Spec for a new PDC in a Primary School

[zag]

I'd simply whack a 600GB intel SSD in there for total piece of mind on the storage.

 

Virtualize it and take images for backups. Job done.

[CommodoreS]

After doing much shopping around, Dell seem to offer the best value for servers. The following is what you can get for £1,117 exc VAT, inc Delivery:

 

PowerEdge T110 II Tower Chassis, Up to 4x 3.5" Cabled HDDs

 

Components

1 Intel Xeon E3-1240v2 Processor (3.4GHz, 4C/8T, 8M Cache, 69W, Turbo)

1 8GB Memory (2x4GB) 1600Mhz Dual Ranked Low Volt UDIMM (speed is CPU dependent)

3 450GB, SAS 6Gbps, 3.5-in, 15K RPM Hard Drive (Cabled)

1 PERC S300 3Gb/s SAS/SATA Internal Software Controller for 3.5" HDD Chassis

1 16X DVD-ROM Drive with SATA Cable 1 UK 250V 2M Power Cord 10A

1 Order Configuration Shipbox Label (PO Number, Ship Date, Model, Processor Speed, HDD Size, RAM)

1 Embedded BMC

1 C9 - RAID 5 with PERC S300, Min. 3 Max. 4 or 6 SAS/SATA Drives, Max. number depends on chassis

 

Software

1 PE T110II Electronic System Documentation and OpenManage DVD

 

Service

1 Base Warranty

1 1Yr Basic Warranty - Next Business Day - Minimum Warranty

1 INFO 1Yr ProSupport and Next Business Day On-Site Service

1 5Yr ProSupport and Next Business Day On-Site Service

1 INFO Declined Remote Consulting

 

Then all you need to get is a Windows Server 2012 licence: £99.12 from Phoenix Software (about the same price from most other license providers)

For Backups, buy a copy of BackupAssist and Western Digital Passport USB 1TB Hard Drives are £60 each - Get 3 or 5.

 

So this has 900GB of SAS drives (being Raid 5) and the option of adding a 4th drive in the future if you ever need more space, and a next day hardware warranty for 5 years. No mouse of keyboard, but you can get a decent cherry keyboard for about £10 and a logitech mouse for £5. Yes, I know the PERC S300 is a software based raid controller, but with the high specs of the server it has never caused any performance issues. These servers run fast and can be used as a PDC to run all services in primary schools without any issues, and offer good value for money.

[3s-gtech]

We've done pretty well with SATA here, they can be fine but make sure you have your RAID setup for any nasties! We run a pair of DFS-R file servers for our main share drives, fed by 6 7200rpm SATA drives each (RAID 1 OS, RAID 5 data). They're not enterprise class drives - 500GB Western Digital Caviar SE. First server was built in 2007, one drive failed in that time and replaced under warranty. With up to 400 client connections (spread between them), I've not had a complaint about the performance yet.

[CHR1S]

Would you guys go for the WD Red drives @ 5400rpm with read writes for ave 100mbs but with the added NAS/RAID features or Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 @7200rpm with double speed but no RAID/NAS features (baring in mind the ridiculously cheap price of these saving £90 a drive).

[localzuk]

Wouldn't touch Seagate with a barge pole. Their failure rate is significantly higher than WD's.

[sparkeh]

Wouldn't touch Seagate with a barge pole. Their failure rate is significantly higher than WD's.

Could you do me favour and point me toward the data for this please? Quite relevant for me at the moment

 

Just in my own experience it was the exact opposite. Was constantly replacing WD drives in my server until HP replaced the whole array with Seagate and not had a failure since. But these things depend on model as well.

[Domino]

indeed better to have plenty of space, id also would have like to have a "hot spare" even if it wasnt plugged it for the "just in case" moment of a disk dying and there is an issue getting a part or the warranty has expired.

 

this is something i am starting to do as getting hold of older disks is a pain

 

That's a cold spare - a hot spare is in the drive array formatted and ready to be built onto :-)

[localzuk]

Could you do me favour and point me toward the data for this please? Quite relevant for me at the moment

 

Just in my own experience it was the exact opposite. Was constantly replacing WD drives in my server until HP replaced the whole array with Seagate and not had a failure since. But these things depend on model as well.

 

Trying to find the report that confirmed my experience of them. I'll see if I can find it.

 

EDIT: This is the one - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-reliability-storelab,2681.html

 

Hitachi and WD are at the top of the pile.

Edited June 17, 2013 by localzuk

[CHR1S]

Trying to find the report that confirmed my experience of them. I'll see if I can find it.

 

EDIT: This is the one - Study: A Look At Hard Drive Reliability In Russia - Practical Relevance

 

Hitachi and WD are at the top of the pile.

 

Just to be picky, that report is 3years old......

[localzuk]

Just to be picky, that report is 3years old......

 

I've not seen any evidence that Seagate has radically changed their quality control practices. Personal experiences of myself and my tech seem to agree with the study.

[SHimmer45]

That's a cold spare - a hot spare is in the drive array formatted and ready to be built onto :-)

 

a spare is good

 

 

over the years i have preferred WD over others.

the face that alot of OEM's use them must be a sign that they are either reliable enough or they are getting them at a cheap enough price

Edited June 17, 2013 by SHimmer45

[CHR1S]

Now the hard decision,

 

2x 600Gb Velociraptors mirrored as the boot and VM drive

 

or

 

2x 250 Gb Samsung 840's mirrord

 

Id love the SSDs, I "think" 250Gb would be enough for core OS and 2x VM's ... hmmmmmmm.....