 |
|
|
|||
| |||||
This company wants to purchase rackmounted servers to run as a cluster for a new database application.
Approximate budget:Â No higher than AU$2500 RRP including GST per server, not including operating system client licenses.
Requires:Â Four rackmounted servers.
Concerns: The company doesn't have a lot to spend and needs to make sure the servers don't blow the budget. Performance of the servers and ease of management will be key factors, any redundancy features will be highly regarded. Operating system must offer reasonable support for clustering and load balancing, and the preference is for Linux.
Best solution: The clear winner here is the XENON server. Not only was XENON the only vendor to pre-configure its server with Linux, it was also one of the most scalable submitted, with up to six SATA drives, the option for a redundant power supply and plenty of room inside the 2U chassis for expansion cards. This machine tops the pops.
Look out for...
Redundancy. Never compromise redundancy for price, particularly data redundancy. At this price point, power, network, and memory redundancy would be hard to find, but at the very minimum ensure that there are two physical disks that can be configured in a mirrored drive array.
Plan for the future. As the application grows in time and a new server is required, ensure that there will be a place for the budget server you are commissioning now. There is no point in replacing it in 12 months time with a AU$6000 server and throwing out a perfectly good AU$2500 server. Unless you have some plan for it in 12 months, you may as well save the AU$2500 now and go and buy the AU$6000 server instead.
Support. Ensure that good maintenance contracts are available with quick parts turnaround in the event of a failure, as these servers don't have the same redundancy levels as their bigger siblings. Be well prepared for a worst-case scenario and ensure that your vendor will have the parts replaced as quickly as possible to have your equipment back up and running. The flip side to this is don't ever use a server with little redundancy for a mission-critical application or else you may quickly find out taking that path turns out to generate a new employment search. Some vendors offer spare parts kits for servers; it is common sense to keep one or two of these handy in the tech room.
This article was first published in Technology & Business magazine.
Click here for subscription information.
