Need advice building FTP SERVER

[Bennethos]

Yo,

Im building an ftp server, it will have to handle 100 clients.
the os im going to use is openbsd or freebsd.

the thing im stuck with... should i buy a motherboard with single cpu or a dual ?

Any idea's i dont want to buy parts that are too performant for tha application in which I will use it, that is only ftp --> fileserver !.

there is going to be some promise SX4000/SX6000 raid cards (raid 5).with 128mb cache sdram or 256 mb and of course ATA 133 IDE hd's from WD with 8mb cache.

the speed of the ftp connection will be : 100 Mbit

should be nice if u guys could help me out.

Im a bit afraid a single pentium 4 2.6 will not be enough, but i might just be totally wrong.


grtZ

[Deathknight]

Is that 100 concurrent users? Disk IO is going to be your biggest problem but I could see thread contention being an issue with that many users pounding away. A dual proc machine with some slower, less expensive CPUs might be a better idea.

[Bennethos]

clients will vary between 20-100 but it should handle all 100 at same time...

I/O is going to be a prob indeed, im going to put 12-24 HD's on that mobo, all IDE ATA 133...

all hardware raid/array no software array of course.


I was thinking of buying a Tyan Tiger i7505 (S2668)

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigeri7505.html


and 2x + 2ghz Xeon 533 fsb 512 kb cache

will 2 ghz be sufficient ?

[Jason A]

plz.....you don't think servers back in the mid 90's had to deal with 100 con. users ?

I had a p3-300a (sitting at 450) running NT4.0 that handled 200+ users with a good 2x Intel NIC and a nice SCSI controller.. and it sat at 20-40%.

Not to mention I was also running MadMax UT server on it from 97-99 and was always in the top 10 UT spots and with 16 users, it would sit at 70-90%.

Nowadays, ANYTHING will handle that.

FTP server doesn't take ANY power at all...

[Jarlax]

A duel processor machine would be nice, but not necessary by any means. If this is only going to be an ftp server then running a 1 ghz CPU would actually be plenty. Xeon's are very expensive, look at other smaller cpus and I think you will be very happy. Running a duel 1ghz Celeron machine for this would be just fine and you will never see the CPU's pegged.

[Deathknight]

Yeah that was what I had in mind as well Jarlax. I never imagined dual xeons hehe. A dual proc amd motherboard with xp chips modded to mps would be pretty cheap and would be a top notch performer. You could even use that machine for other purposes other than FTP I would think.

[pik4chu]

Originally posted by Jason A

I had a p3-300a (sitting at 450) running NT4.0 that handled 200+ users with a good 2x Intel NIC [b]and a nice SCSI controller..[b] and it sat at 20-40%.


the key as mentioned above is disk I/O and the SCSI controller was able to handle that. the problem here is going to be the speed of the disks. if its going to be that large and beefy. might as well do SCSI depending on the capacity you need. but for the computer, you're right, it doesn't need much power. Deathknight has a good idea though, XP's modded into MPs would make a cheap dual proc solution that would work for you.

[Bennethos]

Thank u very much for your advice, ill try to find myself smthing slower ;) .


any ideas about how much ram it will need

[Bennethos]

would the input output be enough with WD ata 100/133 7200 rpm. i have 4 of each, mounted on a promise SX4000 with 256mb cache.

u guys have a link on how to mod the xp's to mp's ... i thought the mp's had multi processor instructions that the xp's didnt have.

grtZ

[coolerbydesign]

Not sure what you have in mind for dollars that you are going to spend but if it where me I would buy an old Netapp filer mayeb a 630 or a 720 you can pick one up on ebay for under a grand. You will be able to serve NFS and SMB/CIFS Clients with it. And your IO issues would pretty much be eliminated.

Just my 2 cents.

Dan