[TriLUG] Cheap Dell Server

[Kevin Flanagan]

On Tue, 2003-04-22 at 11:55, Jonathan Hassell wrote:
> For those of you looking for a cheap but reliable name brand server, I
> recommend the following.

I wouldn't call that a server, it's IDE, no RAID, no mention of if you
can get a redundant power supply.

> Dell has a deal where, for $349 plus shipping and tax, you can get:

This kind of offer just confirms that Dell is still driving servers to
the bottom of the market.  You can get as good a system that is in a
desktop chassis, but has better video, about the same kind of price.



If you need a server, you generally need things like 

Hardware SCSI RAID
Hot Swap disks
Agents that will predict failure of components
Multiple PCI busses may be good if you have lots of I/O

The most common exception to that would be a farm of low end servers,
for web or the like where you have several of the same system, then you
have fully redundant configurations at the system level.

If you have a desktop system, call it that, not a server.


I know that it comes off kind of snobbish at times, but don't expect a
desktop system with a server sticker to do the job of a server.  Call it
what it is, that's not to say that there isn't a market for this kind of
thing, but they are driving smaller businesses to be short sighted in
purchasing this kind of system when they really need a server with
higher end features.




Just my $.02



Kevin




-- 
Kevin Flanagan <kevin at flanagannc.net>