 land connections, you're going to need something like two of these: Digium TDM2400

I would go back and tell the teacher that the instructions are too vague and that you can't properly build a server for a client unless you know a bit more about their needs. Just because you have so much money doesn't mean you spend it all either which puts you in the position of "getting the best and most expensive you can" because you don't know what they need.

From a business perspective, saying "Here is X amount of dollars, go buy us some servers," is dangerous. Where saying, "Find what we need, and tell me how much it will cost," yields better results as it keeps the needs and a fiscal constraints in mind without actually being constrained so the focus is mainly on what they need. Also, unless you're going to run in free software land, I would stick with Intel. Not because they're bad, but more often than not, you'll get better performance unless you're running software that takes advantage of more cores, or if there are a ton of clients.

So really: Do whatever you want. It doesn't sound like the teacher really cares enough to give a real situation that would take everything into consideration. Whatever you do will get you an A.

the project is not done. Each week the project is built upon. Next week we will be told what it is for. again, as i stated before, this part of the project is for getting used to selecting parts. we were not allowed to pick prebuilt or customizer systems. most of the people in my class are completely new to building systems.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

I can't believe that that's all your teacher wants. It makes no sense and offers nothing in terms of learning anything.

I've had an assignment similar to this. The details of my assignment was choosing computers, custom built or prebuilt, for a fictitious company buying all new computers for its' workers and a new server. The assignment was meant to show that the student has a understanding of what hardware requirements are needed for computers used for various situations, like a server needing to be very strong, while workstation desktops don't require anywhere near the same power.

 

[Compgeke]

If the assignement poses no purpose for the server, literally anything will do.

I'd go with a vintage setup.

You know, a Pentium Pro would be more fun. Not only do they cost more, you can easily fill one with 10 gig SCSI drives. If that doesn't work you could be like me and fit 2.5 TB of drives into a Pentium Pro. Yes, it did work.

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

So, I got an update today on the server.

I need 4 file servers with Identical hardware for exactly $108,488.

Can anyone help me select the hardware?
I have to have this updated by the end of the day.
Apparently, we had to have backup servers for each server required.
Since we had a requirement of 2 servers, that means we need 4 altogether.

 

[brandonwh64]

The phone system is still wrong ducky.... Please research a FULL BUSINESS VOIP SYSTEM before buying anything..

A little help though. A new common system that businesses are using is called a VPBX

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

The phone system is still wrong ducky.... Please research a FULL BUSINESS VOIP SYSTEM before buying anything..

A little help though. A new common system that businesses are using is called a VPBX

I don't understand how the phone system is still wrong when I have an Integrated Services Router selected from Cisco. We are not allowed to use any non-Cisco networking hardware.

Here is the Description of the Assignment in all it's glory:

Phase 1b:
50 - CALS in all for 2008 Server
10 - CALS in all for 2003 Server

A company purchase a support contract so a new budget has been established for purchasing the following equipement to connect remote offices and to minimize cost on P.O.T.S.

$150,000

Your Company has now purchase a new facility 3 states away and fiber is not an option so you must have communication between the sites by using routers.

2 Routers - for protocols only Cisco can provide - no generic security must be Cisco based proprietary protocols.
(list which protocols you will be using)

40 - VOIP phones (20 for each facility) - Voice over Internet Protocol Phones

48 port switch - for each location to provide ample room for growth. Just allow for growth at least 5 extra open ports on each switch.