How is this server selection from Dell?

[ColdDigital]

Hey,

 

Im gonna start working on some projects in the next few weeks, and Im going to self host it with 3 servers. Im going to need an application server, 2 database servers 1 will be a backup of the other.

 

My internet speed will be at 1,000 mbits/s both up and down.

 

The database will have to handle frequent requests of deletion and addition of files coming from the application server and that request coming from the client obviously. Im not sure if plain HDDs will do the job, but just to be safe Im gonna be using a server which is capable of supporting SSDs because of the frequent read/writes of files between users. 

 

The application server will have to handle the requests and forward them towards the Database where the request will be applied, meaning this will also be quite busy and will most likely need some good CPU power for that. 

 

Budget is not a problem but I also dont want to pay 10k for each server.

 

I have chosen these servers from Dell so far:

Application Server:

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-r730/pd

Database Server:

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-r730xd/pd

Backup Server:

http://software.dell.com/products/appassure-dl1000-backup-and-recovery-appliance/

 

Additionally for some more security such as a stronger Firewall (TZ400):

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/sonicwall-tz-series/pd?oc=shared_11761&model_id=sonicwall-tz-series

 

Network switch:

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/networking-x-series/pd?oc=dn_x1018p_1156&model_id=networking-x-series

 

What your opinion on these options? Am I missing something out?

Please be honest if you know Im doing something wrong, I dont want to end up f*cking these projects up. 

 

Thanks, much appreciated!

[TheSlicingEdge]

May I ask what your doing?  I know nothing about networking. 

[unijab]

Why not virtualize your app and db servers on a hypervisor and use them with a FC/FCoE SAN for storage? Also something for backups.

[leadeater]

You should be looking at virtualizing this, there will be much more benefits now and in the future. You will be able to gain redundancy, simplified maintenance and much easier hardware migration path when it comes time to replace them.

 

Backup and restore can also be much easier and more efficient, Veeam for example.

 

I would look at this with 2 or 3 nodes: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-c6320/pd?~ck=anav. Either get the model with pooled/shared disk option or install something like Nutanix Community Edition to create a single storage pool and also add SSD caching. HP also have a similar server in their Apollo range.

 

For the firewall Sonicwall should be good, haven't heard anything bad about them. Personally I use FortiGate.

 

For the switch I would be looking for something with 10Gb capability, also the switch you linked really isn't designed for server use but for desktop/client/campus networking. If you are on a tight budget or want to keep the initial cost down and expand/replace later have a look at a Cisco SG500XG-8F-8T. While also not a dedicated server/datacenter switch you will be very hard pressed to find a switch at a similar price with that many 10Gb ports, Layer 3 and it's performance.

 

For the backup server don't bother with that expensive Dell appliance, use a standard server with local disk and Veeam.

[ColdDigital]

9 hours ago, TheSlicingEdge said:

May I ask what your doing?  I know nothing about networking. 

Going to be starting an App for IOS which will be handling many file requests such as takedowns and adding files. Will be happening over a Application server which connects to a Database server, where all the requests get put in tact. 

[KuJoe]

If all you're going to be pushing is 1Gbps then go find a used Dell PowerConnect 5324 for like $50 on eBay. I've been running them in a couple of my data centers for years without any issues (recently switched to Ubiquiti though for consistency and a warranty). I think I have 4 of these 5324s and they're all running solid still except one of them had a fan module that failed but that just means it's more quiet than the others. If you're worried about used hardware failing then get two switches for 1/4th the cost of those X-series switches and set them both up for redundancy and enjoy 24 redundant ports.

 

As for the firewall, why do you need a firewall at home exactly? Most people run NAT at home and as long as you don't open any unnecessary ports you're good.

 

And as for the servers, I don't have any experience with the R730s but I've only ever run Dells in production and have a ton of R610s and love them so the R730s should be just as good (although probably overkill for your needs if you only need 1 application and 1 backup server).

 

Also the 1Gbps uplink and this hardware is a sizable investment but your lack of power, HVAC, and network redundancy makes me think it would be cheaper and better suited if you put these servers in a data center.

