Want to build a server <$400.

I would like to build a small office (3 networked computers) server with the following basics:

Cost < $400
Do not need a monitor.

Would like RAID of 2 60GB drives.
as much RAM as necessary.
as fast of a processor as necessary.

What mobo, etc... should I be looking into?

Thanks

Hey Glenn. :) Well, you're certainly on a budget there! Considering a server is typically the most important (and expensive) system on a network, $400 is pretty paltry. You may be able to get by on that, but I think $600 is a more realistic budget (and even that's pretty darn low).

You're going to need good cooling for long-term stability, and above all good quality HDDs. I'd go with SATA, because it's much better for RAID than IDE. SATA Seagate Barracudas are a very good choice for inexpensive and reliable RAID hard drives. If you get a motherboard with a VIA KT-600 chipset, it'll have an onboard SATA RAID 0+1, so you're covered there. Also, any Barton core AthlonXP will be an excellent server CPU for you, due to its large L2 cache and low cost. It won't be a slouch for speed either, especially for a network of less than 100 clients. For RAM on your budget, I'd go with 512mb PC2700/PC3200, Kingston Value series. For an inexpensive chassis with good cooling (especially on the HDDs), check out the Maxtop Signature II series. They're about $30, look decent and have excessive cooling in all the right places.

Regarding the OS, I'd definitely go with Linux. It's much higher security, better with resources, more stable, and it's free. I've really enjoyed Mandrake 10.0 Official on the server end, since it's as powerful as any Linux distro, yet easier than most and much faster than Red Hat. Using Samba, Linux serves up files and domain services to Windows clients perfectly and transparently. As a matter of fact, I recently set up a Linux PDC running domain services, file sharing, floating profiles and a software RAID-5 for a medium-sized non-profit. They've never been down yet. Not for one day, hour, or even a minute. I log in and administrate the machine remotely (from home, in my boxers), via SSH2. Couldn't be easier! Not only that, but it's 100% free, doesn't get viruses/worms/etc, doesn't require a reboot ever, unless you're updating the kernel itself, and it can handle as many clients as you can throw at it. There really isn't a downside, and to your clients it'll be the same as a Windows PDC (except it won't need to be rebooted when updated).

If you have any more questions, don't hesitate.
-AT

What exactly will the server be doing? If it's more or less just a file server, a fast CPU isn't as important as the hard drives and memory.

Going with what Anti-Trend has said, $400 to do a PC with RAID is going to be really tough. While 60GB drives are available, I found 80GB SATA drives for less than $2 more than a 60GB, so for the money, that's really what I'd stick with.

Motherboard: MSI KT6V-LSR, KT600 w LAN, SATA RAID -- $55.00
CPU: Athlon XP2600 Retail (includes CPU heatsink, warranty from AMD) -- $97.00
RAM: Kingston Value Series 512MB PC3200 --$79.00
Hard Drives: Seagate 80GB, 8MB cache x2 ($72.75 ea.) -- $145.50
CD-ROM: Samsung 52x CD-ROM --$15.99
Floppy drive: NEC 1.44MB Floppy drive (you'll likely need it to provide SATA drivers for the OS during installation) -- $8.00
Case w Power supply: Antec SLK3700AMB w 350W power supply (Antec SL350S): --$65.00

Total: $465.49 + Tax (if in CA or NJ) + Shipping
All prices from Newegg.

A cheap video card, if you decide you actually do need one, can be had for less than $20 if you do need display capabilities.

If you'll be doing a remote install, you could drop the CD-ROM out, but I believe that you may still need to have the floppy.

For stability reasons, I would avoid anything from Epox for motherboards. They are about the only brand, other than PCChips/Matsonic, that I advocate avoiding like the plague. Stick with Antec or Sparkle (also Fortron) power supplies. At the very least, have a 300W power supply, but I'd stick with 350W or better, just to be on the safe side.

Big B's advice is sound, I'd take it to heart. An excellent choice of motherboard, too. Probably the best quality you can find for the price. I only differ on one point:

Big B said:

Stick with Antec or Sparkle (also Fortron) power supplies. At the very least, have a 300W power supply, but I'd stick with 350W or better, just to be on the safe side.

Click to expand...

