[Hcoop-discuss] Server pricing

[Justin S. Leitgeb]

>
>
>We could do this in a forward-looking way by putting in the 
>infrastructure for this sort of organization, but just not including 
>much capacity.  A simple proof that this would work to start out with is 
>the fact that we get by fine with our current server specs, and in fact 
>we are underutilizing what we have.  Maybe RAID 10 and RAM are not 
>cheap, but we wouldn't need much of them to start out with.  We'd still 
>be able to gain valuable experience using them in our initially 
>undemanding setting.
>
>In any case, it's probably a good idea to pick out a few most promising 
>hardware configurations, price them out, and see what seems worth the cost.
>
>  
>

You can find a quote that I put together at the link below.  It has 
basic RAID (level 1) which means mirrored disks.  It would give us 146 
GB of available space, 1 GB memory, and a 2.8 GHz processor.  For $2112, 
it was a cheaper than I expected.  This is a PowerEdge 1850, which is a 
1U server (i.e., pizza-box style).  From my experience, they're easy to 
grow with and give enough power as solid building blocks.

Based on our discussions, and from looking at our utilization of fyodor, 
buying two of these (one for login and user files, the other hcoop 
administration and services, including IMAP) should keep us going for a 
while quite comfortably.  So, a starting hardware package, in my 
estimate, would cost $4224, with basic redundancy and room to grow.

http://www.hcoop.net/~leitgebj/hcoop_net/dell_1850.pdf

Let me know what you think, and we could use some more quotes, too, if 
someone likes another architecture.  I remember talk of a sun system 
that might work for us.

Justin