Need Some Help Building a Pair of Rack Servers

[scarfhead]

I am new to the server hardware arena and have a few questions. First, are there recommended repositories of information and reviews for server builders? Second, I need to build or purchase servers to handle the following:

- A media server feeding up to 10k simultaneous users downloading a total of 25TB a month. We will be on a 100Mbps burstable connection.

- A web server that will host a combination of VPS and shared accounts and an e-commerce platform. This is essentially the storefront for the above content.

Money is not an object. Redundancy, security, and power are. My colocation costs seem to increase with amperage before rackspace or bandwidth.

Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[13thmonkey]

pay someone to design it, a) you'll have some comeback should it not perform to spec (perhaps in identifying the issues and suggesting improvements), b) you'll get to sit next to them and learn.

I'm not one of those that can design it, and so am not biased.

I'm coming from the school of spending a bit up front will save a lot further down the line.

 

[scarfhead]

Thanks for the input. I have no aversion to paying someone to design it, buying preconfigured systems, or using a CDN. But even if I go down that road, I'd be very interested in a loose analysis of what specs I should be looking for with this level of usage.

 

[13thmonkey]

I'm glad to hear that, i'd hate to see the pain of a DIY job when you have stated that funding is not that much of an issue. In fact its probaly a specialist job to even determine the functional specification that you need to meet, so that you can define the tech spec. I'd suggest finding an organisation that can do cradle to grave on this so there is no finger pointing when it goes wrong.

Hopefully someone on here will pipe up and give you are starter for 10.

There's an article on Anantech on building a high capacicty fast server based on ZFS http://www.anandtech.com/show/3963/zfs-building-testing-and-benchmarking interesting reading and may show you that you need more that this.

 

[captvash]

Either if you go with someone to build it or DYI, you gotta post the final specs. I gotta know what kind of server(grid) can run 10k users @ 25Tb/mo. Just for my sick fantasizing purposes haha.