While Antec, Sparkle and Fortron are all awesome, I'd consider a Thermaltake 420watt. The amperage is high, the fans are ball-bearing, and the capacitors are good quality. An excellent PSU for under $40. Also, you'll need a 120mm fan for the back if you choose the aforementioned Maxtop chassis, and an 80mm for the front. I recommend either Enermax or Thermaltake, both ball-bearing and both available from Newegg.com. Sorry, I'm pressed for time, so I can't provide specific links at the moment... :swt:

Thanks for the replys. I will let you know what I go with.

I do have a followup question.
If I find that our budget is larger than expected, in what priority order should I choose upgrades. Is memory more important than cpu speed , etc...

By the way, if you wouldn't mind clarifying exactly what purpose some of these compnents serve in a server I would appreciate it. (ex...why do I need more memory, or when would cpu speed be important, or disk speed)

Honestly, that really depends on your server. I can see the RAID function as a means to keep a hard drive failure screwing you over...although you should still be backing up.

With an office this small, I can't imagine you needing even this much horsepower, however, for the money, it's a pretty good deal.

If you're doing video editing on this thing, both the CPU and memory are hit hard, as well as the hard drives. If it's working with a large database, extra memory is more important than CPU speed. If you have a lot of users accessing it, both the memory and hard drive speeds are important because you'll be doling out data left and right, which is space on the RAM, and places on the hard drive with the data to be loaded into RAM.

When you say RAID, I am assuming you mean RAID 1. RAID 0: it's fast because it accesses data from both drives at the same time. Basically the harddrives are made into 1 large hard drive with the formula :(number of hard drives) x (the smallest sized hard drive)=RAID size. If any drive fails, you're data is totally f*cked. since the bits are doled out between the hard drives. RAID 0 is also called Striping.
RAID 1 is slower, but you've got a clone of the data ready to go. The math here is (number of hard drives) x (smallest sized hard drive in array) / 2.

Power supplies are typically overlooked, though they are really important. If you don't have enough, quality juice, you risk instability---which you don't want on your server. The other, and possibly even greater danger is that a cheap POS unit is more likely to take the rest of the system with it when it goes (everything will eventually fail, it's just a matter of when---but by that time you'll hopefully have moved to something better).

Without knowning what this is used for, it's harder to make it custom fit. If it wasn't for the RAID array, $400 or less is likely obtainable, basically because you really wouldn't need the extra hard drive.

Thanks again for taking the time to help us out.

To be more precise, we will be using this server mainly to store our database files. I am considering RAID as a backup for a HD crash. I don't know much about RAID, other than it copies a disk to a second disk for security. If there is another configuration that would work (other than RAID) I'm open to that. Mainly I don't want a hardware failure to bring down our data. I have been handling backups to this point, half-heartedly at that, and find them difficult to do while maintaining my other duties. Is there a fast, effective, easy to maintain method of backing up that I could incorporate into this systems purchase?

Thanks again.

RAID is a good start, but it is NOT an alternative to backing up. RAID has different levels 0-7, and then some different combinations of the levels. What you could do is forgo the RAID 1 array right now and look into a tape backup drive instead of the 2nd hard drive to make the RAID array, which is something you could always go back and add later. If this is only serving a handful of people, I can't see any reason that the system couldn't handle it with the specs suggested, and especially running Linux.

Tape drives would be good, but they are kinda pricey.

My idea is this: Have to removable SATA hard drive racks, and purchase a 3rd hard drive. Run a RAID 1 array and have the secondary hard drive in the removable rack. This is where the third drive and 2nd rack come in. SATA is hot-swappable, so you just swap the removable hard drives in (at least daily), and then store the spare in an offsite location.

If you were dilligent enough, a DVD-RW drive might be an option to, and more simple. Offhand, I don't know how to, or much less if (although I highly suspect it) there is good way to just automatically wipe the DVD-RW+/- disk that's in it and then write to it. Same thing could apply to a CD-RW disk.

However, if you're looking at large databases (like over 4.7GB), doing a removable hard drive or tape backup are you're choices. Again, with your company, the database might not be all that large, so a CD-RW drive (with dilligence and/or a setup) could be all you need, although you want to make this purchase as future-proof as you can, so the DVD burner could be the next best thing.

IMHO, a RAID is the critical ingredient in the mix, hence my $600 estimate. A RAID-1 requires at least 2 HDDs, preferably identical, and halves the amount of space you actually have while adding redundancy. There is no speed increase nor noticeable penalty. A RAID-5 requires at least 3 HDDs, and can have a virtually unlimited number of HDDs. RAID 5 offers redundancy, and you only sacrifice 33% of your total HDD space (3x 150GB HDDs in RAID-5 = 300GB usable space), and also a speed bonus in the neighborhood of 200%. The downside is that you have to have at least 3 drives, preferably identical.