[TheSlicingEdge]

3 hours ago, ColdDigital said:

Going to be starting an App for IOS which will be handling many file requests such as takedowns and adding files. Will be happening over a Application server which connects to a Database server, where all the requests get put in tact. 

Cool!

 

[ColdDigital]

2 hours ago, KuJoe said:

If all you're going to be pushing is 1Gbps then go find a used Dell PowerConnect 5324 for like $50 on eBay. I've been running them in a couple of my data centers for years without any issues (recently switched to Ubiquiti though for consistency and a warranty). I think I have 4 of these 5324s and they're all running solid still except one of them had a fan module that failed but that just means it's more quiet than the others. If you're worried about used hardware failing then get two switches for 1/4th the cost of those X-series switches and set them both up for redundancy and enjoy 24 redundant ports.

 

As for the firewall, why do you need a firewall at home exactly? Most people run NAT at home and as long as you don't open any unnecessary ports you're good.

 

And as for the servers, I don't have any experience with the R730s but I've only ever run Dells in production and have a ton of R610s and love them so the R730s should be just as good (although probably overkill for your needs if you only need 1 application and 1 backup server).

 

Also the 1Gbps uplink and this hardware is a sizable investment but your lack of power, HVAC, and network redundancy makes me think it would be cheaper and better suited if you put these servers in a data center.

How would this be for a switch?

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/sonicwall-nsa-series/pd?oc=swnsa2600&model_id=sonicwall-nsa-series

 

I was gonna add a firewall for security reasons. I dont know if there is a way to prevent DOS/DDOS attacks so I decided to put in a Firewall switch.

Also jsut to clarify: So you think my server selection is fine right? Also want to go slightly overkill to save some time in the few years upgrading the machines or if any additional projects will be running on them in the future. 

[ColdDigital]

11 hours ago, leadeater said:

You should be looking at virtualizing this, there will be much more benefits now and in the future. You will be able to gain redundancy, simplified maintenance and much easier hardware migration path when it comes time to replace them.

 

Backup and restore can also be much easier and more efficient, Veeam for example.

 

I would look at this with 2 or 3 nodes: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-c6320/pd?~ck=anav. Either get the model with pooled/shared disk option or install something like Nutanix Community Edition to create a single storage pool and also add SSD caching. HP also have a similar server in their Apollo range.

 

For the firewall Sonicwall should be good, haven't heard anything bad about them. Personally I use FortiGate.

 

For the switch I would be looking for something with 10Gb capability, also the switch you linked really isn't designed for server use but for desktop/client/campus networking. If you are on a tight budget or want to keep the initial cost down and expand/replace later have a look at a Cisco SG500XG-8F-8T. While also not a dedicated server/datacenter switch you will be very hard pressed to find a switch at a similar price with that many 10Gb ports, Layer 3 and it's performance.

 

For the backup server don't bother with that expensive Dell appliance, use a standard server with local disk and Veeam.

Hey,

Thanks for the response!

As in Virtualizing you mean just put a bunch of virtual machines on it? 1 running the application server, 1 vm running database and so forth? Wouldnt that be quite resource demanding considering its only one server with couple of hot running vms? If Id take the virtualizing Id probably have to get a overkill machine that could handle all those 3 processes, wouldnt know which one though.

 

And for the backup server youre saying I should build one instead which will save me some of my budget, correct?

[leadeater]

44 minutes ago, ColdDigital said:

Hey,

Thanks for the response!

As in Virtualizing you mean just put a bunch of virtual machines on it? 1 running the application server, 1 vm running database and so forth? Wouldnt that be quite resource demanding considering its only one server with couple of hot running vms? If Id take the virtualizing Id probably have to get a overkill machine that could handle all those 3 processes, wouldnt know which one though.

Most of the time servers barely use 20% of their CPU. Either way you would run two physical servers (or more) in HA and run each VM on there own host, if you need to do maintenance to the physical server or it fails the VM will startup on the other server. You can live move the VM to the other server with no interruptions, a server failure on the other hand will make the VM start up fresh from a crashed state but this is standard for hard faults.

