Hello all,

Here I wish to discuss about, our need and I wish to get solutions for that.

Need: A server capable of serving 1 - 3 websites, 100-200 e-mail accounts.We dont need Dot net or ASP based and even JAVA based applications to run.We need only PHP/perl with mysql based simple applications to run in those websites.

In hand: we have an AMD Athlon64 2800+ processor, 512 MB DDR ( if needed we can upgrade), 80GB IDE HDD, 256 Kbps ADSL connection with a static IP ( we wish to upgrade it to 512kbps when the need comes).

Objective:

The first and immediate need is to choose a stable, secure OS to satisfy our need. I have the following options.

SOLARIS 10/ open solaris
FreeBSD
OpenBSD
Linux: Fedora core4
Linux: OpenSUSE
Linux: Mandriva
CentOS

Can you help me to choose from the best OR If you wish to offer any other addition. After we come a conclusion about OS, we can discuss about software tobe used.

First thing is "What should be the server OS platform" to choose?

Thanks for thinking to help

pardon my questioning, but how on earth do you plan on hosting several enterprise scale websites on a sub-T1 connection? It just wont work, or should I say, you wont have any customers with those pageloading times.. Otherwise I see no problem with the hardware tho extra RAM wouldnt hurt but 512 might suffice.

That said, back to the topic. IMO you can accomplish what youre looking for with any of those operating systems. What the question comes down to is how experienced are the people who need to manage it. If the experience is ziltch when it comes to UNIX, id recomend the easier Linux based solutions like RHEL4, or whitebox linux, even FC4, OpenSuSE / Suse Pro. However, Solaris and CentOS are pretty easy too from wha ive heard, but dont have personal experience on those.

Im not saying the others would be any worse, id even recomend Slackware as the best choise, but if the admins cant handle a systems its not worth having the admin / the system.

Just my thoughts, hope theyre of some use.

Thanks Artanicus

yeah, as you said we accept current connection will not be satisfied for enterprice class websites. But we are on the move to upgrade the speed step by step.

Our customers are not going to view website. Only our employees gonna see thier schedule ... etc.They are going to use e-mails. (200 accounts approx).

When the need comes we will change connection, or even we will go for bandwidth agregation.

anyway your suggestion is useful.
Thank you

Hi,

I personally have implemented a complete mail solution including postfix,IMAP,MySQL,Amavis,SpamAssasin on a FC3 box. It's been running for on year now without any problem. They started with 100 users but they've been growing since then. I think FC4 would be a good choice for this project with the hardware specs you've mentioned.

Regards,

Ryan

CentOS. Same look and feel as fedora/redhat, but geared towards stability and enterprise level use.

I would be more concerned about the 80GB IDE hard disk. Look into a RAID 1 SCSI solution. Although expensive, it will soon earn it's value when the single 80GB IDE drive crashes/runs out of space. How critical is this system, anyway?

Though this server is not so critical now,
Soon we will implement RAID

Connection speed will definetly be an issue. No way you will be able to even run 1 high traffic site on an ADSL connection.

Server hardware isn't that important depending on how much you make it do. I have one server that runs FC3 that is only a 2.26ghz 1g ram, with some pretty big web database applications running on it. It is put under a lot of pressure during peak traffic hours, but has been running for about 2 months since the last reboot and still runs like a champ. I have another server that is like 600mhz with 256 ram and it doesn't do anything really special server side but runs just as well as my FC3 box. I have a 3rd development server that dual boots Slackware 10 and Win2k3, which is identical hardware as my FC3 box.

Bandwidth is key, not as much hardware.

CentOS is good too, but I'm happy with my FC3 box.

Only delt with Mail systems in Windows/Exchange so no help from me there.

I also have a 486 Machine that runs as a MySQL server for all 3 machines