RAM is also important, although substantially less so if you run Linux. In Windows, your RAM is almost never fully utilized, yet much is required for proper behavior/performance. In contrast, Linux simply uses as much RAM as you throw at it. It'll use what it needs first, then proceed to use available RAM as buffers and cache, removing them as necessary to provide more memory for applications. With a Linux box, you can get by with 256mb RAM, but for the meager price difference between 256mb and 512mb DDR, I'd go with 512 so you have a speed bonus (more cache!) and some room to grow.

The CPU simply affects responsiveness of the server, especially with multiple simultaneous connections. In a PDC (Primary Domain Controller), this is more critical. With a slow PDC, clients may not be able to authenticate on their PCs at all (and you can bet you'll get some angry phone calls). With a simple file server however, this is just a bit of an inconvenience, but you lose no functionality. You'll just have a slow server...

The chassis & PSU should definitely not be understated, as cooling is vital to component life, especially the HDDs (!). Clean power in adequate amounts is equally important, for both stability and longevity.

I'm definitely with you on the Linux, I use RH9 at home, however I have been toying with various distros on a separate HD (Slackware, Fedora, Gentoo, and now Debian / Sarge)

I'm not really sure about setting up the server yet...need to do some researching....especially since all the existing PC's use Windows 98 on the network.

I will definitely pay attention to all you guys have told me. Thanks.

glenn69 said:

I'm definitely with you on the Linux, I use RH9 at home, however I have been toying with various distros on a separate HD (Slackware, Fedora, Gentoo, and now Debian / Sarge)

I'm not really sure about setting up the server yet...need to do some researching....especially since all the existing PC's use Windows 98 on the network.

I will definitely pay attention to all you guys have told me. Thanks.

Click to expand...

No problem at all. As for the Linux distro, Slackware or Debian would be the best distro from those you mentioned, IMHO. Again, I run Mandrake, but because it's pretty much Red Hat with free updates and without the sluggishness. But Slack is a rock, and Deb makes a very snappy server! As for networking with Windows clients, SMB is pretty easy to set up and configure. If you can set up a Slack/Deb box, Samba should be pretty straight-forward for you, assuming you know a bit about how Windows networking works in the first place.

If you need any more support or advice, you know where to find us! :)

-AT

Yeah, Samba is pretty easy to do as long as you're competent with some basic networking skills. Hell, I can set it up, and I really don't even use Linux.

I'm back, and I will take you up on your offer for further assistance. I am completely confused about this whole Linux / SATA / RAID issue. I want to use debian sarge linux. I currently have the mobo that you suggested (MSI KT6V ) and I have 2 IDE drives. Well upon reading the mobo manual, I discovered that RAID is only supported by SATA. Now, how do I know if linux will support the SATA? I would like to figure this out before I exchange my IDE drives for the SATA. Also, is RAID a BIOS issue or do I have to make sure my OS supports it too?

I hope I am not crossing the lines of the purpose of this forum, it's just that I have gotten good advice up to this point and my question is hardware related.

Thanks again.

You can setup RAID, if the OS has a means to do it. However, this is software RAID, and this means that the CPU is doing the work.

Using the SATA RAID function, you can (and should) setup the RAID capabilities before the OS installation. Off hand, I haven't dealt with the SATA RAID function provided by the Via chipset, but you should have the ability to enable/disable it in BIOS. You'll configure the RAID function in a SATA RAID controller BIOS that runs after the motherboard's BIOS does after boot up. There's some key, or key combination you hit to get into this. Likely it's one of the Function keys [F1, etc], or an F key with [Ctrl] or [Alt], going by how other RAID cards work. Read the manual for the specifics.

The only part regarding the OS that you should be concerned about is having a floppy ready with drivers for the OS so you can install it on the RAID array. All Windows OS, including XP will. Depending on how new your distro of Linux is, it may support the VT8237 southbridge SATA right off the bat (which is on your motherboard, and typically paired with the KT600 chipset, as well as other newer Via chipsets).

