Server Hardware

[gmpirate]

Is there any real difference between pc hardware and server hardware? I know they can be more demanding of memory and processor speed but so can pc's. Since servers are sold in different cases I just wondered if there were some inherent differences.

[Zulan]

No, there's no differance. The different cases are beacuse they are built with stability and in sometimes redundancy in mind.

[hd581]

Nahhh, there's nothing real magical about a machine labelled "server". Check out mrdisco's reply in this thread from Brainstorming (http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum16/HTML/000073.html). He has a pretty concise and clear explanation.

Zulan, also consider the consumer appeal. Consumer's thoughts --> "Well that machine *looks* like a server..."

edited for spelling...(chalk up another vote for that spell checker)

[This message has been edited by hd581 (edited 04-24-2000).]

[KillerBug]

Yes, there are differences.

1.) Serer CPUs have more chach, higher clock speeds, and much higher prices.

2.) Server mobos , needed to opperate the server CPUs, allow far more memory, amazingly fast devices through 64 bit PCI slots, and often have as many as 15 PCI/AGP slots.

3.) Because the motherboards have so many slots, they need a special case with room in the back for the 15+ slots.

4.) The giant motherboards, the possibilities for up to 16 Xeon CPUs putting off as much as 75w each need massive, redundant power supplies, some times up to 4 1,000w 220v power supplies.

5.) The cases have locks, the front drives have locks, the back has locks, the keyboard has a real, working keyboard lock, the power supplies sometimes even have built in APC devices so the server stays on, even when the power is out.

6.) The hard drives are massive, and are run through raid controlers handling over 3 trilobytes.

7.) Some speed devmon servers have knew hard drives up to 3ft x 4ft x 5ft, craming through 10 up to 10gb per second!

8.) Many servers use water cooling, not to overclock, but because when you have all those components making heat, a fan on a CPU or 10,000rpm hard disk just blows hot air on it.

9.) Servers do not have disket drives.

10.) Servers often have several keyboards, mice, monitors, ect.. and they had them before windows 98 "invented" the feature.

11.) The normal hard drives are not 3.5" drives, they are 5.25" drives, like the size of a cd-rom drive, so many server cases do not have one 3.5 drive spot.

That enough differences for you?

[gmpirate]

pretty impressive equipment . . .

I imagine that a small network wouldn't need such a machine. At what point would a network start to need a more demanding server other than a typical fast pc?

(I'm sure it depends on a lot of things, but just trying to get a general idea . . .)

[Stan]

Just one thing: some servers do have floppy disk...

Stan

[KillerBug]

And some servers have 1x cdroms, I was talking generaly. A small network only needs a fast PC, preferably with 2 or 3 eithernet adapters.

When do you need big time stuff?

Small network, average PC...15users
buisiness network, fast PC...up to 120 users
big network, budget deep blue...up to 2,000 users
internet super server, big time deep blue...hundreds of thousands.

Depending of the speed you are going for for each user, results will vary.