j_c has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

This node falls below the community's minimum standard of quality and will not be displayed.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: OT: server vendors
by jonadab (Parson) on Jun 10, 2005 at 13:05 UTC

    It depends, of course. You've given us almost no idea of the scale of your operation. You could be looking for a nice midrange desktop-grade system with extra RAM, no monitor, a cheaper video card, an extra disk drive, and an external UPS, or you could be looking for a roomful of PowerEdge racks, and we can't tell the difference from what you've said.

    You've also given us very little idea about the type of server you need. For serving static web content, you would mostly be concerned about disk space and bandwidth; CPU would be an almost total non-issue. OTOH, if these web servers need to run server-side dynamic stuff, which most do these days, then there are additional considerations. Since you asked on Perlmonks, I assume you'll be wanting to do a lot of Perl stuff on them, so that makes CPU somewhat relevant, and RAM becomes very important. RAM is even *more* important if there's a relational database involved (though it may be preferable, depending on your circumstances, to put the database on its own dedicated server and let the web server(s) talk to it over the network).

    As far as price/performance ratio: once you get past a certain point, the ecconomies of scale are such that the cheapest way to get 2y performance is to use 2z servers, rather than one server with 2x performance. Of course, that requires some kind of load-balancing or round-robin DNS or something, which for a small network is more overhead than you want to mess with.

    In summary, it depends very much on the details of your setup. If you need someone to hold your hand and walk you through evaluating that and making a decision, you may need to get a local consultant. You'll want someone who can go on-site with you and sit down and look at your situation on paper, as well as your facilities and infrastructure. But of course, that costs money, and it's probably cheaper to buy twice the hardware than you need, to be sure you've got enough, rather than hire a consultant to figure out exactly how much you need. But again, it depends on your situation, and the scale of your operation.


    "In adjectives, with the addition of inflectional endings, a changeable long vowel (Qamets or Tsere) in an open, propretonic syllable will reduce to Vocal Shewa. This type of change occurs when the open, pretonic syllable of the masculine singular adjective becomes propretonic with the addition of inflectional endings."  — Pratico & Van Pelt, BBHG, p68
    A reply falls below the community's threshold of quality. You may see it by logging in.
Re: OT: server vendors
by rinceWind (Monsignor) on Jun 10, 2005 at 13:35 UTC

    I suggest that Perlmonks is not really the right place to ask this kind of question.

    A better bet might be to join the London.pm mailing list and post there. Even if you are not London based, people on that list should be able to help.

    --

    Oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
    My friends all rate Windows, I must disagree.
    Your powers of persuasion will set them all free,
    So oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
    (Missquoting Janis Joplin)

      Of course depending, depending on our mood we might just offer to sell him crack or call into question his sexual orientation - it's a bit of a lottery like that ;-)

      /J\

Re: OT: server vendors
by Plankton (Vicar) on Jun 11, 2005 at 03:44 UTC