Hi NealeI would look at changing a few things here. Of course these depend on the budget avaliable and the uptime required from the server.
I would look at getting a different CPU, specifically an 800MHz FSB CPU. The 2.4C should be the same price if not cheaper and will give you the same or better performance (this also takes advantage of the memory you are installing as the CPU and memory have to run in sync on Intel chipset boards). You may also want to look at an 875 chipset motherboard as this will give you the capability to run ECC memory and I would recommend it for a server. Again the price defference shouldn't be too much, although the ECC mem may cost a bit more in my opinion it would be worth it for the piece of mind. This may be counter acted if you can get a board with on-board video as you can then do away with the video card (something like this http://www.intel.com/design/servers/s875wp1-e/)
Since HDD space doesn't seem to be a concern it may be worth looking at the Raptor series of drives from WD. They are S-ATA drives which may be a problem with the RAID card you're using and they will cost you more, but they give you 10,000 RPM drives built for enterprise class use (5 year warranty and high MTBF)
Finally worth considering is redundant power if this box needs a high uptime, although this is usually a sizable jump in price and if you can live with a little downtime then it's probably not worth the price. Especially if you can connect the machine to an On-line UPS.
Hmm this became longer than I expected :-) Hope it helps Dave Neale Banks wrote:
Hi all, As part of a project I'm involved in, we need to deploy a new server (ia32, FWIW: running Debian "sarge") to run a MySQL database (SME-sized, moderate complexity but not particularly large) + Java Application. I figure that upgradability probably isn't a big issue here, as the obvious path is to deploy a second machine and separate the SQL and java onto separate hosts. A spec being considered includes: DFI PS83BL Intel 865 Chipset Hyper Threading Main Board (H/Threading, 800MHz FSB, AGP 8x, DDR400, 6-channel audio, S/PDIF-in/out, SATA, LAN, USB 2.0) Pentium 4 2.66GHz (533Mhz) CPU 2 x 512MB DDR400 Memory 3Ware 7506-4LP ATA 133 RAID Controller 2 x 40GB WD JB-series IDE HDD (7200RPM, 8MB Cache) (disks to run mirrored) Geoforce2 MX400 64MB DDR Graphics Card 52x IDE CDROM (usual bits: FDD, k/board etc) Anyone care to comment at to the appropriateness of the above spec (i.e. strengths, weaknesses, over/under-kill etc), in particular in terms of value-for-money? Thanks, Neale.