[nzlug] small business server (the literal term, not microsoft's product)

[Matthew Poole]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2006, SIMON WALKDEN wrote:

> I've spoken to a few different people regarding the hardware, and the
> vast majority have recommended the hewlett packard HP-ML150 (3ghz
> intel xeon, 1gb DDR2 ram, 80gb SATA, external SCSI drive). However,
> all the people I've spoken to about this server have been microsoft
> people.
>
So? If you look at HP's website you'll see that the ML150 G3 is supported 
under RHEL4 and SuSE. Ergo, the fact that they're Windows weenies doesn't 
make them wrong in recommending this box.

> Has anyone had any experience with this box? Had any trouble setting
> cronjobs to backup to the SCSI drive?
>
If the drive is visible under Linux you ought to be able to write to it. 
Since the box is supported under a couple of Linux variants, one would 
assume that whatever SCSI controller is offered (probably one of HPs ones) 
has Linux kernel drivers.

> Or can anyone recommend something better than this for a small business?
>
Investigate IBM and *shudder* Dell boxes, too. What you should be most 
concerned with is, in order of priority:
a) vendor hardware support - white boxes are fine for us, but business 
wants to know that a server going tits-up will be fixed by someone
b) dual HDDs, for RAID1
c) price. Ties into a and b, but is also a very big concern. You're after 
a very basic system, not an SMP monster for running weather simulations, 
so price actually is very important

-- 
Matthew Poole
"Don't use force.  Get a bigger hammer."