File Servers - Tower vs Rack

[neildigital]

At present we run a dual processor tower with external 4TB Raid.
But the server is now around 5 years old, and we have quadrupled the machines in the office.

Views on tower or rack servers please, recommendations as well please.

Neil

 

[Pete W]

What do you use the server for?
How many people do you have accessing it?
Do you foresee many more people joining in the near future?

The more information you can give, the more specific a solution can be provided.

 

[neildigital]

We use it for file serving to 12 macs and 15 pcs.

and yes there could be more people over the next year or so.

I am not looking for a solution to be provided though, more a view of which route should we be looking, rack or tower.....

Neil

 

[Pete W]

Well .. the primary advantage that a rackmount server has is portability and size. Towers, as a rule, are cheaper, you can fit more inside of them, and are generally much easier to cool.

If you have lots of space, I would go with a tower. If space is an issue, or if money is no object, or even if you want to just go for looks, then go for a rack.

When I've posted a bit more I'll link you to a couple of options.

 

[Proximitum]

The thing with a rack server is that you need a rack to put it in. So you need to cost that in as well.

 

In that size of an installation I would always be recommending the Tower - purely from a value for money perspective.

 

[brownie]

I was on a course once with Compaq, one of the marketing guys said "Racks were introduced to let IT Managers feel like they were getting something for their money"

I would agree with Pete W.

 

[Gavin Harris]

Racks are great if you have a large number of servers/PCs that need to be located in one location.

I've worked in a few places where there's been 2 servers, a streaming PC a backup PC and 4 file servers - which take up less space rackmounted. It's also easier to remove one PC/Server from a rack than if they were on top of each other!

But if you've only 1 or 2 servers, it really isn't worth the added expense - and a rack unit itself is incredibly expensive to buy and transport.

 

[asonda]

For that amount a very well built/spec'd tower!

 

[UKDSL]

If you have the space then a tower would be best. Rackmount servers are more suited to a datacentre enviroment. Presumably your require alot of storage so a tower will also give you more drive space.

Boston.co.uk will build you a nice Supermicro machine and Dell arent really that bad either..

 

[Subbynet]

Going to go against the grain here and opt for Rack. Racks are not that expensive (Go to a IT auction and they're almost throwing them away! Huge Glass Front ones were going for £100 and less!!!) and most half decent networking equipment will fit (made for) a rack. Given the size of this network I'd expect 19" kit to be used.

All I'm thinking is you've quadrupled in size already, so I'd make solid plans now for future network expansion.

 

[markc]

Always always ask the supplier what components they use in their tower servers.... server grade components or desktop grade components. You'll be amazed at how many tower manufacturers chuck desktop parts in a tower and call it a server, even some of the bigger players, although i'll not mention names.
Like someone else said, consider that you need a rack for a rack server, that in itself can be a pig to buy, i've known people to buy racks and servers then when they try to put the two together thy realise they should have bought deeper racks. Dell machines for example fit very well into Dell racks but if you are not buying a dell rack, you need to get one at least 900 deep, preferably 1000 deep if you use the cable tidy mechanisms that come with most dell servers.

All in all if it's a small requirement, i'd stick with a tower, but be sure that your server manufacturer actually builds proper servers in tower cases (says the man that has a 42U rack and rackmount servers at home !!!! )

HTH - Cheers - Mark

 

[markc]

Also.. think carefully about your cooling requirements... glass fronted racks were designed to pull air up from below and suck it out the top of the rack. These days people tend to opt more for the grill/grid doors so that the air can be sucked through each server and thrown out the back. Glass door will probably be absolutely fine for a few servers but try not to let them cook.

 

[Games4Business]

In the past I've implemented a few powerful servers that have hot swappable components (memory, disks, controllers, fans etc), using VMware to create lots of virtual servers, each with their own shared allocation of resources depending on what they needed without impacting performance.

Recently... Several powerful 1U game servers instead of a virtual server, they are low power and have a virtual server as a backup in the event of a problem until the hardware is swapped out. KVM keyboard and remote desktop.

Nice black dell racks. Nothing like keeping everything in one place, but always make sure you have a backup somewhere other than the same rack Either that or spread the load into two seperate racks.

