Building Servers

[skybaba]

Hi,

I need materials on building Servers from scratch, can anyone help??

Thanks
skybaba!!

[NHH]

A server basically is a computer on a network that that performs specific tasks for the rest of the computers on the network.
As the network gets bigger and number of 'clients' on the network grows to hundreds or thousands, it is ideal to isolate specific tasks to individual servers built for that task, e.g. PDC, BDC, file servers, backup, proxy, DHCP, DNS, firewall.... the list goes on.

The hardware you choose for your server would all depend on what you want it to do and how many clients it will serve. Initially the most important aspect of what makes a server is the software, the hardware should be in place to meet the demands of the client computers.

If it's for your home you will just need a bog standard PC.
My server at home is a standard 1.2GHz Athlon PC running Windows 2000 Server which acts as a web server, internet gateway, DHCP server, firewall and file server across a secure wireless network.

So what did you have in mind?

[skybaba]

What I actually have in mind is a real server.....not a PC server.
The type you'll have in an enterprise environment.

[NHH]

Real server?

The majority of servers used in an enterprise environment are based on PC arcitecture.

Here's a few examples of servers used in my dept...

Pentium 3, 512MB RAM, 5 drive bays.... running Novell Netware and used as an authentication & file server.



Pentium 3, 512MB RAM, 5 drive bays... running Windows 2000 Server & used as intranet host.



A number of rack mounted servers each with Pentium Xeon, 1GB RAM, 6 drive bays... either running Novell Netware or Windows 2000 Server, The ones you see here are a selection of file/authentication servers & mail servers.


Each of these with have a 1Gb or 10Gb ethernet connection connected through to a fibre channel backbone.

[skybaba]

Yeah,

We're getting closer to it.
I would like a server running Win 2K or 2K3, acting as the Domain Controller for a large enterprise, say with a user base running to like 5000, or one running Terminal Services.....something that will require Multitasking and stuff like that.

Thanks for you replies

[NHH]

A terminal server?
Pretty heavy duty stuff for 5000 users, more like a 2-4 processor server per 50-100 users running Windows Terminal Server with enough RAM for at least 32MB RAM per user to be hosted on the server with at least 500MB left for the system.
80 terminal users would need a hefty server with at least 4GB RAM.

Nevertheless this is a help site for home users... might I suggest Experts Exchange for enterprise help.