Server advice

[Tim Nelson]

We are in serious need of some upgrades to our server here and I was wondering if people have any general recommendations that would be beneficial for a rendering and animation studio.

 

Right now we have a Dell server that is about 5 or 6 years old. It is running Windows NT 2000, and here are some general specs.

 

Pentium III processor

6 Seagate SCSI hard drives totalling a massive 240gb.

1.5gb RAM

 

Our priority right now is to get some larger hard drives because that amount just isn't cutting it, especially for animation projects. I would like those 6 drives to be more like 200gb a piece.

 

Another thing we want to consider is doing a RAID configuration of some sort since right now we have to do tape backups and they are just taking too long. If we could get some raid going on, I assume we could eliminate the need for the backup tapes.

 

So, do you think it is time to purchase a brand new server, or is our current Dell server something that we could get by with for a while and just make some upgrades?

 

Any advice is appreciated. We have a part time IT consultant who will make the purchases and installation, but it would help us to have some idea what to suggest and ask him to do for us.

 

Thanks

[Greg Hess]

Is processor speed important? Or just drive size and I/O performance?

 

I'd first start your admin IT guy reading a bout "SAS" or Serial Attached SCSI, the next generation of scsi drives.

 

SAS controllers allow you to use either SATA drives, or SAS drives, which allows you ultimate flexibility in setting up large RAID arrays. The bandwidth available for SAS setups completely and utterly destroys both U320 and SATA-II setups.

 

This PDF should help get him started.

http://graphics.adaptec.com/pdfs/SAS_PCI_Express_Bandwidth_Infostor.pdf

 

Further google searches will result in more information.

 

For a baseline, I'd probably build up dual opteron system. Are you building yourself, or looking for a system builder. If you're looking for a system builder, I'd recommend boxxtech and start sending emails to their departments to get more information.

[Tim Nelson]

Is processor speed important?

I don't know, is it? Right now we just use the servers for email, file storage, and licenses...as far as I know. What role do the processors play in all that? Is the hard drive performance totally seperate from processor speed, or are they inter-related?

 

The SAS sounds nice. I hadn't considered Boxx to do a server until now. But it makes sense since it is basically just a turbocharged workstation with a lot more storage. I have to say though that my faith in Boxx was a little shaken when 2 out of the 3 workstations we ordered from them had hardware failure within the first couple of weeks. One hard drive and one set of ram. At least their custumer service was great.