Need help with building a web server

Question

Greetings!

I'd like to build an apache web server, running on debian lenny.

It will primarily be used for hosting a web-shop, so it should have some light db i/o and lots of image serving (item previews/thumbs/etc...).

It's tough to put a finger on the exact number of concurrent requests that I'll get hit with, but I'd say that a non-professional setup should be enough to handle them.

By non-professional I mean that I don't need to invest into purchasing blades, a rack or something of the like. Just regular desktop PC tweaked for web server performance.

Which exposes my current problem: I have no idea whatsoever what kind of a machine I should be looking for.

If I'd like to build a gaming rig, no problem - there are at least a million sites out there with performance benches, from bleeding edge graphic card reviews to flat panel LCD contrast/response time charts. But when it comes to trying to find reccomendations for a web server based build, I'm having a hard time finding a good RECENT review.

So, at least I've managed to gather this so far - these are the priorities I should be attending to:

1) Lots of memory (preferably fast)
2) A pair of fast HDDs
3) As many cores as I can get
4) As fast processor as I can get
5) A MB with good I/O

So, memory and HDDs aren't that big of a deal, you can't go wrong here (I guess). With the RAM prices these days, it's pretty affordable to pump 8+ Gb into a machine.

The only question here is, would it be worth it to buy a tiny (<=32 Gb) SSD and place all my web stuff and OS onto it. My entire web server is just a couple of megs in size + the database will fit really neatly onto it with space to boot.

As for the graphics card, I'll just plug in any old PCI Ex card I can whip up, and the same goes for any peripherals. I don't need a display of any kind - I'll be logging in remotely for most of the time.

OK - and now for the most important question: Which Proc and MB to buy. As far as I've gathered - it would be better to have 10 cores running at 100 Mhz each than only one running at 2 Ghz, taking the nature of the machine into consideration.

So I'll most likely have to get a quad core, right? The question is which... :/

For there are several affordable... My budget is around US $800. This is, again, for just the proc, the MB, and the memory. I have the HDDs. If I take a small SSD, add $100 to that budget.

AMD Phenom or Intel Core 2? Which MB to go with it? I'm totally lost here.

If this will start an AMD vs. Intel flame war, I'm truly sorry, for this is not my intention - but if you could at least point me to a good recent review for a web server build I would ge grateful.

Answer 1

On the one hand you say you don't need that much performance but on the another you are talking about adding as many cores as you can. A quad core CPU of either AMD or Intel will be more than sufficient. It gets into the category of "religious war" but i prefer the Intel chips; I usually buy Xeon processors. As far as SSD, I wouldn't bother. Look into a good RAID setup with a 3Ware controller; either RAID 1+0 or RAID 5 (obviously, there will be a religious anti-RAID5 crowd, though I prefer it .. at least until RAID 6 is more widespread). As much memory as you can afford is ideal, although anything more than 8 is probably overkill from what you have said. Probably the main departure from what you have already listed is that I wouldn't even bother with the SSD. Depending on your usage patterns, you may actually hurt performance with it and any benefits for your use cases would not be worth the costs. Wait for the research to catch up for SSD to really be beneficial in terms of performance. :)

If this is a business server, I recommend buying one pre-configured from IBM, Dell, or whatever major manufactuer is your preference (I prefer IBM).

Answer 2

Have you considered shared, dedicated, or virtual hosting? If I were you, I'd go with SliceHost for the virtual server, then use Amazon S3 for serving up images and other large static files. The combination has worked well for me in the past. I've found that, especially when it comes to hosting, don't take on more responsibility than you absolutely have to.

Answer 3

This is really a stretch for the "right" kind of question for SO. Only in degrees though "implementation."

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Pre-configured "Server" machines can often be more cost-beneficial. But, if you'd still prefer to build your own...

Considering just your budget ($800) for MB, Proc, and Memory...

RAM - DDR2 800 ($200/4GB, and cheaper)

MB - 1333/1066MHz FSB ($250)

CPU - Dual Core ($150)

Quad Core can still be too expensive for the benefit -- but, that's up to you to judge.

But, follow the links, and use the Advanced Search to cross out unnecessary features, and you should be able to reduce the list of items fairly easily.

Answer 4

If you're not planning on running the next Amazon, I'd say that your choice of CPU/chipset is irrelevant. Find a motherboard with the features you need (4+ RAM slots, plenty of SATA headers, etc) that suits your budget and then buy a upper midrange multicore CPU to suit. Get a PCI express RAID card and a meaty UPS too.

Get a vanilla hard drive for the OS, and a pair of fast drives (WD Velociraptors, etc) and put them in RAID 1 for the webserver for redundancy.

Then, after a year or so or restarting the server every other day, migrate everything to a hosting company.

Answer 5

I use MediaTemple for my websites. They have a lot of professional organizations hosted on there servers. I'd probably go with them if I were you.

My dad thought the server route would be easy and we found out differently the hard way. If you don't have a friend or an employee that really knows what he's doing, I'd be careful. Anyways, good luck.