Server in the house

[Stoney X]

I was tempted to buy a Compaq Proliant server on ebay over the weekend. One of the things that put doubts in my mind was the practically of having one of these machines in my spare bedroom. Does anybody know how much noise the cooling fans make when compared to a typical desktop? The machine in question had four processors and a load of SCSI hard drives. Would it seriously affect my monthly electricity bill?

Regards
Stoney

[charlie-india-mike]

I think cooling may be more of an issue here.

These servers run reasonably hot even with all fans working. They are not that noisy.

They do consume a fair amount of power and really do not like to be powered up and down that often

C-I-M

[bladewashout]

Set up a 108Mb wireless LAN and stick it in your garage (if you have one)! You can control with remote desktop and yes, they are very noisy if the fans speed up when it gets hot

BW

[Stoney X]

Thanks for the replys C-I-M and BW. So cooling, noise and power consumption will be an issue. I could probable solve the first two issues by putting it in the attic, except it weights 68kg. :oh: I didn't win the auction. It went for £87.01 in the end. I might just keep my eye open for a slightly small model.

How do Dell's PowerEdge servers compare to Compaq/HP Proliants?

Regards
Stoney

[drauk]

How do Dell's PowerEdge servers compare to Compaq/HP Proliants?

You're using one now. Two in fact.

[Saab Dastard]

Stoney X,

I just had to comment, having worked extensively with datacentre servers, particularly rack-mounted Compaq Proliants, but I also have a lot of experience with HP, Dell and IBM kit.

They are VERY noisy in comparison to your average desktop. Multiple power supply fans, cooling fans and disks make a hell of a racket.

They do consume much more power than a desktop (3 or 4 times, depending on the configuration).

They don't mind being powered up and down at all. It is the hard disks that don't enjoy being spun up and down, but no more so than any hard disk on any computer. Servers are just glorified PCs with built-in resilience features.

Running one such server in a reasonably well ventilated room would not be a problem regarding cooling. it is only when you are running several, plus disk enclosures, screens, peripherals and comms kit that you start getting into overheating problems without installing air con.

But what on earth would you want to DO with it that you couldn't accomplish with a bog-standard desktop / minitower? The advantage of a Server as opposed to a PC is simply one of fault tolerance. Use them where you need high (ish) availability and reliability, with fewer single points of failure.

You can run server operating systems (all MS Windows, from 3.5 thru 2000, I haven't tried 2003) perfectly well on PCs (and vice-versa, but why?). You can add a SATA or SCSI RAID controller and multiple NICs to a desktop PC - what's the difference, except for hot-plug / redundancy / resilience / fault-tolerance?

Multiple processors are only of value where you have an O/S and / or application that can take advantage of them, and that will be stressed to the point of needing to use them. Databases and OLTP servers spring to mind. Again, you can run desktops with 2 or more processors - great for compute-intensive applications, not for most end-user tasks.

Sorry if you know all this, but from your original question I assume that you don't!

SD

[Stoney X]

SD, it would be like having an eighteen wheeler truck to run down to the shops for milk and bread, wouldn't it? ;) I know it's over the top but what a toy! The plan is to run Red Hat Linux, Apache, Mysql, etc and have a good play. I know Red Hat Linux 7 will run on them and presumably the later version will too, so no probs with a (free) operating system. I'm not looking to use it for desktop type functionality, more command line unix/linux/geek type stuff. I do development work on multi-processor Unix machines at work and it would be nice to know the root password for a change.

Regards
Stoney

[Saab Dastard]

Stoney X,

Fair enough, I suppose - you're the one who has to live with it!

If you want to play with the software set you mention I would still suggest that you go for a smaller, newer 2 x processor box than a great big lump of old iron.

Unless you really need to work with high availability stuff I wouldn't touch a big old rack mount like that with a 10 foot barge pole!

But then you may enjoy driving down the road in a converted diesel electric locomotive!

I'm put in mind of the question:

"why does a dog lick his b*llox?" Because he can!

SD

[charlie-india-mike]

SD

Where does the fault tolerence appear then? They break just as easily as a PC if not treated correctly and kept in a reasonable environment.

High speed multiple processors generate a lot of heat and if not cooled will cause all sorts of misterious problems that seem to have no solution.

As for powering up and down , I was refering to the disk array.

C-I-M

[Saab Dastard]

They are fault tolerant insofar as they have hot-pluggable, redundant power supplies, redundant network cards, error correcting memory, RAID arrays, hot-pluggable nics, hot-pluggable fans, hot-pluggable disks.

Having one of these servers working in a reasonably well ventilated room IS keeping it in a reasonable environment.

They are well cooled, that's why they have multiple fans - that's why they are noisy.

The problem only arises when they can no longer reject the excess heat into the environment - or to put it in plain English, the room gets too hot. That simply won't happen running one single server (even with 4 CPUs) in a normal, reasonably well ventilated room.

How many PCs could you have working in your front room before they start doing "misterious" things? One? Two? Four? Eight?

You really haven't a clue, do you?