How to build a server

[the-programmer]

I need to know if i want to build a server what shall i do and what
devices should i buy
I need to know everything

 

[Guest]

I need to know if i want to build a server what shall i do and what
devices should i buy
I need to know everything

What server, you mean a web-site, asp.net based?

 

[George Ter-Saakov]

first you need to build a building where that server is going to be.
then you need to build a power generator which will power your server
then you need to build .........

But to keep you life more fun just rent it. I recommend the planet.com for
$169 a month you get your server in 2 days.

You can go to webhostingtalk.com to get more recommendations.

George.

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

It depends upon what you want it to do. If you want it to be highly
available like a web host, you definitely don't build it, you buy it. The
main reason is, most components you see on the market today are designed for
home use. That means they are designed to be used part of the day, then
turned off. They aren't exactly meant to be left on for months if not years
at a time. You'll need differently families of processors also. Instead of
the Intel Core, Core 2, or Pentium, you would be looking at the Intel Xeon
family sa that's there server processor. For AMD instead of Athlons you'd be
looking at Opteron's.

Hard drives get real expensive. SATA and SATA II are nice and fast, and IDE
is an old stand-by, but speed is not what counts solely in a server, it's
speed plus reliability. The hard-drives you see in the stores just don't
have the level of reliability of SCSI and Fibre Channel drives that are
geared towards that market. SATA drives are getting better, but they just
don't have the long-term resliency yet that the Enterprise class drives do.

Basically, you're better of buying a base server and adding the appropriate
components if you need them.

If you just want to build a home server you could do this with an existing
computer (providing that the hardware meets the server OS's minimum
requirements) and then install a Server OS such as Windows 2003.

Basically though, there's no way anyone here can give you the instructions
on how to do it as it's not a simply question. Too many issues and too many
options based on purpose to dole out in one post. Not to mention if you see
how many books there are for building desktop computers but note how few
there are for building servers. There's a reason for that since the
complexity goes up a few notches and makes it harder to bring all the issues
into a book. Most people who do build servers are already professionals
working with them so they have a good idea of what is required already.

 

[Guest]

The short answer:
Building servers is very educational.

If you just want to develop ASP.NET web applications, get ye to GoDaddy.com
and rent space. We have multiple SQL Server databases, a terbyte a month of
bandwidth, and it's amazingly cheap. Very good experiences, and
bandwidthwise they have been true to their word.

Ken Fine
http://ideapod.com

 

[Mark Rae]

If you just want to develop ASP.NET web applications, get ye to
GoDaddy.com and rent space. We have multiple SQL Server databases, a
terbyte a month of bandwidth, and it's amazingly cheap. Very good
experiences, and bandwidthwise they have been true to their word.

I'm interested to hear you say that - you're the first person I've known to
have a good word to say about them...

 

[Guest]

I/we have three different hosting accounts with them and have been very
happy with GoDaddy.

One account we wired up to some high volume traffic and indeed put many
hundreds of gigabytes through it, close to the limit. I kept expecting to
get "the letter" hemming and hawing and seeking to recraft our contract, but
GoDaddy has been true to its word.

The site is well documented and they give you a pretty good set of features
out-of-box both in .NET land and with open-source alternatives (I don't use
the latter, but they are there).

No reliability issues whatsoever.

For specialized installations and applications we use our own server. For
the purposes for which I've been using GoDaddy, it has been a great service.

Anyway, if the OP is just starting out "building a server", GoDaddy and its
price point wouldn't be a terrible starting point. When he refines his
needs, there's a world of providers out there.

-KF