debianuser Posted September 8, 2006 Share Posted September 8, 2006 Hello guys! We're trying to build a server for the company in which I am doing my internship. This server will pretty much act as ftp and file sharing running Debian of course ;-) I just mainly need assistance on the hardware level. Like what you guys could recommand, for example Mother board wise etc... so here where few things, I would love to have your inputs, before I go "shopping" Processor: I was thinking about getting on of those AMD 1 Ghz Socket A Athlon or an AMD - Sempron64 3400+ (Socket AM2) MotherBoard: MSI K7T Pro (this one ain't be fast but I heard was really stabke)... anything else you guys can suggest regarding motherboard? Ram: 512MB Toshiba PC133 I am also going for IDE Disk, not SCSI.. reason is because in case the machine fails, they can still pull out the hard disk and plug it to an external case and still continue the work... so what you guys think? I am open for suggestions, corrections "no one is perfect ;-)" thanks again Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metatron Posted September 8, 2006 Share Posted September 8, 2006 There are a lot of things to think about when building a server, the most basic things you have to think about are: How much you have to spend? How many people will be using it at any one time? How important is uptime? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debianuser Posted September 8, 2006 Author Share Posted September 8, 2006 How much you have to spend? Arround 300-500 euros?! well at that point money ain't really be a big deal.. if we need to invest more, we will! How many people will be using it at any one time? Well see that's the trick - within the LAN, up to 10-20 people... for the ftp server.. up to 30-40! but I can always limit the number of connections How important is uptime? 99.9% if possible any suggestions, I was checking out this motherboard http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=9&am...amp;modelmenu=1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metatron Posted September 8, 2006 Share Posted September 8, 2006 Well for 500 euros it’s (£339.79 is that going to be the full build cost?) going to be shit and not overly suitable if your dealing with say 60 people concurrently. How much storage do you need? Go for Opteron’s. (That MB is shit) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debianuser Posted September 8, 2006 Author Share Posted September 8, 2006 Well for 500 euros it’s (£339.79 is that going to be the full build cost?) going to be shit and not overly suitable if your dealing with say 60 people concurrently. How much storage do you need?Go for Opteron’s. (That MB is shit) the 500 euros were more dedicated to invest into Motherboard-CPU and RAM.. the rest can be pulled out from old computers.. i am getting 2 * 500 GB for storage.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metatron Posted September 8, 2006 Share Posted September 8, 2006 I would go with a Gigabyte NF Pro 2200 and put a couple of gigs of ram in it. You have lots of upgrade potential with that board, which comes in useful if your company expands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debianuser Posted September 8, 2006 Author Share Posted September 8, 2006 I would go with a Gigabyte NF Pro 2200 and put a couple of gigs of ram in it.You have lots of upgrade potential with that board, which comes in useful if your company expands. I will take a look at it, thanks! any other feedbacks would be welcomed! thanks again Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PoyBoy Posted September 9, 2006 Share Posted September 9, 2006 w00t w00t. That motherboard kicks arse. You also need to take into account what sort of networking you are dealing with. No point in buying expensive hardware if your network cant support the possible bandwidth, or you dont have upgrade plans. This usually isnt an issue however. For maximum uptime and performance I would try to find a viable raid 5 solution (combines the speed of raid 0 and the stability of raid 1) Thats my $0.02 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debianuser Posted September 10, 2006 Author Share Posted September 10, 2006 Man!!! after spending two days building a personalized firewall and router, I came up to realize that the guys for whom I work have a D-Link DI-524 High Speed firewall-router http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=316. The possibility to configure this firewall are really not bad, a lot of options including NAT,MDZ and so on... So I am not sure, do I decide to go with my debian box running my "awesome" IP-Tables rules or do I decide to just plug that D-LINK to the ISDN connection? I am not an expert of such technologies but can I trust this kind of router? does it not heat a lot and therefore succeptible to freeze? Another thing is that having a debian firebox allows me a more flexibility but then when thinking of what I need or expect from a firewall, looks like the D-Link can pretty much do the job What do you guys think? would you choose the D-LINK or still go with the debian box? thanks a lot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted September 10, 2006 Share Posted September 10, 2006 I don't trust ANY of those devices. My ADSL router, despite being a fancy/pricy one, is configured to just be a bridge. I.e. Transfer all the data it receives onto my LAN, and I'll deal with it from there, using my own router/firewall. No complaints yet... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debianuser Posted September 10, 2006 Author Share Posted September 10, 2006 I don't trust ANY of those devices.My ADSL router, despite being a fancy/pricy one, is configured to just be a bridge. I.e. Transfer all the data it receives onto my LAN, and I'll deal with it from there, using my own router/firewall. No complaints yet... So at that point, isn't better to just configure your firewall machine to be a router and get rid of the router? or why then would you still keep the router and then forward the packets to a firewall? any particular reason (especially security wise)? thanks a lot for the help guys!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooper Posted September 10, 2006 Share Posted September 10, 2006 The reason the device is still there is because I got it for free with my ADSL connection. It's a nice, small box that you just hang on the wall someplace near where the phone line comes out of the wall. Obviously it would be neater/cleaner when I had a PCI card or something that did the bridging towards the internet, much like a modem used to do in the old days. The problem is that under Linux support for the undoubtedly cheap POS cards you're likely to acquire will probably be iffy at best. So I took the safe route: an ADSL router that would bridge from my LAN to the internet. It can do a ton of other stuff, but since it can't report to my log server and I sure as hell aren't going to import those logs every day or so, I chose to just let it just leave that stuff to the machines that do know how to report suspicious activity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debianuser Posted September 11, 2006 Author Share Posted September 11, 2006 The reason the device is still there is because I got it for free with my ADSL connection. It's a nice, small box that you just hang on the wall someplace near where the phone line comes out of the wall.Obviously it would be neater/cleaner when I had a PCI card or something that did the bridging towards the internet, much like a modem used to do in the old days. The problem is that under Linux support for the undoubtedly cheap POS cards you're likely to acquire will probably be iffy at best. So I took the safe route: an ADSL router that would bridge from my LAN to the internet. It can do a ton of other stuff, but since it can't report to my log server and I sure as hell aren't going to import those logs every day or so, I chose to just let it just leave that stuff to the machines that do know how to report suspicious activity. Cooper... thanks for the insight! do you mind telling me which distribution you installed on your firewall... did you just go for a distribution and edited iptables rules or did you go for those linux distributions oriented firewalls? thanks a lot man Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
debianuser Posted September 15, 2006 Author Share Posted September 15, 2006 Ok guys... after trying here and there I came up with this configuration that seems fair enough for the work on the server so here it is MB: Gigabyte K8N Pro http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...&CatId=1569 CPU: Opteron 165 Dual core - 1.8 Ghz 1024Mb Ram Dual channel 500 GB sata hdd - 3 Gb/s and the rest is standart... now my question is how in the world would I know if when I get the material it would be Linux compatible, especially Debian Compatible? :roll: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.