Ok, so I need some help here...I am really new to the whole server/workstation situation. I am getting ready to start building a couple boxes for a friend of mine and I need to know what you guys would recommend?

After doing some research here is what I found another server company was using to run their gaming servers off of:

"Minimum" Specifications:
Dual 265 Dualcore AMD Opteron Processors
4 GB PC3200 DDR RAM
Seagate SATA 7200RPM HD
Tyan Hardware

"Maximum" Specifications:
Dual 5130 DualCore Intel Xeon Processors
4GB PC2 5300 FB-DIMM DDR2 RAM
Hitachi SAS 15,000RPM HD

Now, unfortunately, I really haven't dealt with these kind of processors before so I wanted to know if someone could set me up with a couple different box specifications. Maybe something like, a top of the line workstation, a better than average workstation and then a decent workstation. I would need to find out how many servers I can run from one box without experience tons of lag or loss. So, if anyone is willing to just give me a little help it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

what youre really asking is: how many clients can be served by one light-medium duty server... and how would that be configured? prefferably going amd i hope.
keep in mind another important factor... redundancy... consider raid 5 plus spare option.
two santa rosas should fit the bill.

how many clients does your friend have in mind? 20... 50... 100?

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Latest workstation:
Lian li PC-A05B, KN3-SLi, 4400 Brisbane, Freezer 64 Pro, 2 gigs Super-Talent T800UX2GC4, 36 raptor system drive, Caviar RE 320 storage drive, Hiper 580, Ati 1300 Pro, running Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Symantec 10.2.224

quote:

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Originally posted by: functional-pc
what youre really asking is: how many clients can be served by one light-medium duty server... and how would that be configured? prefferably going amd i hope.
keep in mind another important factor... redundancy... consider raid 5 plus spare option.
two santa rosas should fit the bill.

how many clients does your friend have in mind? 20... 50... 100?

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100 would be a good assumption, seeing as he hopes this to grow into a true business for him. And honestly, I have no idea what you mean by two santa rosas or raid 5 plus spare option, so if you could maybe be a little more specific, im a newbie to all of this

santa rosa would be a multi socket solution from amd... like two 2000 series opterons.
find out what anticpated storage will be and i can give you specifics.
if they need 2 terabytes of space, then you could run five 500gb sata drives in an array... with a sixth drive standing by (spare) if a drive fails, then the system will automatically keep going... and rebuild itself.
of course that is simply for your storage... you will need a dedicated system drive as well, like maybe a 74gb or 150gb raptor.

http://www.functional-pc.com/raid%205.JPG

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Latest workstation:
Lian li PC-A05B, KN3-SLi, 4400 Brisbane, Freezer 64 Pro, 2 gigs Super-Talent T800UX2GC4, 36 raptor system drive, Caviar RE 320 storage drive, Hiper 580, Ati 1300 Pro, running Vista Home Premium 64-bit with Symantec 10.2.224