LebGeeks

rayan23

Member

Small Business Servers

Hi all,

I was wondering if any of you knew good places around Beirut for purchasing servers. I'm looking for one or two machines for a small business. So far I've only been able to locate one vendor in Hamra, and they said it would take approximately 4 weeks to get a server delivered. Is that normal?

Many thanks,
Rayan

xterm

Moderator

Re: Small Business Servers

Hi all,

I was wondering if any of you knew good places around Beirut for purchasing servers. I'm looking for one or two machines for a small business. So far I've only been able to locate one vendor in Hamra, and they said it would take approximately 4 weeks to get a server delivered. Is that normal?

Many thanks,
Rayan

That would depend on the "machines"'s availability in lebanon really.

rayan23

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

xterm, do you know of any good high-volume vendors who carry servers in stock?

beezer

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

What kind of servers? What are you looking for them to do exactly?

rayan23

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

The servers would mostly be for development/testing of a web application. They would serve a mySQL database, and perhaps a few other applications for the office, such as a MediaWiki site.

In other words, nothing too intensive. A tower server would be sufficient.

Padre

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

There is a a place I know that sells all kind of IBM / dell servers, but refurbished at really great prices
They have a huge stock
Let me know if ur interested

proners

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

hmm you can set up a server environnement on your own pc(or any other normal pc), just choose the server linux distro you want, and there you go .. then apt-get for example has COW powers

at first i read this thread but couldn't reply(connection went down ).. i thought you needed servers to deploy your websites/applications, i intended to say that deploying a web server in Lebanon is a bad idea a) no reliability b)higher cost because of bandwith, so if you intend to do that in that future, choose a hosting company based in Europe(France 1st choice) or US, if you want a lower end solution like a  vps, i'd recommend slicehost among others(which i don't remember the names)

BashLogic

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

hold your horses!!

a couple of servers? for minimal requirement as what you described?

im going to withold myself from verbally bashing as i usually do..
this is what you do! you get a UPS, what ever you are aiming for, remember that you are in lebanon, so get a UPS first! once you have that, get an ordinary PC any pc tower suffices nowadays, just make sure that you have a minimum of 512mb, if possible 2gb. and the last thing that you would get are two large disk drives.
oh yeah an external usb disk for bkps!

your shopping list should look like this:
- UPS
- simple basic Tower PC with a minimum of 512mb ram and space for two disk drives
- two disk drives.

install the two disk drives in the tower pc, and then install linux of what ever distro flavor that you prefer, i would suggest centos or opensuse (im not that big of a fan of ubuntu but thats my personal choice).
during installation, configure the two disks as raid a raid1 disk. this way you have redundant disks in case on disk fails. and when it comes to backup, once a day or a week, you turn it on, plug it in and copy data for bkp and archiving.

my point, for the tasks that you described, there is no benefit of purchasing so called server machines, your desktop pc and laptop can give the same performance to what you described. so cut your investment short and get the correct and basic necessity right form the start.

btw, you can run xen, vmware etc on the linux and have multiple operating systems running cuncurently if that is a requirement. ive done it a zillion times before.

mir

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

think of it as today's personal computer are yesterday's huge servers.

couple of years ago, anyone would be salivating over a 2GB ram or a 300 GB HDD... so think of it this way.. you have what you need and more

if you find what bash described to be complicated... i am sure you can get help on how to do it or have someone do it for you .. i think it will still be cheaper and at least more fun

if you still want to buy something and you feel that you have to spend that money... i would pm you the contact info of some ppl if you want.

Good luck with that app of urs :) and welcome to the forum

Joe

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

"Server machines" are nothing but your average computer without screens, keyborads, mouse, ... Any old computer/laptop will do (especially if you don't want high requirements), if it has a proper OS installed. I usually use Debian cause I like Linux, but it's not the only solution availabe (BSDs, Windows server 2003, Windows server 2008, ...).

And if you're doing development, virtualisation (vmware and such) might be the cheapest solution. I especially recommend virtualbox but vmware is also nice.

Anyway, my point is I agree with bash (and no mir, what he says isn't really complicated) but I just felt the need to confirm it, and say it with my own words.

Yeah, I'm bored ...

proners

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

Yeah, I'm bored ...

now i can truly say: welcome to lebanon

rayan23

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

Thanks for the tips guys... I'm just going to install FreeBSD or CentOS on a desktop and use that as our office server.

nuclearcat

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

"Server machines" are nothing but your average computer without screens, keyborads, mouse, ... Any old computer/laptop will do (especially if you don't want high requirements), if it has a proper OS installed. I usually use Debian cause I like Linux, but it's not the only solution availabe (BSDs, Windows server 2003, Windows server 2008, ...).

I do not agree.
What is difference between Xeon, for example, and regular Intel Core 2 Duo?
Capability to do SMP, use ECC memory and few more things. IPMI management...
Even just intel gigabit network card looks same, but my practice shows that "server" cards have real hardware benefits, visible only to system programmers (for example PBA buffer).

But for small office - desktop board and regular case, as server, enough.

rolf

Member

Re: Small Business Servers

At my last job they had Dell servers running vmware infrastructure.
They had like 6 think rack servers, all running vmware OS.
You could login to the VMware infrastructure client, create any os on any machine, take snapshots, deploy a template, move the image from one server to another... all that in a couple of clicks. Each machine can run several OSes concurrently over a VMware layer.
Sadly, half these servers werent even in use, except for testing and such... (so if u think u or someone could buy one of these, PM me)
I think that would be overkill for your requirements. Just buy el cheapo hardware with a good ups. Buy 3 or 4 samples of the same hardware (so that you have backup and spare). Also get a fast 1tb external USB disk.
Using dd under linux you should be able to backup the whole disk in 1/2 to 1 hour maximum.
If you have similar hardware, if something fails u can just move the harddisk to another machine with the similar hardware (thats why im telling u to get similar hardware). Now if youre running windows I cant guarantee anything, Im not up to date with windows validation and cloning... I know it usually works well with 2000 and XP... thats about it.. for windows server ull have to test and research
If the HD crashes u have a bit-per-bit backup and can restore it through a live CD.
Anyway, that is just my suggestion, based on my experience and my approach.
Whatever u do, like bash said, get a good UPS first.

"Server machines" are nothing but your average computer without screens, keyborads, mouse, ...

They are engineered and tested for superior reliability, may include technologies such as hot swap and parity protected RAM, normally have a serial interface and an additional Ethernet interface to remotely control it...

Last edited by rolf (May 6 2009)