Servers

A word about Server hardware:

We have all seen the advertisements for cheap server systems out there; they're in our mailbox, they're in every magazine you pick up. We get a lot of questions about the servers we sell, and why we don't try to compete with the $699 (or even $299!) "Server" you can purchase online. So here goes...

Hardware:
A "real" server is designed from the ground up to be a high performance, multi-user system. All of the components of a server are designed around that purpose, from the chipset on the motherboard to the architecture of the internal communication channels of the system, to the RAM, Hard disks and other storage media. This means that each user on the network will be able to do their work in a fast, efficient, and effective manner.

Hard disks: We strongly encourage the use of a special type of hard disk in the servers we build, called SCSI (pronounced "scuzzy"). SCSI disks and controllers are built to give maximum performance for multi-user or disk intensive operations: The disk has a controller on-board (unlike ATA or IDE disks), and the SCSI controller is designed to minimize system CPU usage when performing disk reads and writes. You can see the performance difference by watching CPU usage on 2 identical systems as they read or write large files to a SCSI or ATA disk; the CPU gets very busy on an ATA based system. What does this mean for the end users? Less CPU available to do other tasks, like serve up files and spool print jobs. Lately, SCSI storage has largely been replaced with SAS (Serial Attached SCSI). SAS drives are far faster and hold more data than their SCSI counterparts, and are also engineered to use less power. As power consumption in the datacenter becomes more and more front of mind for company executives, server manufacturers are responding in kind by building servers and that use less juice.

RAM: A "real" server will usually have several features that make the performance of the memory increase dramatically: The most common is ECC, or Error Correction. In a typical PC, if you experience a failure of a chip on your Memory card, you will see things like blue screens, system lockups, and general flakiness. In a system with ECC ram, you will get a polite message that you have bad memory, and that it needs replaced. The system will continue to function normally, as the controller for the memory will mark that bit as bad, and simply ignore it until you can replace it.

Chipsets The motherboard of your server is like your spinal cord: it carries the signals to the CPU, RAM and everywhere else. A PC chipset is designed for one operator, sitting behind the keyboard. A server chipset is designed to handle much more traffic, and optimize that traffic so that everyone's operations get done in a timely manner, and without interfering with each other. In addition, Server RAM is designed so that in the even of a failure of a chip, RAM requests from the operating system can be shunted around the bad bits, thereby preventing a system failure and enabling the administrator to replace the defective RAM at a time of their choosing.