new personal server (sounds like a dupe)

[no1v2]

I'm really psyched about the new server I just ordered the parts for tonight. It's not quite as nice as all the new ones everyone's been getting at work lately, but for a personal one I think it's pretty good. The main parts are:

SuperMicro SuperServer 5013G-i (http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/SUPERServer/SuperServer5013G-i.htm)
P4 2.4B 533MHz FSB (2.4 GHz 512KB L2 cache)
2x 512MB Kingston HyperX PC2700/DDR333 RAM (CAS 2-2-2-5-1T) (1GB total)
2x Western Digital Caviar 80GB Special Edition drives (ATA100 8MB buffers)
Promise Fastrak100 TX2 ATA100 PCI RAID controller (for RAID 1/mirroring)

The total cost was around $1100. I think I found some pretty decent deals, but let me know if I got ripped off. Originally I ordered a cheap POS from Colomachine (this isn't exactly "mission-critical" and I wanted to keep it cheap), but I was regretting it pretty soon afterwards. When they told me the model I ordered was discontinued I went all-out and got quality parts for everything. It'll be colocated in the VA Equinix with ProHosting/NetFire on a nice mix of Internap, Qwest, and GlobalI (has anyone here ever heard of them?). From a server they host that I have an account on (same inbound route):

$ traceroute -I pool-138-88-85-153.res.east.verizon.net
traceroute to pool-138-88-85-153.res.east.verizon.net (138.88.85.153), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 66.151.108.1 (66.151.108.1) 0.316 ms 0.327 ms 0.270 ms
2 dcx-edge-01.inet.qwest.net (65.114.147.221) 0.347 ms 0.378 ms 0.297 ms
3 dca-core-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.9.157) 1.619 ms 1.650 ms 1.606 ms
4 dca-edge-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.9.22) 1.525 ms 1.517 ms 1.497 ms
5 63.148.64.222 (63.148.64.222) 2.247 ms 2.838 ms 2.437 ms
6 A1-0-0-31124.ESR-DSL3.RES.verizon-gni.net (151.200.4.209) 2.525 ms 2.467 ms 2.553 ms
7 pool-138-88-85-153.res.east.verizon.net (138.88.85.153) 17.461 ms 18.651 ms 18.386 ms

I love my route to them :D

Edit: Btw, I have a dynamic IP address, so I don't mind showing what it was in that traceroute.

[Jay Suds]

Not bad. Personally I don't like the Promise cards since we've started using the 3Ware 2 port cards for low end IDE RAID. http://www.3ware.com/products/pdf/Escalade7000SeriesDS1-7.qk.pdf.

[no1v2]

Yeah, it's probably the weakest link. How does the 3ware's performance stack up to Promise's? I bought the Promise mostly because of http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/20011023/.

Uh-oh, while posting this I found http://www17.tomshardware.com/storage/20021112/. They're mostly comparing ATA133 results there though, and focusing on features I wouldn't use, so it might not even apply to me. I'll just stick with the Promise for now, it's not worth the hassle of returning it and waiting for a new one.

[no1v2]

Wow, that 3ware is a great deal! The decision to RAID the drives was made at the last minute, so I hadn't researched it enough. The 3ware is a true hardware RAID controller, has much better Linux support, and is only $35 more. Just as importantly it should be able to fit nicely in a 1U rackmount (unlike Adaptec and Promise's true hardware cards, though they are higher-end). A 3ware is already on its way, and the Promise is gonna get returned unopened :) Thanks for the tip!