I need a server

[adavis]

I'm the webmaster at a private K-12 Christian school. Currently we have our site hosted on a *nix server at a local isp. They provide space but no extra bells and whistles. They have suggested that we buy our own server and that we can park it there at no addition charge.

I am trying to find out what I need to get and about how much it will cost. We are in the SE US. I want to be able to run my php/mysql and perl scripts.

Thanks,
Alisa

[planetsim]

I think its a bit much to buy your own server unless your getting a lot of traffic (unless they are talking about buying server space).

I would probably do a bit of research, and check your logs over the past few months and work out a suitable plan. It will also depend if the school wants to give hosting to its students (if so maybe a getting a server would be an ok idea)

[tekky]

What kind of budget are you looking at? thats the first concern, and what kind of site? Just an informative site that people would goto maybe once a week for updates... or something that many people would use on a daily basis to update/review data from a database?

[adavis]

The budget is as little as possible. I just checked the stats and during the school year we're averaging between 7000 and 9000 hits a day. We post lunch menus, news letters, sports schedules/scores and roster, and there's a click through link for grades. Even in the summer, we're getting about 2000 hits a day. Now some of that might be that many of the teachers have the school site set as their homepage. I used to and changed it because I didn't want to affect the hit count.

The problem is that the isp has requested that we get our own server because I have asked for special things that they don't want to install on their server. For instance, I asked for pdflib and have asked for upgrades to php/mysql/apache. It's a bit complicated, but the crux of the problem is that the school wants me to add certain functionality to the site that I can't do without adding things to the server. We are also thinking about doing our grading program inhouse which would mean that we would need an ssl.

We're getting ready to refresh about 50 teacher computers and I'm just wondering if we can't take one of those and with some upgrades, turn it in to an acceptable small server.

Thanks,
Alisa

[planetsim]

Well if you want to turn in one of the computers into a small server make sure you have a speedy connection, im sure the school will probably have the computers set up in a network with Internet Access. If so they will probably be downloading etc.

If thats the case inhouse maybe a bad option as it will be very slow loading the website. Id suggest you define hits as well. Also are the hits actual visits or hits that the logs say, which include images etc.

[adavis]

We use webalizer and those numbers where hits not page views. February, which was our highest month for hits had 3462 actual page visits.

I don't know any of the particulars of the server that our site currently lives on other than it's LAMP. I don't know memory, speed, storage, etc...

I know that we have a broadband connection at school. I'm thinking it's T2. What ever was common/popular in 1999 when we moved to the new campus.

I plan to let the server live in the same room where our current server is. That way it's monitored 24-7, just like it is now. If it goes down or the power goes out, they will restart it for us. The biggest difference to us is that we would be able to physically go down there and load what ever we wanted/needed on it. For example, if we want an ssl, then we can put it on. The folks are really nice and helpful, they just don't want to load a bunch of stuff on that server to accomodate one of the many sites that is on that server. I think that server hosts 25-35 sites. I've never counted them.

[tekky]

What are the specs on the computers you are replacing?

I was going to suggest a 500Mhz NON celeron process with 512-1Gig ram and a decent HD... I would honeslty think that with only your schools site on the box, that would be plenty.... and you dont "physically" need to be there to install stuff... once the box is up and online (You did say the ISP would let you colocate it there for free right?) you can SSH into the box and install everything from that ssh session, but if the ISP is willing to also manage that box for you... then I suppose you dont have to worry about that....

Thats my opinion on the matter... (and if you had to purchase the parts... it would easily be under 400 if not 300 (depending on the RAM prices)

[dalecosp]

Fast[er] and big[ger] is great, but she could easily do this with* a toaster, baby AT mobo, and a 486/66 Mhz with 64 MB RAM at no more of a load than what's she's describing. It'd do mail, too, and you could chase Klingons around from the CLI in your spare time :D 'Course, it'd be a PITA to do any big compile ops --- e.g. FreeBSD's "make world", for example.

But this is exactly the situation where Open Source stuff excels. Get a retiring Winbox, blow out the dust and stick Gentoo, Slack, (or, yeah, FreeBSD!!!!!!) on it. "cd /usr/ports/lang/php4 && make install clean ..."

voila...

My first server was a Celeron 233/64MB that had begun life running Win95. I seriously think it ran until just last year, and I only replaced it because I had faster junk I'd never use for anything else ...

[*realistic example, perhaps, but just an example, nonetheless ... finding AT keyboards is getting harder, heh!]

[adavis]

I think the boxes being refreshed are Pentium II's or III's. All I know for sure is that the new campus opened in 1/1999 and that they were dontated at that time by a local company whose CEO was on the BOD of the school. No one will be around until tomorrow so I can call and ask then. I might be able to email my hardware guy today, but I don't know if he'll be checking his email or not.


Thanks,
Alisa

[tekky]

Originally posted by dalecosp
[*realistic example, perhaps, but just an example, nonetheless ... finding AT keyboards is getting harder, heh!]

but AT->PS2 adapters arent ;)

and I agree, slower would work, but I was leaning on the aspect that even *I* dont like compiling stuff on my Cyrix (yah ucky ugly company of "CPU" makers...) 233 (actually clocks at 187 per all of my CPU benchmarks...) -- Compiling and walking away for a day just sucks...

And I recommend avoiding Celerons just because despite their cheap prices, their lack of Cache really bites when it comes to performance.

[planetsim]

Pentium III is sufficient for an own server as long as it only hosts that site at your amount of hits.

[adavis]

I have an AMD K6 which is my 20yos is using at college. I have been thinking about donating the AMD and getting him a laptop which would work better for him anyway.
(yos = year old son)

Thanks,
Alisa

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by tekky
Compiling and walking away for a day just sucks... As opposed to starting a Windows machine downloading and installing the latest service pack and walking away for a day :D (you don't want to be doing this on a dialup connection).

But think of it this way: You're sitting in the lounge flipping through a magazine and someone asks you why you're not working: "It's compiling now".

Or set up the monitor as an "experimental art" installation.

And once it's up, how often are you going to be compiling again?