Fileserver - AMD or Intel CPU?

aaf

I'm going to be building a PC which will mainly act as a fileserver (may have a database stored on it). Which processor would be better to use, an AMD A64 3000+ or an Intel P4 3.0GHz? The PC will also be used occasionally for accessing this database and general office/web access. I'm thinking it doesn't matter which CPU I use. Can anyone back this hunch up? There will be max 3 users who will be accessing this fileserver from their workstations. Also, I'll be sticking 1GB of RAM into this baby.

Kali

Personally I'd go with the Intel, mainly down to the fact that its going to be on constantly, so temperature and reliabilty are the keys. CPU performance isn't an issue here, disk speed is.. go for a raid 0 or 5 scsi or quality sata array (or even 1+0)

tba

also if it is going to have alot of drives keeping the power usage down on other components is a must.

Personally I wouldn't let people log on to it, if you want to use it as a net gateway then put proxy sowftware on it, its a file server not a terminal.

aaf

It's gonna be used for storing emails and for file sharing. There may also be a need for a shared database. I'm not going to get bogged down in RAID, SCSI or proxies. I'm gonna do a weekly backup to an external HD which will be stored offsite (2 external HD's in total). All I need to backup is emails and documents and maybe the database.

Kali wrote:

Personally I'd go with the Intel, mainly down to the fact that its going to be on constantly, so temperature and reliabilty are the keys.

Do you really think temp is going to be an issue? I wouldn't have thought so. Reliability shouldn't be an issue either? The only thing I can think of is that the Intel CPU might handle multi-tasking a bit better but there's going to be nothing too intensive running on the machine.

uberpixie

Kali wrote:

Personally I'd go with the Intel, mainly down to the fact that its going to be on constantly, so temperature and reliabilty are the keys. CPU performance isn't an issue here, disk speed is.. go for a raid 0 or 5 scsi or quality sata array (or even 1+0)

Eh?

AMDs run cooler than the P4's and use on average 30% less juice. Look at the benchies. Which is worth considering if the PC is going to be always on.

As reliabilty goes amd and Intel will last just as long as each other.

You are right in saying that harddrive access will be the kicker not cpu.


AAF:

TBH price each cpu with a good mobo and get the cheapest!

Just make sure you get a mobo with SATA II and have a look at getting some samsung spinpoint P120S harddrives.

They have gotten good reviews, are fast and most importantly they are fast AND cheap :-)

Stephen

Don't AMD 64's run a lot cooler than P4's these days anyway? You could spring for one of those lovely dual core ones for maximum performance.

edit: Aha, that'll teach me to leave a firefox window open for an hour and reply without refreshing first.

rogue-entity

What OS are you going to be running on this server? I strongly recommend BSD or Linux as the OS for your server. Unix servers have been known to have uptimes that span years, they are reliable, stable, crash proof and most important secure. Everything that Windows is not. Windows is fine for desktops and client workstations but not for servers.

As for everything else, since you are just running a server with a DB try and get a 64bit CPU, which ultimatly means an AMD chip. DB's work better on a 64bit system as they frequently need to perform 64bit calculations which are normaly split into two 32bit ones, but on a 64bit system they can be done natively and so are done faster.

stevenmu

For the level of usage your talking about, I don't think it's going to matter noticeably which way you go. If possible go dual-core, if not a P4 with HT might have the edge, especially if the database is going to be run as a server process on the machine and not just a shared access file or something like that. Going 64 bit probably isn't worth it for you just yet, but the possibility inthe future would be good, afaik Intel offers this possibility aswell as AMD now so I don't see any difference there. As for windows vs BSD/linux, this really depends on you database platform, and the support options, my own guess would be that anything other than windows is just unnessecary complication.

Btw, RAID 5 is generally a no-no when databases are concerned.

aaf

I think alot of stuff mentioned here is gonna be overkill for what is needed. I'm just going to maybe share out a folder or two from the server which also may be used occasionally as a workstation, store emails there and there might be a need to store a database there. I need to find out more info about the database but it may be nothing more than shared contacts etc using Outlook! Thanks for the advice.

sutty

Pure and simple, go with what is cheapest. If its just going to be run a basic file server, a Basic database server and maybe a workstation from time to time. Then you dont need a super spec. You should be looking at prices.

Capt'n Midnight

sutty wrote:

Pure and simple, go with what is cheapest. If its just going to be run a basic file server, a Basic database server and maybe a workstation from time to time. Then you dont need a super spec. You should be looking at prices.

Not quite. It's a file server. So drive redundancy is a must. Software mirroring is cheap using two IDE/SATA drives. The next step up is if you need the drives swapped on the fly in which case you are looking at Hot plugable SCSI drives on a RAID controller and you might as well go Hot Spare if you are going that far. TBH there isn't a lot of point in getting something in between, if you are going to have to power down the server to change a drive, then you can ignore most of the fancy stuff. Another option is to get an extra drive and dump to it (ntbackup / tar / whatever) to give you added protection against sw crashes.

