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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!howland.reston.ans.net!usc!ccnet.com!hustle.rahul.net!rahul.net!a2i!samba.rahul.net!a2i!bug.rahul.net!rahul.net!a2i!thales.nmia.com!gallup.cia-g.com!lithium From: Stephen Fisher <lithium@cia-g.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Server hardware considerations.. Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 21:17:42 -0700 Organization: New Mexico Internet Access Lines: 67 Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.960219204849.14523A-100000@gallup.cia-g.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: gallup.cia-g.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Greetings all. I am strongly looking into converting my current [ISP] server from Linux to FreeBSD. I will do this by starting up a secondary server running FreeBSD, then possibly converting the main server to FreeBSD also. I've had bad luck with my hardware setup for Linux (I didn't buy the parts specifically for Linux like I am going to do now) so I want a very robust server to work with. I would like r of 10..20..30 days or more unless I take it down voluntarily. I have read many posts in newsgroups and mailing lists and in FreeBSD howtos/faqs and put together a first summary of basically what I am looking for. Please discuss how good/bad the system will be with me. This is a small system (only about 200 users right now but growing very fast) 10 users online at a time and multiple web servers, FTP servers, and so on will be running. However, it must be able to handle more in the near future. I am not concerned with FreeBSD handling PPP users, since my PortMasters do that already. CPU: 486DX4/133, I have a 486DX4/100 right now and am pleased except when I started [my home 486dx4 and the server] I had terrible problems with Segmentation faults, Signal 11, on Linux. It seems many people had/have those problems, do they exist in FreeBSD? How much faster would a Pentium 133 be? Is it worth it? Or maybe a totally different system. Bus: PCI most likely. I use VLB right now. RAM: 16 meg to start with, maybe 32, There aren't any special considerations I should take when getting the RAM are there? Mother Board: I've seen that ASUS MBs are very nice but their home pages don't list prices which probably means they're high priced;) About how much do they run? I am looking for mid-range robust hardware, nothing cheap or specular. Any other MB types to look into? SCSI Controller: Adaptec 2940/PCI. This appears to be a good mid-range card, should I get fast/wide/or what.. Is there any difference that I should keep in mind? I use an Adaptec 152x now. Disk: SCSI 1.08GIG Conner (it's in my Linux server right now). Network: 3c509B. This is what I have now and it seems to be a very good card. CDROM: SCSI 2x Tape backup: SCSI.. I have no idea what is best, I am using a cheap and slow floppy-tape drives right now and haven't been very pleased. People have suggested using "Amanda" to do backups, also using just plain tar. Basically, I want to do nightly incremental backups and weekly full backups - not changing the tape daily. I may be going overboard being so cautious when getting this hardware but I want a nice system =) I can supply more details if you want. Thanks in advance! - Steve - Systems Manager