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Page 3 of 5 The Controller: AMI Express 300 RAID with 32MB Cache
Our server is going to be able to do heavy application sharing, FTP serving, website publishing and database thrashing. All this is going to be a heavy hit on our storage subsystem. Regular plain-o IDE won’t cut it in our machine. SCSI is the only way to go here. If you don’t have enough cash to get a SCSI RAID card, you can plunk out about $50 for a Promise FastTrak 100 IDE RAID controller. Attaching two IBM Deskstar drives to it will give you performance numbers unmatched by even some SCSI drives.
However, this is Tweak3D and we won’t be held back. Thus, I’m going full force on an Ultra160 SCSI RAID controller by AMI. The model we chose is the Express 300 card. It comes standard with 16MB of cache but our card came with 32MB. Bonus! Here are some of the features of the Express 300:
Intel i960RM 100MHz Processor,
32MB PC133 ECC SDRAM (128MB supported),
Built-in hardware XOR engine for RAID parity,
Supports 15 devices per channel,
Ultra160 SCSI LVD support,
RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 10, 30 and 50 supported,
Tagged Command Queuing,
Supports Scatter/Gather,
Multi-threading of up to 256 commands simultaneously,
Variable stripe size for all logical drives,
Automatic and transparent rebuild of hot spare drives,
Hot swapping of new drives without down time,
And hardware MSCS server clustering support.
Those are just a few of the high-end capabilities the Express 300 supports. The features I listed are the most important ones though. Obviously, this card isn’t a toy.
The Hard Drives: 2x Quantum Atlas V (36GB total)
To take advantage of our AMI Express 300 I’ve decided to go with two Ultra160 SCSI drives from Quantum. They’ll be operating in RAID 0 mode for speed.
These drives spin at 7200RPM and have an average access time of 6.3ms. Since they are striped in RAID 0, I felt that using higher RPM drives would just add to the cost of the overall server. And thanks to the Express 300 card, more drives can be added to server at any time.
If you really want mass storage space, you can add a single IBM Deskstar 75GXP drive to the server. Since it will only serve as archiving, a large 46GB model or up should be fine for most needs. The Network Cards: 2x Intel EtherExpress Pro 100Mbps
Instead of having just one network card, I decided it would be to the server’s advantage to have two. If a server has two network cards, you can set the server up to be a network router. If you prefer buying a separate hub/router/switch and using only one network card, that works just as well. You’ll even save some time setting up routing and proxy software on the server.
Intel makes some of the best network cards you can buy and its EtherExpress 100 Pro series are no exception. It comes with comprehensive management and monitoring tools to let you control features such as duplex and auto sensing speeds. Intel cards also have very low CPU utilization time. This means while all the network traffic is occurring, the server doesn’t have to spend precious CPU cycles doing things that the network card should be able to do.
The Sound Card: Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! Value
If the server is going to be able to do some gaming later on, we’ll want it to be able to make some noise besides those created by its Ultra160 RAID array!
While the soundcard isn’t a necessity inside a server, it can come in handy sometimes. It’s more of a necessity in a game server than in any other server. If you have no intentions to do anything remotely game on you server, you likely won’t need a sound card.
If you are using a motherboard like the MSI K7T Pro I’m using, you can simply use the onboard sound. Because the server isn’t your primary system, you probably won’t be connecting high-end speakers to it so the onboard sound should give you all you need. The CD-R Writer: Plextor PlexWriter 12/4/32 SCSI
Your server will hold critical data that you’ll need to backup somehow. Tape storage is an option, but CDs last longer, are more durable and are more portable than a DAT cartridge. With CDs costing as low as they are now, it makes sense to go with a CD writer for archiving purposes.
The 12/4/32 PlexWriter is a SCSI writer so it fits in well in our SCSI storage system. It doesn’t come with BURNProof but on a server like this, we’re not going to worry about encountering buffer underruns. Basically, you can use any old CD writer you have laying around for backup purposes. We aren’t really worried about the writer’s speed since it’s not going to be on our primary machine.
The DVD/CD Reader: Toshiba 12X ATAPI DVD
A DVD drive isn’t really needed, but I through it in anyway for the sake of compatibility. Who knows when we’ll stumble into a game we need to install that’s on a DVD!
Find a drive that works, and put it in. I just happen to have a spare Toshiba 12X drive around, which is fast enough for any CD and DVD realistically speaking. Having another optical drive installed gives us a new feature -- the server can now do disc-to-disc duplication. Data won’t have to be copied to the hard drive and then back on to a blank CD-R. This way, we save space and time.
Other Components
The devices I talked about above are important to the function of the server. In the end, even a server needs simple things such as a keyboard and mouse. And what would a computer be without a monitor? You can pick any monitor you like. Usually, servers have monitors that are large enough just to do what needs to be done.
You’ll also need the standard floppy drive for those rare cases, and finally, you’ll need a case and power supply.
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