 

This does have the requirement that both servers can see and share the storage so you either need a way to pool the local storage in the servers or use external storage connected via SAS/iSCSI/NFS/FC. This is why I suggested the Dell C6320 or the HP Apollo r2800 plus Nutanix, heck you can still use one of these and not virtualize as you originally planned but get the benefit of less rack space.

 

Your only going to be running 1 VM on each server but in the event you do need more servers you can just create more VMs without purchasing more hardware, server resource permitting.

 

The backup server would still be a separate server independent from the virtual host servers.

 

As for your question above about firewall/switch yes you can just use the firewall and forgo buying a switch, quiet obvious now that you mention it.

 

Also just for information sake at our primary datacenter we run ~700 Windows VMs on 21 HP DL360 Gen9 and ~100 Linux VMs on 4 HP DL360 Gen9. These are all a mix of demanding database servers and application servers plus many other things for 5000 staff and 35000 students. You can run a lot on the kind of hardware you are looking at, more than you realize.

 

Edit: Also the Dell C6320 and the HP Apollo 2000 are hybrid blade servers, there are multiple server nodes that slide in the back and storage goes in the front. It's more than 1 server.

[ColdDigital]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Most of the time servers barely use 20% of their CPU. Either way you would run two physical servers (or more) in HA and run each VM on there own host, if you need to do maintenance to the physical server or it fails the VM will startup on the other server. You can live move the VM to the other server with no interruptions, a server failure on the other hand will make the VM start up fresh from a crashed state but this is standard for hard faults.

 

This does have the requirement that both servers can see and share the storage so you either need a way to pool the local storage in the servers or use external storage connected via SAS/iSCSI/NFS/FC. This is why I suggested the Dell C6320 or the HP Apollo r2800 plus Nutanix, heck you can still use one of these and not virtualize as you originally planned but get the benefit of less rack space.

 

Your only going to be running 1 VM on each server but in the event you do need more servers you can just create more VMs without purchasing more hardware, server resource permitting.

 

The backup server would still be a separate server independent from the virtual host servers.

 

As for your question above about firewall/switch yes you can just use the firewall and forgo buying a switch, quiet obvious now that you mention it.

 

Also just for information sake at our primary datacenter we run ~700 Windows VMs on 21 HP DL360 Gen9 and ~100 Linux VMs on 4 HP DL360 Gen9. These are all a mix of demanding database servers and application servers plus many other things for 5000 staff and 35000 students. You can run a lot on the kind of hardware you are looking at, more than you realize.

 

Edit: Also the Dell C6320 and the HP Apollo 2000 are hybrid blade servers, there are multiple server nodes that slide in the back and storage goes in the front. It's more than 1 server.

So I dont need a switch, and instead get this for the firewall and gain security.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/sonicwall-nsa-series/pd?oc=swnsa2600&model_id=sonicwall-nsa-series

 

or this

 

https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/next-gen-firewall.aspx

 

https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/utm-9.aspx

Dont understand the difference between the two though. 

 

Application server with Database VM.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-r820/pd

 

As in for backup server Ill just build one will be cheaper as well.

 

Edit: For some reason I feel like IF my project becomes successful that the vms wont handle the load with a large amount of users. Just an example: Lets say that I get 3 million users daily all doing those requests of takedowns and adding of files. I am worried that itll fry the server and will the server will simply not be able to handle the load. Am I over exaggerating?

[leadeater]

29 minutes ago, ColdDigital said:

Edit: For some reason I feel like IF my project becomes successful that the vms wont handle the load with a large amount of users. Just an example: Lets say that I get 3 million users daily all doing those requests of takedowns and adding of files. I am worried that itll fry the server and will the server will simply not be able to handle the load. Am I over exaggerating?

There is no performance loss, or gain, between running a VM versus running on bare metal on modern hypervisors. How do you think AWS or Azure provide services to customers, certainly not dedicated hardware. In extremely rare cases performance can be slightly lower than direct bare metal, 10%-15%, but that is most definitely the exception.

