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#1
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small office file server
I'm looking to build a file server for my small office (currently only 2-3
employees) I don't need anyhting too massive right now but it could be asked to doa lot of thing in the next 6 to 12 months, so I'd go a little overboard now then have to rebuild later. do I really need to go with an opteron? (which are pretty pricy) or can I juse use an athlon X2 or even high end athlon 64? I'm going to have at leas 1GB of RAM, most likely 2GB. going to have a raid array (RAID 0) for backup purposes. this is just being used to serve up commently used files right now but will eventually be used to: host our website possibly an exchange server DHCP server possibly an Asterisk server and who knows what else thanks! |
#2
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small office file server
On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:54:48 -0400, Nick wrote:
I'm looking to build a file server for my small office (currently only 2-3 employees) I don't need anyhting too massive right now but it could be asked to doa lot of thing in the next 6 to 12 months, so I'd go a little overboard now then have to rebuild later. do I really need to go with an opteron? (which are pretty pricy) or can I juse use an athlon X2 or even high end athlon 64? I'm going to have at leas 1GB of RAM, most likely 2GB. going to have a raid array (RAID 0) for backup purposes. this is just being used to serve up commently used files right now but will eventually be used to: host our website possibly an exchange server DHCP server possibly an Asterisk server and who knows what else File servers based on the proper OS don't require much at all for CPU power. I've still got a 486 running novell file and print server. An Opteron, or even an old P1 is like buying a Jumbo Jet to send a letter cross-country. Web, mail, ftp, dhcp servers also require minimum cpu usage unless you have thousands of clients with thousands of hits per minute. Ditto for the rest with the exception of possibly Asterisk. While it may not require a lot of cpu power I think I'd want a seperate Asterisk server simply because of the loss of phone service should it run into a problem from all the other uses you may have on it. But that's just my opinion. You could easily put all in a $200 PC and have 95% cpu power to spare. Put your money where it's needed, ram, storage, and backup. Now if you're also going to be using this as a workstation..... -- Want the ultimate in free OTA SD/HDTV Recorder? http://mythtv.org http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html Usenet alt.video.ptv.mythtv My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php HD Tivo S3 compared http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/mythtivo.htm |
#3
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small office file server
going to have a raid array (RAID 0) for backup
I think you mean RAID 1, two disks mirrored. -- Ed Light Smiley :-/ MS Smiley :-\ Send spam to the FTC at Thanks, robots. Bring the Troops Home: http://bringthemhomenow.org |
#4
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small office file server
On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:54:48 -0400, Nick wrote:
I'm looking to build a file server for my small office (currently only 2-3 employees) I don't need anyhting too massive right now but it could be asked to doa lot of thing in the next 6 to 12 months, so I'd go a little overboard now then have to rebuild later. do I really need to go with an opteron? (which are pretty pricy) or can I juse use an athlon X2 or even high end athlon 64? I'm going to have at leas 1GB of RAM, most likely 2GB. going to have a raid array (RAID 0) for backup purposes. this is just being used to serve up commently used files right now but will eventually be used to: host our website possibly an exchange server DHCP server possibly an Asterisk server and who knows what else thanks! An Athlon64 is fine, you don't need an Opteron. The Nforce4 (for socket 939) and Nforce 5xx (for socket AM2, this is the new Athlon 64 that supports DDR2) have on board RAID controllers and dual gigabit ethernet controllers so they have everything you need for a file server. You probably should get a low end dual core like the A64 X2 3800+, they're pretty cheap and they'll give you a lot of headroom for the future. An MSI K9N with an AM2 X2 3800+ or X2 4000+ would be a good choice. However don't buy anything today if you can afford to wait a month. Intel is coming out with their new processor on July 24 and AMD has timed big price decreases to correspond with Intel's release. |
#5
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small office file server
Nick wrote: I'm looking to build a file server for my small office (currently only 2-3 employees) I don't need anyhting too massive right now but it could be asked to doa lot of thing in the next 6 to 12 months, so I'd go a little overboard now then have to rebuild later. do I really need to go with an opteron? (which are pretty pricy) or can I juse use an athlon X2 or even high end athlon 64? I'm going to have at leas 1GB of RAM, most likely 2GB. going to have a raid array (RAID 0) for backup purposes. this is just being used to serve up commently used files right now but will eventually be used to: host our website possibly an exchange server DHCP server possibly an Asterisk server and who knows what else thanks! Almost no CPU is required for a small office server. With the current AMD price reductions, an Athlon 64 3000+ socket 939 on a Asus A8N-VM CSM with 2 x 512 mb PC 3200 memory would be more than adequate. It has built in video and supports SATA II and RAID 1. IIRC, that mb also has gigabit LAN would would be helpful. Its not the only solution and I only mention it as an example of some features that might be desirable as a basic system used for a small office server. For most offices, 120 gig of shared disk space is big overkill. A lot of motherboard support RAID 1 mirroring of either IDE or SATA. Modern drives with long warranties make a lot of sense for RAID 1. We run a server in our home that probably gets more traffic than a small office. Its a video / movie server to two HTPCs and does file sharing across six computers. Its running a Sempron 64 2600 socket 754 with half a gig of PC 3200 DDR, 2 x 320 gb (1 SATA, 1 IDE) and 1 x 250 gb hard drives, no RAID. Motherboard is MSI RS-480 with buint in video. 420w power supply and DVD RW. O/S is XP home. Runs very cool. Never a glitch. |
