What server do I buy?

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evilsee

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The supplier of some software we use has suggested we get a Xeon based server to run there applications.

I thought that a high end desktop would suffice and I got our support company to quote, I got the following two options back:

1) i7 870 or
2) x3430

Everything else spec wise is the same. Which one do I go for, the i7 is about R2000 cheaper than the xeon?

Thanks
 
Messugga said:
Depends on what work the CPU needs to do.
Click to expand...

+1

Depending on the type of applications you're going to run, I highly doubt CPU would make much difference as it's usually the hard drive and RAM that are the bottlenecks when it comes to performance.

Make sure your support company doesn't just pop in 2x SATA drives. I'd recommend at the very least an SSD drive or a RAID10 configuration to keep up with RAM/CPU.

But again, this highly depends on what you're going to use the server for. I've seen a lot of people spend upwards of R80k on a poorly configured/quoted server (desktop or otherwise) and then bitch and moan when the application is slow, only to hear back from the other guys that "it's the CPU" (which it rarely really is)
 
The software is a CRM system and booking system, it will be accessed by 10 users who will each have a version of the client app installed on there respective machines.

They did quote on SATA drives by the way.
 
You need to consider in addition to what has already been mentioned:

What sort of response time you are expecting for these 10 users simultaneously and if the number of users will increase over time.

How large will the CRM database end up being and whether you are going to store all your CRM data on the same server. As the number of orders and customers increase so too will the storage required.

You will need SSD's or SAS hard drives to achieve decent performance - couple that with sufficient RAM and you are happy.

CPU wise I would go with the Xeon...
 
Last edited:
evilsee said:
The supplier of some software we use has suggested we get a Xeon based server to run there applications.

I thought that a high end desktop would suffice and I got our support company to quote, I got the following two options back:

1) i7 870 or
2) x3430

Everything else spec wise is the same. Which one do I go for, the i7 is about R2000 cheaper than the xeon?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Don't ever get a High End Desktop to do Server work. I've seen to many people get burned doing it. Just one example I put in a SATA NAS device a while ago month later 2 drives failed at the same time. Luckily the one drive was a hot spare but I'll never use sata for server work again. Saying that I've had one SAS raid configuration that's been running non stop for 6 years without one failure.
 
TheGuy said:
Don't ever get a High End Desktop to do Server work. I've seen to many people get burned doing it. Just one example I put in a SATA NAS device a while ago month later 2 drives failed at the same time. Luckily the one drive was a hot spare but I'll never use sata for server work again. Saying that I've had one SAS raid configuration that's been running non stop for 6 years without one failure.
Click to expand...

+1
desktops do desktop work, servers do server work... you dont use a server as a reception computer, so why would you use a desktop as a server.... reliability is key!!

all depends how big the DB is gonna be... if you got 10 users accessing the DB, thats nothing, specially if they all running a client side app. got a client running a CRM for the last 2 years off a HP rackmount servers (cant remember model) with 4GB ram, 2 xenons cpu's, 2 x 78GB SAS drives (just mirroring) and we have never had a problem with it! i got them the server (refurbished) for about 3500 - 4000... and you can still add on extended warranty... still can get if your interested....
 
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