Not planning to get it or anything (yet), but I've been looking into seeing whether dedicated or colocated servers are cheaper.

Well, I had a look, and was somewhat surprised how cheap you can get one.

What do you think of this? (all prices are in AUD, and from some computer store here in Brisbane, so you could probably get stuff cheaper in the US/UK)


CPU:   $499
Intel QUAD XEON E5420 ACTIVE 2.5G/12M/1333Mhz

HDD:   $169
Seagate SATAII NCQ 500GB 7200RPM Server Edition
(could probably have some RAID setup; the store doesn't have SAS HDDs, so dunno how much they cost)

RAM:   2x $189
2x OCZ 4G(2x2G) PC6400 800Mhz Reaper HPC 4-4-4    (8GB RAM)
or, go for generic RAM (probably wouldn't on a server)  (4x $45)
4x DDR2 2048MB(2G Single stick)PC6400 800Mhz

Motherboard:  $288
ASUS P5BV-C/4L Server M/board Intel 3200MCH 1333MHz DDR2-667/800 PCI Express x16 8x SATA RAID GbE LA
(dunno really, just the above happens to meet all the necessary specs, and was the cheapest)

Other: well, I'm not sure what else a server really needs, except a case/PSU.  Not sure if a video card is needed, but if one is needed, the cheapest that can be found (if the motherboard doesn't have onboard video).
Doing a search for rackmount/server cases, the cheapest at that store seems to be around $200 (O_o, that's very expensive for a case...)


In total, the above parts come to about $1,534.
If wee assume the server has a life span of 3 years, and can't be sold after that time, that's roughly AU$43/month.

IMO, that's pretty good in comparison to what's available in the dedicated hosting field.


Just out of interest, let's step up the machine a fair bit, to compare to expensive dedicated hosts:
CPU:   2x $499
2x Intel QUAD XEON E5420 ACTIVE 2.5G/12M/1333Mhz
(no need to go faster - probably having more multi-core processing is more beneficial)

HDD:   $450 + $144
Seagate Cheetah 146G 8MB 15KRPM U320 SCSI HDD(ST3146855LC)
(store system stuff here)
Samsung 750G 7200RPM 32MB Cache SATA II
(store large downloads here)

RAM:   4x $199
4x DDR2 4G(2x2G)PC5300 667Mhz ECC Kingston(KVR667D2E5K2/4G)
(going for slower, but ECC registered, RAM)

Motherboard:  $640
Intel S5000VSASAS Server Board 667/106/1333FSB Dual GLan
(doesn't have SCSI, so would need to get a SAS HDD instead)

Case:   ~$250

The above totals $3278.  Assuming, again, 3 year lifetime, that's around $92/month.  And that's for 8 CPU cores, a 15k RPM HDD and 16GB of ECC RAM (it's probably more optimal to have multiple servers, but for simplicity, I'm using one).


So how much does colocation cost?  I don't really know that much about it, but from looking around, I've seen deals for 4U (size of the server in rack units) 3Mbps (~948GB/month), for around $130/month.


So that's around $180/month for the "cheap" server, if wee assume I've not left something out (chances are, I have), and $240/month for the expensive one.

Dunno, colo seems a little too cheap compared to dedicated?  If wee're going to dump the server after 3 years, I wonder if it could be donated or something (someone's sure going to have fun with an 8 core, 16GB RAM machine with a 16MB video card =P).

(This post was last modified: 11/05/2008 07:06 AM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)

(This post was last modified: 11/05/2008 07:31 AM by feinicks.)

feinicks Wrote:You will also need to include basic system cooling as server run hot. Graphics card is optional I guess, though Sever 2008 runs better with it. But if you're gonna run server 2003 or a Linux server edition, that is an avoidable cost, as most good mobos come with onborad graphics.

It is a pretty cheap deal, but resell won't be so nice (not that it matters!) as who knows what all wee will have 3 years from now.

Rack unit is good!

how much do you pay for dedicated server?

AMD quads would be further cheaper (isohunt runs on AMD opteron i think!)

Yeah, will need to look into Opterons.  The store that I checked didn't have many (all cheap ones), so ya...
I've only ever run a Linux server.  Windows sucks.
Cooling?  Not sure - I'd thought that the stock CPU fan should be suffice.  Only the 15k RPM HDD would be the other main heat producer...

Dedicated, well, for a similar specced "cheap" server, you pay around $200/month (from what I've found), but for the "expensive" server, you pay heaps more. (maybe around $400/month?, though those typically include a control panel, and are a managed server (your host manages your server for you))

Slushba132 Wrote:You can probably build one for cheaper.
Most of what you pay for with a computer is labor. But come to think of it sometimes you can get a really good deal.
Like when I was recently at the computer store a dual core 4700+ amd processor only cost 120$
Lets see so for a server
Processor                120$ (give or take a few)
Mother/Main board    150$ (give or take a few)
Hardrive                    64$ (250 gig what the heck? http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/...SD-250AS7)
Ram                     49-80$
---------------------------
total                       414$


but I also don't know if servers need graphics card or keyboards or anything like that. (I'm more of a pc type of guy)

Oh also if you want to look into it more tiger direct has some pretty good deals

That computer is more aimed at a desktop environment.  Sure, you can use it for a server, though server hardware is probably more optimal. (especially your RAM - you'd generally be looking for 2+GB, usually 4GB/8GB of RAM for a server)

(This post was last modified: 11/05/2008 08:48 AM by ZiNgA BuRgA.)

(This post was last modified: 11/05/2008 09:41 AM by feinicks.)