Towers are fine, but when you start getting lots spread around the place it looks quite untidy. I visited a client who had nothing but desktops and tower servers in their computer room, it also looked a bit cheap especially when investors were visiting the offices.

In the past I've setup a server room, with 5 racks on the front row, with enough room to get the server in at the front, and a thick glass window to show off the server room as clients walked by, when the server room lights were off the under floor blue lighting really made a difference . Now thats what I call selling their service

 

[KM-Tiger]

Views on tower or rack servers please, recommendations as well please.

Just might have found the answer to this!

 

[confused]

Well .. the primary advantage that a rackmount server has is portability and size. Towers, as a rule, are cheaper, you can fit more inside of them

EH?

There seems to be a lot of very odd answers here. At the end of the day, where is it going? where is your current server? where are the rest of your actives? Are your other actives rack mountable or are you just going to bung them on a shelf in the cab? If you are then they might as well stay where they are. Do you have an area to mount the cab? what about recabling? - might be necessary.
Spec up the server, get quotes and sizes for both pedestal and rackmount servers of that spec. At the end of the day, spec for spec they will be the same, this is a small network and assuming you arnt dragging massive files back and forth every few minutes then just about any off the shelf server would probably be adequate.
So only you can decide which you want. Why not go for a pedestal that has an optional rackmount kit - which a lot do - then you can rack mount it later if need be.

 

[KM-Tiger]

we are a manufacture of store display rack ... CD/BOOK/MAGAZINE rack ...

Well I suppose that might interest hosts with porn sites.

They could put those servers on the top shelf.

 

[wardourdrive]

I deal with things like this daily.

If you think you are going to be expanding and needing more storage and possible have more users then go for a rack. If you have a dedicated server room then cooling should not be an issue. If not you can install rack mounted fans. Most modern servers are designed to run fairly cooly now a days.

There are good and bad points for either solutions, rack mounted or tower.

Tower solution would be cheaper but you would have less expandability compared to a rack mounted.
Racks tale up space and if you don't have a dedicated server room can be annoying for those who sit near it.

PM me if you need further info or even costs.

 

[Kameleon]

At present we run a dual processor tower with external 4TB Raid.
But the server is now around 5 years old, and we have quadrupled the machines in the office.

Views on tower or rack servers please, recommendations as well please.

Neil

Hi Neil,

Depending on the amount you wish to spend i would recommend talking to bigredbox solutions. They are easy to speak to and will go out of their way to offer useful advice. We use one of their servers - all the companies in our complex have now switched after seeing the service and reliability we have gained. I can't post links yet, but google bigredbox without the any spaces and have a look on their site.

Plus the servers are a funky red as well!

Tom

 

[Ash77]

is this for just use as a fileserver and nothing else? I’m guessing you’re a design company judging by the number of macs? Or am I just jumping to those designer stereotypes! In which case you’ll be moving about large files no doubt, and ideally want to be able to use this server to help manage all the computers as network?

I'm using DELL Power edge 2900's at the moment, they can be rack mounted or used as towers. They also have 10 HDD bays which you can fill as and when you need them – these are a year or 2 old now but are pretty well put together if you can put up with dealing with Dell. The R900/905’s have replaced that range but are very good value- HP kit is also very reliable but you should be looking for servers with built in redundancy and if these servers are critical to the way you work make sure you have a decent support contract bundled with it, at very least you should be looking at an 3 year next business day warranty in case of component failure.

I've just added 2 new 2TB drives to one of them so have a nice new fault tolerant array for some additional storage, think I'm up to 6TB in one of them now (all in Raid1). These servers also run as domain controller & email servers.

 

[Ash77]

ok ignore the comment in my post about the R900s' bit on the pricey side and a little over spec too! the R710 would be a better option, upto 8 disks in a 2U case. Rember you dont have to sue SAS storage if you don't want to there are cheaper options by getting SATA disks & drive caddies yourself instead of usign dell to supply. And yes it would be slower but it all depends on the apllication, file serving will be fine with new good qualuity SATA's. (Although SAS would be nice)

If anyone is wondering, SAS = Serial Attached Scsi