I got a question for anyone that may know anything about servers.

I have to puchase a new server for work. The company that manages our Data Management System suggested we get at least a 30 gb hard drive, 2 gig RAM and misc. items. They also suggested we get a pentium 4 processor.

Since I have never purchased a server before and have little knowledge, does anyone have any suggestions on where to get a good server with these attributes? I contacted Dell and Gateway. So far, gateway seems to have the better deal but they use the Xeon processor. What's the difference between the Pentium 4 and the Xeon?

Any do's or don'ts when buying these things?

Thanks for the help

Tell Dell that Gateway is offering you a deal but you like Dell systems more and would like to do business with them and you wanna know what they can do for you.

They'll undercut Gateway in a heartbeat.

The only real difference between the Xeons and the P4's is the amount of onboard cache on the chip.
And about $1000 per processor

When dealing w/ servers the only company I like to deal w/ is HP/Compaq. I think there service is the key to that.

Don't forget to include a backup device w/ your quote. Nothing worse than losing a server if you don't have any backup to go back to.

For generic servers I think Dell is the way to go, just make sure you opt for the extended service and the handholding if you don't have IT staff to do it for you. While I like and have HP/Compaq servers they can be a little more intricate for the non-IT shop to manage... Just myh thoughts...

I really really second the backup. Prefferably an autoloader that can store a weeks worth of tapes as small places, like yours, are less likely to flip tapes daily. Why don't you have town support on this?

Autoloaders are da Bomb! I cannot tell you how many times using Autoloaders and BackupExec with remote options has saved my life and time, too!

I have a 7tape DLT autoloader at work, and each tape is assigned to run on a specific day. Saves a whole lot of time, and I have a long period of backups saved.


And as for the configuration of the server, it really all depends on what application it's being used for. There's no sense in buying an XEON when a P4 will do just the job, and vice versa, you don't want a P4 running a certain application and being overwhelmed.

Thanks for the input, folks. I just received the final "Quote" I got quotes from HP, Dell, Gateway and IBM. IBM was real helpful and guided me into something that the School Department MIS dept. thinks will be great for our use. It appears we will go with IBM. They set me up with a Mirrored 73 gb hard drives, 2gb ram, twin fans, twin power supplies, a UPS backup, a tape drive, media and software for just over $5k. The rest of them were single drives/fans/power supplies etc for around $4,800 so the added expense is not that much. Dell made me feel like more of an idiot than I already am and like I was bothering them. No warm and fuzzies there. The "State Bid" HP was pretty pricy for what I was getting. We'll see how things progress. We also got the 3 yr, 24/7 4 hr service plan which will really help us. We tend to break things often :smash:

the school i work for i had go with a dell P4 QUAD xeon processors.
also use the autoloader from HP it does let you sleep at night better.

:D IBMs rock