WEB Servers

[stc_bennett]

Quiock question for all IT professionals out there.

Does anyone know of any sites where they review WEB Servers for example Cobalt RAQ4 or similar.

I am looking for a newer uptodate server with more space and possible Raid 1 support.

Developing Big intranet for Company it has been suggested to use Sun Cobalt Systems but are there any others out there that can do better.

Money is no object on this well it is budget was £10k for hardware.

Help greatly appriciated

Steve

Few beers in it at a TVR meet in the future

[fatsteve]

Steve,

If you're looking for something similar to the Cobalt Raq4 (albeit Sun), try the Sun Netra's (v100 I think).

They are 1U units and are based on readily availble parts (ie standard PC memmory). Plus have a single internal IDE drive. They don't have SCSI or Fibre Channle but it will take 2 internal IDE drives, so you could to mirroring.

They seem to be up to the job. I use one as a test server with Oracle 8i, WebLogic 6.2 and Apache on, (not to mention the Java apps and background jobs that are running). They come with Solaris 8 which is great (better mem. utilisation than 7).

www.sun.com/servers/entry/v100/

At most it has about 10 users and seems to handle it with ease. They start around 1K, but if you are running web apps I would seriously look at 512M memory.

Steve

>> Edited by fatsteve on Sunday 19th May 17:56

[Marshy]

I would have recommended big Compaq iron like the Proliant range, along with Linux on top. However, I just heard that due to the HP/Compaq merger, Compaq is dropping some or all of its server range. That's going to displease an *awful* lot of people.

[UpTheIron]

Marshy,

Not strictly true - one way or another, the Compaq technology will form the basis of the revised server ranges.

I'd look at the Compaq DL360's (1U, 2x P3, 2x Hot-Plug 15K SCSI's) or, if you need more than a couple of servers then either Compaq's or HP's Blade servers have to be the way to go.

[q405mb]

Compaq/HP lineup now that merger has gone through is based on market share...

Most likely as follows:

Handhelds - iPaq (Jornada goes, selling cheap at the moment already)
Desktops and Notebooks - Compaq products
Intel based Servers - Compaq ProLiant range
Unix based servers - HP range
Printers & peripherals - HP range
Entry level storage - Compaq
Enterprise level storage - HP

H

[sprintmp]

I also found the DL360s excellent. Had 6 of them - although not acting as Web Servers.

[fatsteve]

quote:
I also found the DL360s excellent. Had 6 of them - although not acting as Web Servers.

True, I did Oracle 9i real app cluster with 2 of them. This was 2K server, which was actually quite stable. Normally I stear well clear of Oracle on MS installations.

As Marshy said, can't really go wrong with Proliants.

Thing to remmember is that you don't generally need huge amounts of processing, just good IO and memmory usage. Of course that does depend on what is running on your web server, if you're running proper N'th tier stuff and your DB is on a different server.

Would also recommend Sun E220R for a bit more grunt. But thats probably gonna blow the budget.

I find that the general trend at the mo' is to go down a 'RAID' type approach with servers, ie many lower powered clustered units rather than one monster server(single point of failure etc).

Obviously depends on what software is doing the clustering and what type of cluster your running (active/active or active/passive), but thats another story.

Right, this sad bastard is going to bed.!!

Steve