*BSD News Article 60427


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.eng.convex.com!hermes.oc.com!news.unt.edu!cs.utexas.edu!academ!bcm.tmc.edu!news.msfc.nasa.gov!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aremorica.jpl.nasa.gov!f.odonnell
From: f.odonnell@jpl.nasa.gov (Frank O'Donnell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Good commercial PC box for a FreeBSD Web server?
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 22:25:06 GMT
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <f.odonnell.656.310E9AC2@jpl.nasa.gov>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 137.78.104.20
X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev B final beta #4]

We are interested in putting up a FreeBSD 2.1-based Web server to benchmark 
against other flavors of Unix running on different hardware at a high-volume 
Web site.  The first thing we have to do is specify what hardware we want to 
buy.

I've taken a look at Jordan's picks 
(http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/handbook104.html#154), which makes hardware 
suggestions at the subsystem or component level.  To avoid driving our 
procurement people nuts, however, it would be a _lot_ easier if we could just 
say "Get us a [Compaq/Gateway/Dell/etc/etc] Model X9000 with the 2-GB SCSI 
hard disk option" rather than trying to find a system bundler who will 
assemble a system from scratch.

So my question is:  Is there a PC configuration out there available from a 
major commercial vendor that you can recommend as a good box to run a Web 
server on?  Since this will only be a Web server, we don't care about 
multimedia, monitors, etc.  We're probably thinking something on the 
order of a 150-MHz Pentium or similar processor.  Something like a 2-GB drive 
should take care of the OS and basic Web docs that it needs to house, although 
we'd want something with some extra bays so that additional disks could be 
added.

Thanks for any comment,

Frank
frank@jplpio.jpl.nasa.gov