Yeah Big B is right, there should be a floppy disk in a paper sleeve labeled "RAID DRIVERS" or something around that. Yes, you can enable/disable it in BIOS, good luck!

glenn69 said:

I'm back, and I will take you up on your offer for further assistance. I am completely confused about this whole Linux / SATA / RAID issue. I want to use debian sarge linux. I currently have the mobo that you suggested (MSI KT6V ) and I have 2 IDE drives. Well upon reading the mobo manual, I discovered that RAID is only supported by SATA. Now, how do I know if linux will support the SATA? I would like to figure this out before I exchange my IDE drives for the SATA. Also, is RAID a BIOS issue or do I have to make sure my OS supports it too?

I hope I am not crossing the lines of the purpose of this forum, it's just that I have gotten good advice up to this point and my question is hardware related.

Thanks again.

Click to expand...

Linux will definitely support your SATA controller no problem. With a 2.6 or newer kernel, you don't even need the floppy. Either you can make a software RAID using Linux's RAID tools, which supports RAID 1-5, or you can trade in your IDE drives for SATA ones, and use your VIA southbridge as a RAID 1 controller.

If you go with the software RAID, you do have more flexibility, and can set the OS to report to you if there's a problem with your RAID. However, as B already pointed out, there's a performance hit to your CPU since there's no hardware RAID controller. I'd also like to point out though that since Linux's RAID functionality is so good, the performance hit is literally undetectable on a modern system. The only real downside is that if you've never set up a RAID before in Linux, you're going to be reading some walkthroughs... :eek: Really though, it's not that hard, so this is still a viable option.

Alternately, should you trade in your PATA drives for SATA ones, you can simply setup a hardware RAID in the southbridge's BIOS. The plus side is that there's zero hit to your CPU, and it'll be a more straight-forward setup. The down side is that you'll have no flexibility to grow and add more harddrives, or convert to a RAID 5 in the future, since it's a hardware limitation. Also, you'll receive no reports of problems with the RAID until a drive physically dies, since the OS will only see one logical drive, not two. :swt:

If it was me in your Doc Martins, I'd trade the IDE drives out for SATA ones either way, since SATA is much better for RAID than PATA in many respects. Then, I'd set up a RAID-1 in hardware using the VIA southbridge, then Install/setup Linux. After a while, if your needs (and your budget) have grown to the point where you need more space and performance, you could always add a Promise FastTrack SATA controller (about $60), and another 3+ harddrives. Then you could set up the new drives in a RAID-5, move your data over from the RAID-1 and still have your existing OS running from the hardware RAID! Best of both worlds. And as you expand, you can always add more drives to a Linux RAID, it's really easy.

All the best,
-AT

P.S. - If you haven't already got a good server chassis, here's a good one for a good price (pictured below). It has plenty of room for HDDs (all cooled!), sharp looks and great airflow.

Also, if you're going to do a hardware RAID using the VIA southbridge, it'd be wise to add at least passive cooling to that chip. Hardware RAID will warm it up quite a bit, and you know how important stability is in a server.

The one Anti-Trend is a pretty good case, but if your on a pretty tight budget and cant afford that,

`MGE ECO M1 Black ATX Mid Tower Case With 350W Power Supply, Model "CAECO-M1-BK" -RETAIL 26 dollars!

`I'tll do, but you will be using RAID, the hard drives will heat up, causing you to need a few fans. Enermax Adjustable Speed Blue 80mm Case fan, Model "UC-8FAB-B" -RETAIL
VERY good fans, and only 5 dollars each. You should get 3, atleast, two in front, one in back, but Four would be better. I would recommend getting four.

`Chipset cooling: Zalman Northbridge The stock northbridge heatsink tends to get warm, I have the same motherboard and I dont put too much stress on it. At only 5 dollars, good buy!

`Or you could get a full KIT to do it, adhesives (you need adhesive for your southbridge anyways) thermal paste(you need that for your northbridge heatsink anyways) and a heatsink! Zalman NB HS KIT Just 7 bucks! The choice is yours

`Since the southbridge has NO MOUNTING HOLES, you will need to get some thermal adhesive!

`That's IF you can find a heatsink for it, you cant glue on your old northbridge heatsink for there is junk in the way!

Take care :good:

Thanks again everyone. I new I came to the right place. I will be returning the IDE drives for 2 SATA drives by Seagate.

Now I have a question about my mobo.

1) The manual reads "Please note that the AGP slot does not support 3.3V AGP card. Use of 3.3V AGP cards may result in a failure to restart the syatem." I have a used Radeon 7500. I'm not sure if I can use that card. The site states that it is 3.3V and 1.5V ??? http://www.ati.com/products/radeon7500/radeon7500/specs.html

Thank You