>>SERVER BRAND: DELL
>>- any problems with Dell?
>>- I don't think I need rack moutable, just a tower is fine
>>- are the extended support packages worth the cost?
>
>Rackmount is more expensive but really handy in order to properly set up your entire range of equipement (switch, RPC, router, server).

What is the percent increase in cost for the same system, but rack mountable?

>>CPU: Pentium 4
>>- should I get a server capable of having a 2nd processor added?
>>- what advantage is there to getting a XEON processor?
>>- what is the percent performance boost from adding a 2nd processor?
>
>For Internet server, I will always recommend a dual processor. But, that will increase the cost by much. For dual processor, the standard is now at 2.4. If you go at one processor, you could reach 3 gigaherts. For high traffic, at least 4 transactions per second, yes, dual will do it. Going single, latency will occur.

For 2 CPU systems, it is necessary to move to the XEON or can you can 2 processor Pentium 4 systems?
Do you have to recompile your code to run on a XEON, or is this invisible to your app?

>>DRIVES: 2 (or 3), 30 GIGs in RAID
>>- what practical advantage is RAID5 (3 disks) over RAID1 (2 disks)
>>- what is the extra cost for hot swappable? Is this worth the cost?
>
>RAID solution is always an amazing technology. We had a failure last year and no one ever saw it. The alarm went in, we hot swapped the drive, synchronized the new one and bingo. Since two years, I've been with RAID with 5 disks. We're now at 10 as for rackmount servers, that seems to be a standard as well.

Does having RAID5 configured drives mean that the drives are hotswappable by default? If they aren't hot swappable would the OS inform you that a drive was bad, then you would bring the server down to replace it?

>About hot swap, the fans, triple, are also hot swap. This is amazing.

Not sure what you mean. Each hard drive has a dedicated fan for it?

>>INTERFACE (mouse, keyboard, monitor)
>>- do people find it is a pain in the neck to dispense with these.
>>- Is PCAnywhere fine for remote console access?
>
>We dropped PCA years ago. VPN is the way to go. Much faster, provides a greater security and is now standard.

Is VPN built into Windows 2000 server, or do I have to buy extra software to enable a VFP connection?

>>Spare Parts:
>>- should I keep a spare nic and hard drive for failures?
>
>With RAID solution, put at least 3 drives in it. So, if something happens, you just have everything in place to go through it. You can always buy additional drives just in case later on you would need one and no more on the market would be available.

I am not sure what you mean. Are you suggesting that with RAID, I don't have to keep spare parts? Instead just wait for a failure, then buy a replacement? I am worried that I wouldn't be able to buy the exact same hard drive 2 years later. Apparently for RAID5 the hard drives must be exactly the same.