Server hardware compared to desktop hardware

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 3:52 pm

I'm just curious as I peruse a little catalog here. When I see an IBM xSeries Express Server, they look like a regular tower. Is there a difference in the hardware inside compared to a workstation, though? I've read on some pages that a server is quite simply a machine dedicated to specific tasks or a specific task, while others say the hardware is different and better suited to the daily grind or some similar sentiment.

So, if you're going to just build your own, as I like to do, do you really choose different hardware for it aside from something obvious, such as getting a large amount of storage for a file server? Are the motherboard and RAM different, or do the servers simply come with minimal or no audio and video? I do notice the servers tend to have an Opteron or a Pentium D or Xeon processor, but I really have no idea what is different beyond that.

allix · Post by **allix** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 4:31 pm

good posts, i think the same sometimes, i personally think its just they target the hardware for server use than it actually for a server only.
We all know that desktop hardware is used for servers all the time, so i see no reason why server hardware could not be used for a desktop.
I am sure you can plug a sound card into a Opteron board, as well as a expensive video card.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 4:59 pm

The difference in my opinion is that with a server you don't get a graphics card, sound card, monitor, mouse, speakers or keyboard. And it generally comes with a real OS (Linux) without any the crap software that people like Dell like to put on their desktops. Also I think most servers have better CPUs and hard drives (Raid array most likely).
You save money by not having to get all the extras when buying Server hardware over Desktop hardware usually, although most of the time you can just get a cheap old desktop and use it as a server and you will be fine.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 5:44 pm

Good to hear that. I'd like to build a little backup or file server here, and was thinking I could save money by building a little something. Just get a slightly old but dependable motherboard and CPU, some good RAM (we don't need much), and get a RAID card or a motherboard with onboard RAID, a couple of disks, and be pretty much good to go.

Any preferences then for these items? I tend to buy ASUS motherboards, AMD chips, Crucial or Kingston memory, and Seagate drives. Does anyone have any preference for nVidia or VIA chipsets on their motherboards? Would like to know if one of them is more open source friendly than the other. Obviously nVidia does the video driver thing, but I'm thinking that Intel are good about onboard video, and bastards about their wireless networking cards, so I'm conflicted about them. (An aside, does the System76 use the onboard Intel wireless networking or something else? Maybe I'm wrong about the wireless bit, but I know Intel are bad about something non-video related) so didn't know if nVidia did the same thing with their chipsets, or if it even matters that much. Seems to be good support for motherboards from what I can tell.

chuck · Post by **chuck** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:26 pm

Typically with server hardware you get better quality parts. You get a system designed for uptime. Designed to be kept on 24/7. Redundancy is built in with multiple nics, power supplies, etc. When you buy the typical server you get better tech support and warranty out of the box, so to speak, than you do with a desktop system.

That being said, my home servers are old desktops. I have an E/IDE raid card in my file server. I have two other desktops with software raid and small drives for various services and IPCop.

For a home network stay with whatever hardware you're comfortable with, just avoid the bargain basement parts. Check into the current state of SATA raids if you want to look to the future and better access speeds. I still like the E/IDE drives for the server as the drives themselves are on sale every other week at great price/size ratios and for the home network access speed isn't a major concern. Don't worry about video and sound as the server doesn't really need either once ssh, vnc, and webmin are installed.

TankCatNinjaFish · Post by **TankCatNinjaFish** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 11:40 pm

It used to be that machines sold as servers generally were more suited for heavier loads... faster hard drive (SCSI) in RAID, faster memory, multiple RISC CPUs with larger caches. But in the last ten years the gap between PC's and higher end unix servers closed and now the differences are small... as mentioned, servers may lack graphics cards. also, it may have faster/multiple NIC's, encryption acceleration cards, multiple power supplies, etc. In reality, though, your desktop machine would probably make a fine server.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 11:27 am

TankCatNinjaFish wrote:In reality, though, your desktop machine would probably make a fine server.

If you're talking about a HOME server, yes. If you're talking about a real server, no.

My home server is fine for what I use it for, but I wouldn't put it on the internet. If I reboot my server every 3 months, it doesn't cost me money.

Most people who are paying for real servers expect as close to 100% uptime as possible (and get it). Real servers are capable of having their hard drives and power supplies swapped out when they fail without taking the system down. Better ventilation and rack mountability are important, too.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:05 pm

Yeah, I've just been using some old desktop machines for a server at home, and I use it for email and web stuff over the Internet and it works fine for me, but a reboot every 3 months, as Gomer said, isn't a big deal.

If I started to do real email service and running everything off of it at work, like Zimbra or something like that, I'd get a worried just using a typical desktop computer. I've never actually dealt with rackmount equipment, and never had to quickly swap hard drives and power supplies when things break. I could just take my time at home, so it didn't matter.

As a token of my ignorance, I'm not even sure how you would swap out hard drives and power supplies without taking a system down. I have to just guess here that you can change a hard drive out without too much trouble if you're using RAID mirroring (RAID 1?), which I only know of from reading. Power supplies, though? Do you have redundant power supplies on your server hardware? I seem to remember an HP at work that had three power supplies and could run fine off two, so I'm assuming that's what you mean. It wasn't rack mounted, though, and just looked like a fairly large tower. Looked like the ventilation for that thing wasn't too good, though. I would actually like to play around with that stuff someday, just so I don't feel like an ignoramus.

CptnObvious999 · Post by **CptnObvious999** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:53 pm

I know the Linux kernel has options for hot swappable RAM and which is usually not turned on by default but I'm not sure beyond that as I have never tried messing with it, it might be possible to hot swap most hardware using a desktop system as a server but it would take a significant amount of tweaking.

allix · Post by **allix** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 1:54 pm

I thought google use off the shelf commodity hardware to run there huge cluster on linux?

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:20 pm

allix wrote:I thought google use off the shelf commodity hardware to run there huge cluster on linux?

My understanding is that at google the computer itself is often redundant. I think they just boot off the network to do their job as a part of a cluster, so if a computer breaks, they just replace the whole computer. Hopefully someone will correct me on that if I'm wrong. Of course, I'd imagine that there must be nice servers running those clusters with fancier hardware, but just for processing power, it seems like that would make sense to me.

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 2:25 pm

Found a 7 page PDF describing it.
http://labs.google.com/papers/googlecluster-ieee.pdf

allix · Post by **allix** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 3:50 pm

cool, thanks for finding that

Vogateer · Post by **Vogateer** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 4:07 pm

You're welcome.

It might be a few years old, I think the basic idea is still the same.

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Tue Mar 06, 2007 10:16 pm

Gomer_X wrote:
TankCatNinjaFish wrote:In reality, though, your desktop machine would probably make a fine server.
If you're talking about a HOME server, yes. If you're talking about a real server, no.

My home server is fine for what I use it for, but I wouldn't put it on the internet. If I reboot my server every 3 months, it doesn't cost me money.

Most people who are paying for real servers expect as close to 100% uptime as possible (and get it). Real servers are capable of having their hard drives and power supplies swapped out when they fail without taking the system down. Better ventilation and rack mountability are important, too.

TBH, I've seen very few systems like those in the wild. Most servers I've seen and have worked on are more or less COTS parts with higher redundancy. I know folks who work at the Labs in Los Alamos, though, and they have some manly boxen there, that's for sure.