 

The hardware requirements you need doesn't change with either method but dedicated hardware is a rare thing now days. Unless you are running an extremely big hyper scale web service, think Google, there a ton of efficiencies to be gained with a visualization model.

 

If you want a safe bet and to keep it simple, which is a good thing, go with your original server choices they are good. Just install something like ESXi on them and run them independently with local storage as you would have. Then later if things work out you can add in share storage (SAN) from Dell, HP, EMC, Netapp, Lenovo etc and migrate the VM's backend storage to this then configure the two servers in HA. This will then allow you to easily hardware upgrade the existing servers with extra RAM and add new servers in to meet the required demand.

 

Of course the other option is to go down the Google model and configure your service in such a way that you can add very cheap front end application/web servers on demand and remove them.

 

At some point you are going to need to make sure you have a reliable service and that is impossible with single large/powerful server approach. I'm guessing you were always going to expand the number of servers later anyway. Just make sure you are thinking ahead and making design choices now that will help later, how are you going to keep reliable access to the database? A single huge spec server full of SSD's isn't as good as two or three much lower spec ones.

[KuJoe]

8 hours ago, ColdDigital said:

I was gonna add a firewall for security reasons. I dont know if there is a way to prevent DOS/DDOS attacks so I decided to put in a Firewall switch.

Also jsut to clarify: So you think my server selection is fine right? Also want to go slightly overkill to save some time in the few years upgrading the machines or if any additional projects will be running on them in the future. 

Can you clarify "security reasons", if you're using NAT then a firewall won't add a whole lot to the equation unless you're going to have ports open that you shouldn't or need specific filtering/ACLs. A hardware firewall will not prevent/mitigate a DDOS attack since you will only have a single 1Gbps uplink. You'd be better off with a software firewall on your servers to save yourself some money and power consumption along with reducing the noise.

[Guest]

Presales hat on:

 

@leadeater is most certainly right in that you don't require all that hardware.

 

• Where are you putting all this? Home or collocation?
• Have you spoken to Dell presales to get quotes done on specific hardware and support packages?

 

[.:MARK:.]

On 16/05/2016 at 2:51 AM, JaredM54 said:

would personally go with something other than the Sonicwall, like Pfsense. 

I'm sorry, what?

 

Also @Windspeed36 is good with this stuff, listen to him.

 

But I don't know why you need this at home, as there is much more than this hardware to consider when building your own systems infrastructure. Is it not beneficial to run these applications in cloud?

This app on iOS will likely not tax your servers at all. Run cloud instances of these things and scale up when user volume increases.

Or you could build a small server with 2nd hand supermicro boards and e5-2670s and experiment with high-availablity and methods to quickly provision the servers. Also Hypervisor is a must, ESXi is free, vCenter costs a lot of money but worth it if the profits are rolling in and you need to scale out and become more fault tolerant. You also need to think of the SLA on the network connection, is the plan a business plan? Have you looked at colocation? Have you picked out a rack for setting up this equipment?

 

But IMO, build a small server at home and virtualise, use this as the testing environment and then use dedicated cloud servers with ESXi and vCenter for production environment.

[leadeater]

On 5/16/2016 at 1:51 PM, JaredM54 said:

would personally go with something other than the Sonicwall, like Pfsense. 

 

2 hours ago, .:MARK:. said:

I'm sorry, what?

 

Yea I found that rather amusing too. Pfsense is about as fit for critical business use as a TP-Link home router. I would pick a technically inferior product that has excellent support over a technically superior product with horrible support every time, not that I'm calling pfsense superior to Sonicwall because I'm very much not.

 

There is so much more to picking a product than just simply comparing feature sets and hardware specification sheets, something your general user just don't understand unless they work in IT.

[.:MARK:.]

The reason why things like AWS and Azure are popular is because you pay them, and they have the infrastructure to handle almost anything. The point of those services is for the app dev to focus on their app! And not on their infrastructure. With buying your own equipment, it's a huge upfront investment, at the minimum $100k and there is too much risk. If your app doesn't grow quickly then you are barely utilizing the servers you paid for, and if it's being maxxed out, you need to buy a load more which may not be possible with the profits you are generating. Renting from cloud is a sound idea, because you have scalability, protection, infrastructure and if it all falls through, you've spent a few thousand max.

