Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: $15,000 to Burn
Author: Eric Soroos Posted: 6/10/1999; 10:09:33 PM Topic: $15,000 to Burn Msg #: 7191 (In response to 7190) Prev/Next: 7190 / 7192
On the lotsa little rack mount machines theory, I'd look at a bunch of roughly $2k machines.One for searching (memory++), one for static serving (apache/iis/whatever) + the rest for dynamic content.
Penguin computing, http://www.penguincomputing.com has some linux ones, ~ 400mhz celeron + 64mb of memory + 1u (1.75" tall) rack case + 8.9 gig drive, cdrom and built in ethernet (10/100). Granted these are linux, but I'd bet that you'd be able to find something similar in the nt domain.
Their base system is $1500, I'd add some memory, depending on the application. (i.e. frontier search engine == lotsa memory, straight pages like the discussion group == more processing.) A rack mount servers go, this is pretty reasonable pricing. (As an aside, the rack case is probably at least half as expensive as an emachines tower.)
Maybe top it off with a network switch (~ $200/port or so) so that each machine gets its 100mbit each way to itself.
This setup should saturate most reasonable upstream bandwidth availability.
If rack mounts are not necessary, at work we just got in a power 2 it dude! tower with dual celeron 400's, overclockable to 504. Good ultradma drive + 256 megs of memory, 11 fans, and 16mb video card for ~$1700. I don't think I'd overclock a server unless it went through a good shakedown eval first, but the dual processors are always a nice option.
eric
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