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Server Hardware

Having built my domain on the "cheap", I started out with a disparate selection of servers from various manufacturers, but mainly Dell and HP. Even with my very small system, having to support machines from more than one manufacturer was a bit of a pain, so I eventually selected HP on the basis that I had more of them at the time and I had been happy with their performance and support channels - even as a non-paying customer. I think that Dell would have been an equally good choice, but FWIW, I am now focusing on HP and this page describes the hardware that currently runs my domain - or, at least it will when I finish it !

There is one issue with HP servers that I should mention. Up until 2014, HP made access to firmware and driver updates open to all, however, in early 2014, HP decided that system BIOS upgrades would only be available to customers with valid warranties or support agreements. This means that BIOS upgrades for older systems will no longer be available to second users - however, drivers and option board updates continue to be available - at least, as of August 2018.

When I first expanded my network storage to a decent level, I used both Dell and HP hardware; a Dell PowerVault 220S with 14 x 300 MB SCSI disks (4.2TB) and a HP Modular Smart Array (MSA) 20 with 12 x 500MB SATA disks (6TB). These devices provided ample storage capacity for my network but had significant power requirements, making them pretty expensive to run, not to mention, extremely noisy. I have now replaced these devices with a pair of Buffalo Terastations with 4 x 2 TB SATA disks (8 TB) which gives me slightly more storage capacity with much lower running costs. The downside is that SATA drives do not have the performance of SCSI so the performance of the file servers is not as good as it was, but they are more than acceptable for my needs.

 

  DC1 HP DL360G4p
Processor 2 x 3.0 GHz Intel Xeon
Memory 4 GB
Disks 2 x 73 GB SCSI (RAID 1)
Network 2 x GigaBit, 1 x ILO2
  DC2 HP DL360G4p
Processor 2 x 3.4 GHz Intel Xeon
Memory 2 GB
Disks 2 x 73 GB SCSI (RAID 1)
Network 2 x GigaBit, 1 x ILO2
  DFS1 Buffalo Terastation 5400R (WSS 2012)
Processor Intel® Atom™ Dual Core 2.13 GHz
Memory 4 GB DDR3
Disks 4 x 2 TB SATA (RAID 5)
Network 2 x GigaBit
  DFS2 Buffalo Terastation WSS 5400RR2 (WSS 2012 R2)
Processor Intel® Atom™ Dual Core 2.13 GHz
Memory 4 GB DDR3
Disks 4 x 2 TB SATA (RAID 5)
Network 2 x GigaBit
  App1 HP DL360G4p
Processor 2 x 3.6 GHz Intel Xeon
Memory 4 GB
Disks 2 x 146 GB SCSI (RAID 1)
Network 2 x GigaBit, 1 x ILO2
  App2 HP DL380G2
Processor 1 x 1.26 GHz Intel Pentium III
Memory 1 GB
Disks 2 x 18 GB SCSI (RAID 1)
  3 x 18 GB SCSI (RAID 5)
  (With shared online spare)
Network 2 x 100MB
 
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       

Key
DC Domain Controller Includes DHCP and DNS Roles
DFS Distributed File Services DFS Role with internode replication
App1 Application Server #1 SNMP Monitoring, email gateway
App2 Database Application Private

 

 

 

 

 

 

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