 

Though I really do encourage having a dev environment and a production environment. Keep your dev environment anywhere you want, keep it mostly inexpensive and mid spec, and focus on optimizing deployment methods and configuration management. These will be key if you get dedicated cloud servers and need to scale out operations.

[Mikensan]

Just to reinforce what a couple have said - cloud services is likely the way you want to go. Majority of them have pricing plans that scale to your current needs and easily grow. You won't have to worry about replacing the equipment in 5 years / off-site backup / hardware support / up-time / HVAC / content network distribution. It is also very time consuming to fine-tune the environment to run at maximum performance (big reason why hyper-converged solutions are getting popular).

 

Beside the cloud idea, I also recommend going virtual if you wanted local servers. Those R730s are beasts, bottleneck is going to be your disks and memory before it's compute power.

[ColdDigital]

On 5/16/2016 at 1:33 AM, KuJoe said:

Can you clarify "security reasons", if you're using NAT then a firewall won't add a whole lot to the equation unless you're going to have ports open that you shouldn't or need specific filtering/ACLs. A hardware firewall will not prevent/mitigate a DDOS attack since you will only have a single 1Gbps uplink. You'd be better off with a software firewall on your servers to save yourself some money and power consumption along with reducing the noise.

Sorry for the late reply.

If Id be using NAT wouldnt that be interfering with the connections between the other servers, such as Application Server to Database Server communication. NAT gives the feature of a hidden IP address, wouldnt that make it difficult for the servers to communicate and retrieve data from each other?

Also:

Im better off leaving the firewall switches out then, correct? Then software comes into the game, this will be adequate for monitoring threats such as DDOS? DDOS/DOS prevention is my main concern, after all I dont want the servers crashing. I think without proper protection on the servers, it will also defeat the use of them since theyre vulnerable to anything. 

[ColdDigital]

On 5/17/2016 at 11:53 AM, Windspeed36 said:

Presales hat on:

 

@leadeater is most certainly right in that you don't require all that hardware.

 

• Where are you putting all this? Home or collocation?
• Have you spoken to Dell presales to get quotes done on specific hardware and support packages?

 

 

Co-location - an office

What do you mean by "get quotes done on specific hardware and support packages?"? Specs?

[ColdDigital]

On 5/17/2016 at 0:09 PM, .:MARK:. said:

I'm sorry, what?

 

Also @Windspeed36 is good with this stuff, listen to him.

 

But I don't know why you need this at home, as there is much more than this hardware to consider when building your own systems infrastructure. Is it not beneficial to run these applications in cloud?

This app on iOS will likely not tax your servers at all. Run cloud instances of these things and scale up when user volume increases.

Or you could build a small server with 2nd hand supermicro boards and e5-2670s and experiment with high-availablity and methods to quickly provision the servers. Also Hypervisor is a must, ESXi is free, vCenter costs a lot of money but worth it if the profits are rolling in and you need to scale out and become more fault tolerant. You also need to think of the SLA on the network connection, is the plan a business plan? Have you looked at colocation? Have you picked out a rack for setting up this equipment?

 

But IMO, build a small server at home and virtualise, use this as the testing environment and then use dedicated cloud servers with ESXi and vCenter for production environment.

In terms of speed -- 1000mbit both upload and download (business plan). It wasnt my decision on hosting the service with this method. Ive talked to my boss already and argued many times, though he still insists on hosting the servers in the office -- not renting them. I will try talking to him again, once he comes back from his trip. 

Edit: I will also be the only one working on this, meaning that if something goes wrong with the servers it would drag me away from development as well. Like you said, this is one of the main reasons why companies choose to rent instead of self-hosting.

[KuJoe]

1 hour ago, ColdDigital said:

Sorry for the late reply.

If Id be using NAT wouldnt that be interfering with the connections between the other servers, such as Application Server to Database Server communication. NAT gives the feature of a hidden IP address, wouldnt that make it difficult for the servers to communicate and retrieve data from each other?

