Goran wrote:
Hello, my personal view is that all this stuff ("someOS-compatible") is
crap. Just look for good & qualitative parts for the server and that's
it.
My actual recommendation for server with several responsibilities in
small companies is an Vanerpool enabled Intel-machine for using with
Xen, some gigs of ram and a battery cached hotswap&hotspare
hardware-raid-5 controller with much ram. And of course a UPS.
My _personal_ recommendation is not to use a hardware-raid (depending on your data-security considerations). Our hardware-raid-5 controller recently died just a few weeks before guarantee expired. Had it survived some more weeks, it would have been very expensive or impossible to get a replacement, since the server is three years old and that type of raid controller is out of production. I don't know if there is a way to recover data in case of hardware failure of hardware raid controllers. With software raid, you could always stick your disks into the next PC (as long as not too many disks fail at once).
Since then I prefer software raid, which uses 'standard' PC components that make replacement easy in case of hardware failure.
Your considerations may be different, if you plan to buy a new server as soon as your 24h-site support contract runs out, etc. YMMV, take care,
Johannes