I run a small voip system in an industrial processing site, and I am replacing a pair of old servers with a new pair, and I'm looking for thoughts on how to improve longevity. The site is TOTALLY inaccessible, and the budget is small, so it makes this fun...
The server will
-- be serving a small voip server, 20 calls maximum. To put this in perspective, my droid phone can almost pull this off. an old Celeron can pull it off but its close. Brute processing isn't overly critical
-- Will also run small sql queries and serve the occasional web page for a VOIP management tool, again, very small load, but now i need more than one core/thread etc
-- Operate in a murderously bad environment. Its damp, cold, hot, kicked, slammed, rocked, people stack things on top of the cooling vents, the power goes from 100V to 130V routinely, and occasionally gets outside of those limits. The power goes out, and they will be on the same grid as (no joke) several 500HP inductive electric motors, and although technically "isolated" with transformers and starters etc, when those motors spin up its a pretty violent moment in the electrical grid in the plant. The available support on the ship are people who can swap cables and hit power buttons, but beyond that its all remote access.
Now, before you start thinking "hahahaa right!" note that it can be done, I actually got an old gateway desktop to survive for 5 years by putting a decent power supply in. That said, i also recently put a core i3 out there, and it survived 4 months before cracking.
My plan so far is to buy a pair (redundancy has served me better than quality) of cheapo rigs out there with a isolating battery backup in (to stomp out those power fluctuations) where one is the server, and one is the failover.
The two systems i have an eye on are:
- G620 + 4gb OCZ/Kingston (other recs welcome) + 500 GB caviar black + ??? motherboard + 750W Corsair PS
or:
- AMD X3 + 4gb + 500 gb caviar + ??? MB + 750W Corsair PS
and for either system:
- enough cooling fans to keep a nuclear reactor safe under full meltdown
Does anyone out there have thoughts no which of these are likely to have a better life span under duress? Thoughts on which of these combos will have better interrupt handling (VOIP doesn't like interrupts being fired in between 20 ms packets)? any recommendations (or "don't buy" recommendations) for motherboards? Given the approximately $1,200 budget, i think redundancy and a ton of cooling is at least a good start, but I thought I'd ask the other people who spend far too much time thinking about this what they think. I'm open to other processor/mb combo's, i even considered staying with Socket 775, since its been pretty darned stable for me for a very long time. These two just seem like the best bang for my buck given the circumstances. I think i can build both systems for about $350 each, add in a $200 battery backup, and have $300 to spend on an army of case fans.
So, let me know how far off (or on i suppose) base I am. Thanks!
The server will
-- be serving a small voip server, 20 calls maximum. To put this in perspective, my droid phone can almost pull this off. an old Celeron can pull it off but its close. Brute processing isn't overly critical
-- Will also run small sql queries and serve the occasional web page for a VOIP management tool, again, very small load, but now i need more than one core/thread etc
-- Operate in a murderously bad environment. Its damp, cold, hot, kicked, slammed, rocked, people stack things on top of the cooling vents, the power goes from 100V to 130V routinely, and occasionally gets outside of those limits. The power goes out, and they will be on the same grid as (no joke) several 500HP inductive electric motors, and although technically "isolated" with transformers and starters etc, when those motors spin up its a pretty violent moment in the electrical grid in the plant. The available support on the ship are people who can swap cables and hit power buttons, but beyond that its all remote access.
Now, before you start thinking "hahahaa right!" note that it can be done, I actually got an old gateway desktop to survive for 5 years by putting a decent power supply in. That said, i also recently put a core i3 out there, and it survived 4 months before cracking.
My plan so far is to buy a pair (redundancy has served me better than quality) of cheapo rigs out there with a isolating battery backup in (to stomp out those power fluctuations) where one is the server, and one is the failover.
The two systems i have an eye on are:
- G620 + 4gb OCZ/Kingston (other recs welcome) + 500 GB caviar black + ??? motherboard + 750W Corsair PS
or:
- AMD X3 + 4gb + 500 gb caviar + ??? MB + 750W Corsair PS
and for either system:
- enough cooling fans to keep a nuclear reactor safe under full meltdown
Does anyone out there have thoughts no which of these are likely to have a better life span under duress? Thoughts on which of these combos will have better interrupt handling (VOIP doesn't like interrupts being fired in between 20 ms packets)? any recommendations (or "don't buy" recommendations) for motherboards? Given the approximately $1,200 budget, i think redundancy and a ton of cooling is at least a good start, but I thought I'd ask the other people who spend far too much time thinking about this what they think. I'm open to other processor/mb combo's, i even considered staying with Socket 775, since its been pretty darned stable for me for a very long time. These two just seem like the best bang for my buck given the circumstances. I think i can build both systems for about $350 each, add in a $200 battery backup, and have $300 to spend on an army of case fans.
So, let me know how far off (or on i suppose) base I am. Thanks!