Topic awaiting preservation: Building a Server Farm.

Hey guys, I'm working on a business plan and we have to try to price out a theoretical server farm. I'm looking at about 4 servers which I know I need and then after talking to my old sys admin (who I can't reach right now) he said I'd also probably need a switch and a firewall. The thing is I'm trying to price out these pieces of hardware and there's tons of choices and I'm not sure which ones are appropriate.

So my questions are. Does this setup sound right? Servers, fireall, switch? Just in terms of configs not worrying about bandwidth. And does anyone have some ideas as to switch and firewall actual hardware product suggestions?

thanks



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

A switch is good because that way your cluster will be on it's own physical network segment (should be on it's own logical segment as well) and because packets are not broadcast.

And a firewall is just a plain good idea.

As far as specific hardware, Dell Poweredge servers have always been a good buy for me. Be careful though about the software bundles. If at all possible, install as much as you can yourself.

For the switch, I'd go with Netgear or Cisco, with the former being the more cost-effective choice. I've gone through several different brands and these two have been the most reliable for me.

For firewalls, the Cisco PIX series has never given me any problems and is a pretty robust firewall. It's also around the mid-range as far as price is concerned.

Cool that helps, I was actually looking at the Dell Poweredge Dual Processor stuff for the servers. We're going to be Linux based and we'll do the Software stuff ourselves.

Do you have any specific model choices for switches and firewalls? I'm kind of lost wading through the options. It doesn't have to be perfect just a recommended config. I'm just pricing stuff out to come up with an idea for a business plan and the actual purchasing will be done once we hire a sys admin.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

I would recommend that you actually contact Cisco and get a price quote from them. They would be able to help you get a package going. Just tell them what your basic needs are and some type of price range. A good firewall or switch would run anywhere from $500 to several thousands.

Also, you will have an actual quote to include in your business plan. I've found Cisco customer service to be very helpful and most times they'll be able to just email the quote to you.

If at all possible, have your sys admin involved. In the IT community, opinions vary and he/she could have a very different view of the equipment you might consider purchasing.

Sorry I can't be more help, but without knowing the exact specifics of what you're planning (load balancing, expected throughput, type of network, etc.) any specific equipment I'd recommend might do more harm than good.

perfectly good suggestion thanks!



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

I just bought an eight port Netgear switch for $42.00.

I built the firewall for our system by putting Linux on an old machine and letting it do the firewalling for the network. Since the resource demands for linux are very low, you don't need a very powerful machine and being able to use an older machine we already had helped cut the cost a lot. I use CoyoteLinux on a floppy disk as the firewall (NAT) software.

This may be more hands-on than you want, but I just thought I'd throw it out as a suggestion.

-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

Right, I was going to suggest using a Linux box for the firewall. Extremely customizable, and with an operating system that you may be able to get a lot more free technical support on than any other sort of rack-mounted serial based firewall.

Yeah the Linux firewall idea is most likely the best. You can do some really nice software configurations there, that can help a whole lot when you get into situations like weathering a DOS attack, or even tracking all the incoming / outgoing packets.

Dan @ Code Town