Also:

Im better off leaving the firewall switches out then, correct? Then software comes into the game, this will be adequate for monitoring threats such as DDOS? DDOS/DOS prevention is my main concern, after all I dont want the servers crashing. I think without proper protection on the servers, it will also defeat the use of them since theyre vulnerable to anything. 

NAT is your only option unless you are also leasing dedicated IPs which can be pricey for a residential/business ISP. NAT has no impact on the servers themselves talking to each other since they'll each still have their own IP but they won't be publicly accessible without port forwarding rules.

 

A single 1Gbps uplink is not adequate to handle a DDOS attack. Most attacks I see these days are well above 10Gbps (although not as common as people make them out to be unless you're hosting something fairly popular and highly visible) so regardless of the appliance you use to mitigate them your uplink will be saturated extremely quickly. If DDOS protection is a concern then I would just host your server(s) in a data center that specializes in DDOS protection. Depending on where you live and where your target audience lives you have a lot of options out there and they are probably a lot more affordable than whatever you were going to pay for that 1Gbps residential/business uplink at home.

 

I personally use CNServers (Portland, Oregon) for DDOS protection for some of my servers and they are awesome. If you need a more customized solution with more location options then Voxility is also really good (CNServers uses them as one of their upstreams but also uses their own DDOS mitigation appliances). If you need something cheaper than QuadraNet recently started offering it in their data centers but they can get pricey depending on their level of protection.

 

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, ColdDigital said:

Sorry for the late reply.

If Id be using NAT wouldnt that be interfering with the connections between the other servers, such as Application Server to Database Server communication. NAT gives the feature of a hidden IP address, wouldnt that make it difficult for the servers to communicate and retrieve data from each other?

Also:

Im better off leaving the firewall switches out then, correct? Then software comes into the game, this will be adequate for monitoring threats such as DDOS? DDOS/DOS prevention is my main concern, after all I dont want the servers crashing. I think without proper protection on the servers, it will also defeat the use of them since theyre vulnerable to anything. 

NAT would only be between the public IP to the internal server IP, inter server communication would not be effected as they will have private IP addresses. When you go to actually deploy this application in production for real customer use you would more than likely be putting the connections through an F5/Citrix load balancer/reverse proxy or CDN.

 

I really don't know enough about the application you are developing to give better advice on how you would best deploy it but for now that isn't that much of a problem since you are still developing it, as long as the plan is not to host it in house also........

[Guest]

5 hours ago, ColdDigital said:

 

Co-location - an office

What do you mean by "get quotes done on specific hardware and support packages?"? Specs?

So with the hardware and support packages, they're never 'list price' for it - always negotiable. Talk to a Dell partner however as mentioned, you're better off using cloud services for what you're after.

 

As for colocation - that's not collocation, that's putting a server in an office. Collocation means that it's going into a data centre with the following assurances:

• non contended WAN connection
• SLA's - 98% is usually the minimum I look for.
• UPS's & Generators
• Good physical security
• Remote support availible

[KuJoe]

1 minute ago, Windspeed36 said:

So with the hardware and support packages, they're never 'list price' for it - always negotiable. Talk to a Dell partner however as mentioned, you're better off using cloud services for what you're after.

 

As for colocation - that's not collocation, that's putting a server in an office. Collocation means that it's going into a data centre with the following assurances:

• non contended WAN connection
• SLA's - 98% is usually the minimum I look for.
• UPS's & Generators
• Good physical security
• Remote support availible

+ Network and power redundancy. Hosting in an office not designed to be a data center just invites too many single points of failure. There really is zero benefit of hosting your servers in your office unless your application does not need decent uptime (i.e. being down for a few hours/days is acceptable), have some sort of compliance/regulatory requirements, or you need to physically access your hardware regularly (and even then finding a data center in driving distance will remedy this for you). I don't know how much it costs to lease a shared 1Gbps port where your office is located but I'm willing to bet for the same price or cheaper you can host or rent a few servers in an actual data center with a nice SLA. Your clients will also appreciate the better routing/peering than you can offer in your office.