Server Board Help!!!!!

[Fazzi]

Please help me in selecting the right motherboard and processor. I will be setting up windows server 2003.

I can go AMD or Intel.


Please help me out. I would appreciate your hand-on experience with the particular motherboard running Server 2003. i.e. driver and peripheral compatibility.

Thanks.

 

[NXIL]

Please help me in selecting the right motherboard and processor.

Running Win2k3 Server, but what software, i.e. what is server's mission? This will help you determine how much RAM you will need, and what processor configuration will work best (dual core, quad core, two quad cores).

Highly loaded system? Low load?

Budget?

Depending on the mission and who is footing the bill (you or your work), it may be that purchasing a Dell/Sun/HP server is going to give you more bang for your buck than cobbling a system together.

NXIL

 

[Fazzi]

Thank you for your reply...I have been thinking about this in the last two days. I am re-building a budget server for a charity. The existing server is a 3.0GHz Pentium 4 1.5GB ram with a Raid 1 disk, and one hot-swap back-up disk running Win2k3 that the majority of the time serves as the file server. I the last two weeks I have also installed two virtual machines on this setup: one to act as a content filter (Dansguardian proxy server) and the other being a LAMP appliance that is already hosting a PHPBB forum. The machine is also a DNS, a domain name server, and an ASP server. It is amazing that all this has been working like a charm. But, the box is old and the fans started to buzz out, etc, etc.

I have already placed the order as follows:

Intel s3200shv
Intel Xeon 3210
4GB new ram+all the exiting hardware
New case and a good power supply

All of the above for about $700

Considering my budget and the needs this is not that bad at all. I am planning to run a couple more VM's on this. The motherboard is also a good one (1333fsb ready) and hopefully in year I can upgrade to win2k8 when the bugs are all ironed out.

 

[drjman]

make sure you dedicate 1GB for the host at all times, otherwise everything suffers. If you are using the box for Active directory, sparingly use virtual machines. If you box does AD, DNS, File server, i would stay away from VM's as not to impede on the resources.

 

[NXIL]

Dear Fazzi,

you chose some first class hardware, new chipset so there is an upgrade path, plenty of memory--you rock.

Congrats,

NXIL