#6
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small office file server
General Schvantzkoph wrote: On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:54:48 -0400, Nick wrote: I'm looking to build a file server for my small office (currently only 2-3 employees) I don't need anyhting too massive right now but it could be asked to doa lot of thing in the next 6 to 12 months, so I'd go a little overboard now then have to rebuild later. do I really need to go with an opteron? (which are pretty pricy) or can I juse use an athlon X2 or even high end athlon 64? I'm going to have at leas 1GB of RAM, most likely 2GB. going to have a raid array (RAID 0) for backup purposes. this is just being used to serve up commently used files right now but will eventually be used to: host our website possibly an exchange server DHCP server possibly an Asterisk server and who knows what else thanks! An Athlon64 is fine, you don't need an Opteron. The Nforce4 (for socket 939) and Nforce 5xx (for socket AM2, this is the new Athlon 64 that supports DDR2) have on board RAID controllers and dual gigabit ethernet controllers so they have everything you need for a file server. You probably should get a low end dual core like the A64 X2 3800+, they're pretty cheap and they'll give you a lot of headroom for the future. An MSI K9N with an AM2 X2 3800+ or X2 4000+ would be a good choice. However don't buy anything today if you can afford to wait a month. Intel is coming out with their new processor on July 24 and AMD has timed big price decreases to correspond with Intel's release. Wacha gonna do with a dual core processor? For a file server? Mail server? Print server, even with large documents (printers are remarkably slow)? Its WAY too much overkill. As a combined file server, print server, mail server, all that CPU power is wasted on a small office even if it expands from 2 to 20 employees. A socket 939 Ath 64 3000+ is plenty of power. What is necessary is the ability to manage a couple of mid-sized hard drives in RAID 1. Video can be integrated onto the motherboard since a server doesn't need a powerful video card. Gigabit LAN is a useful feature for a file server, but most files in a small office are small and transfer quickly over a 100mb LAN. More important are the access controls. These don't take much CPU either but are needed, especially if remote access is going to eventually be required. |
#7
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small office file server
"Nick" wrote in message
news:uszjg.137269$k%3.78639@dukeread12... I'm looking to build a file server for my small office (currently only 2-3 employees) I don't need anyhting too massive right now but it could be asked to doa lot of thing in the next 6 to 12 months, so I'd go a little overboard now then have to rebuild later. do I really need to go with an opteron? (which are pretty pricy) or can I juse use an athlon X2 or even high end athlon 64? I'm going to have at leas 1GB of RAM, most likely 2GB. going to have a raid array (RAID 0) for backup purposes. this is just being used to serve up commently used files right now but will eventually be used to: host our website possibly an exchange server DHCP server possibly an Asterisk server and who knows what else thanks! The two most important parts of a file server is the amount of ram and the speed of the hard drive subsystem. I heard that Google used to run their huge database engine off of a bunch of Pentium Pro computers. You can skimp on everything else in the system except these two items: lots of ram and a good fast IO HD subsystem. You only need these if you have a lot of people "hitting" the computer otherwise, the cheapest new computer you can find will probably handle the load. later...... PS. You can never have too much speed or too much ram. (Hackers percpective). |
#8
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small office file server
"Nick" a écrit dans le message de news: uszjg.137269$k%3.78639@dukeread12... I'm looking to build a file server for my small office (currently only 2-3 employees) I don't need anyhting too massive right now but it could be asked to doa lot of thing in the next 6 to 12 months, so I'd go a little overboard now then have to rebuild later. do I really need to go with an opteron? (which are pretty pricy) or can I juse use an athlon X2 or even high end athlon 64? I'm going to have at leas 1GB of RAM, most likely 2GB. going to have a raid array (RAID 0) for backup purposes. this is just being used to serve up commently used files right now but will eventually be used to: host our website possibly an exchange server DHCP server possibly an Asterisk server and who knows what else thanks! If you plan to use Win XP as the server OS, be aware that it has a limit of 10 simultaneous TCP connexions. There is a patch on the net, which raises this limit. However, if you want to use an original OS, consider Linux. |
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