Tips to buy a server
 

Hi!

I would like to buy a server and want to know if someone know any online tutorial or article about the important things to think about in order to choose the correct machine.

It will mostly be used as backup und web-server for about 100 people.
Thanks.

Xpucto

It really depends on what sort of content you are serving and how frequently but from your description I would concentrate on getting a decent sized raid 5 array to help save and deliver static content. If you run any database apps on the webserver then make sure you have enough ram to accommodate that. Having extra RAM will never hurt.

We used to run our web/e-mail server on an old 1.1GHz celeron. We support about 200 users.

We recently upgraded to a cheap Poweredge server from Dell.
2.53GHz P4
512MB of RAM
two 160GB hdd's RAID 1

The system runs, apache, mysql, and postfix without any problems. Eventually we'll upgrade it to a gig of RAM.

You should be able to get something like this from Dell for under $700 or $800.

I want to set up a web-server with mysql, Apache and different CMS and File sharing systems on it. It won´t have so much traffic on it. It will be used for an institut in an university. Students (around (100 a day) wil be allowed to read, write very few and download and upload. Teachers (around 50) do mostly writing and uploading.
Speed isn´t the most important. The server should be reliable and give me so little trouble as possible! Backup and keeping files safe are more a big thema .
1) How much RAM should I need for example?
2) I still don´t know whether I should take RAID 1 or RAID 5?
Thanks
XpucTo