What OS ? - many of the SATA "raid" cards use software drivers and may only work in windows.

jozi

Is a amd 64 or P4 not a little over kill for a file server?
I have a internet gateway/fileserver at home running a 1ghz celeron and only thing it needs that would be better is more ram 192is cutting it fine i think.
may i also recommend Clarkconnect

Jozi

Stephen

A fileserver for a home user is going to be different than a fileserver for a business. Where I work, we have several fileservers, all with a lot of users concurrently accessing files and services on them. All of them run redundant scsi raid arrays. Just looking at the main fileserver now, there are 130 users currently connected. This machine doesn't run a DB or shared printers anything, its purpose in life is to just share files, and its kept busy as fcuk.
It has a ~1.1 GHz P3 Xeon with 2.25GB of RAM, and about 700GB of diskspace.
(windows server 2003 std btw)

How much to spend all depends on what you need it for.

aaf

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Not quite. It's a file server. So drive redundancy is a must. Software mirroring is cheap using two IDE/SATA drives. The next step up is if you need the drives swapped on the fly in which case you are looking at Hot plugable SCSI drives on a RAID controller and you might as well go Hot Spare if you are going that far. TBH there isn't a lot of point in getting something in between, if you are going to have to power down the server to change a drive, then you can ignore most of the fancy stuff. Another option is to get an extra drive and dump to it (ntbackup / tar / whatever) to give you added protection against sw crashes.

What OS ? - many of the SATA "raid" cards use software drivers and may only work in windows.

The plan is/was to have 2 drives in the "fileserver" running RAID 1. Then to have an external hd enclosure with ntbackup, or similar, dumping files onto it weekly. I would have 2 ext drives like this so as 1 is stored off-site every 2nd week.

jozi wrote:

Is a amd 64 or P4 not a little over kill for a file server?

Probably, but this machine will also be used as a desktop workstation so it needs to be better than a 1GHz!

SouperComputer

how intensive is this database? What format is it in? Are the calculations being done on the server. Unless this database is being hammered by 10 users or more on a continuous basis

For a file server, speaking from experience you can easily serve 15 computers 350Gb of information in RAID through GB LAN with a PII 266 and 196Mb RAM without it even breaking a sweat! This machine also served as an FTP, firewall, proxy with content filer and webserver with My SQL. File serving does not use CPU time that is of consequence, also if the database was in mdb format and stored on the server, then it is not serving a database, it still serving a file.

The money people throw at "servers" is amazing. Servers by their very nature should be made fault tolerant rather than highy specced. An external HD is great for backup, but you still have the downtime of loosing your info.

This is what you need:

Sturdy filesevercase, maybe with hot swap bays and nice stable PSU. (€100)
PIII board, 256MB RAM (€40)
PCI RAID card (€60)
PCI GB Lan NIC (€19)
HD's, complete with 80mm fan blowing gently infront of them (2x €115)
Clarkconnect linux (FOC)
UPS (€69)

Total cost: €518

Samsung seem to be good drives, but their long term reliabiilty has yet to be proven. You payes your money and takes your chance. I would go with WD or Seagate. Maxtor tend to fail more often, and throw out more heat.

You could do this for next to nothing and have a very reliable server.

Probably, but this machine will also be used as a desktop workstation so it needs to be better than a 1GHz!

If its a server, it does not get used by end users for browsing or for work, end of story. This is where clarkconnect is appealing as it resists the temptation ot use it at a PC. Honestly letting an enduser on a server a very bad idea. No matter how much you lock the machine down ro how clued in the user is. Save yourself the grief and possible down time of you server AND a client and use seperate machine.

Spend the money you have saved on more RAM for the client machines, spare HD's, beer.

I guarantee the machine will chug away for years to come without a bother so long as you have good cooling. By that I dont mean 7000RPM fans, but even low speed 80mm's front and back and a 120MM PSU keeps the temps down and the life of you precious HD's happy.


Now on the other hand, if this network is going to expand a lot in a short period of time and use a more intensive database, then you could consider a more powerful CPU.



HTH

aaf

SouperComputer wrote:

how intensive is this database? What format is it in? Are the calculations being done on the server. Unless this database is being hammered by 10 users or more on a continuous basis

For a file server, speaking from experience you can easily serve 15 computers 350Gb of information in RAID through GB LAN with a PII 266 and 196Mb RAM without it even breaking a sweat! This machine also served as an FTP, firewall, proxy with content filer and webserver with My SQL. File serving does not use CPU time that is of consequence, also if the database was in mdb format and stored on the server, then it is not serving a database, it still serving a file.

The money people throw at "servers" is amazing. Servers by their very nature should be made fault tolerant rather than highy specced. An external HD is great for backup, but you still have the downtime of loosing your info.

This is what you need:

Sturdy filesevercase, maybe with hot swap bays and nice stable PSU. (€100)
PIII board, 256MB RAM (€40)
PCI RAID card (€60)
PCI GB Lan NIC (€19)
HD's, complete with 80mm fan blowing gently infront of them (2x €115)
Clarkconnect linux (FOC)
UPS (€69)

Total cost: €518

Samsung seem to be good drives, but their long term reliabiilty has yet to be proven. You payes your money and takes your chance. I would go with WD or Seagate. Maxtor tend to fail more often, and throw out more heat.

You could do this for next to nothing and have a very reliable server.


If its a server, it does not get used by end users for browsing or for work, end of story. This is where clarkconnect is appealing as it resists the temptation ot use it at a PC. Honestly letting an enduser on a server a very bad idea. No matter how much you lock the machine down ro how clued in the user is. Save yourself the grief and possible down time of you server AND a client and use seperate machine.

Spend the money you have saved on more RAM for the client machines, spare HD's, beer.

I guarantee the machine will chug away for years to come without a bother so long as you have good cooling. By that I dont mean 7000RPM fans, but even low speed 80mm's front and back and a 120MM PSU keeps the temps down and the life of you precious HD's happy.


Now on the other hand, if this network is going to expand a lot in a short period of time and use a more intensive database, then you could consider a more powerful CPU.



HTH

Cheers for that. Noted. I'll take everything into consideration before buying anything and I'll be back on here as soon as I get the cheque upfront, which is overdue by about 2 months!