Huge project

[AustinS]

Hey guys I'm working on a web hosting business. I plan to custom make my servers. My company will start with 10 servers running 4 18 core cups per system, 128 Gb ddr3, 1 raid card, 12 3 Tb ssd, & 2 750w power supplies. Where should I go for this hardware? Remember I'm making 10 of these systems. The company is also going to run full 10/100/1000 ether net with 2 4 port ether net cards per system. 

[StevenSensei]

Would it not be cheaper and more reliable simply to rent servers from Amazon or another provider and then resell the space on those machines / racks to your customers?

[Mornincupofhate]

15 hours ago, AustinS said:

Hey guys I'm working on a web hosting business. I plan to custom make my servers. My company will start with 10 servers running 4 18 core cups per system, 128 Gb ddr3, 1 raid card, 12 3 Tb ssd, & 2 750w power supplies. Where should I go for this hardware? Remember I'm making 10 of these systems. The company is also going to run full 10/100/1000 ether net with 2 4 port ether net cards per system. 

https://www.resellerspanel.com/reseller-hosting/

 

All you need to pay for is a webserver, and have basic HTML/PHP knowledge. If you're not looking to pay for servers.

[AustinS]

I want full 100% control of my machines with a system that is near impossible to get 10 of from a provider. I also have some special Linux software we will use for security.

[Mornincupofhate]

15 hours ago, AustinS said:

I want full 100% control of my machines with a system that is near impossible to get 10 of from a provider. I also have some special Linux software we will use for security.

Your best bet would be to rent from someone like OVH (amazing host) and just resell them from there. You can also automate the process, but you would need expensive as shit software like this https://www.whmcs.com/ 

 

How much cash have you got to spend on this?

[AustinS]

I am coding custom software for control panels and all other related software.

[Moonzy]

19 minutes ago, AustinS said:

Where should I go for this hardware?

 

 

[AustinS]

2 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

 

 

This does not help as it is geared towards desktop not servers.

[Moonzy]

Just now, AustinS said:

This does not help as it is geared towards desktop not servers.

i know, its just for lulz

 

you can try contacting intel since you're buying a lot tbh

[AustinS]

How would I go about a sponsorship with Intel?

[Mayaa]

So if i got this right, you are running out and spending tens of thousands of dollars on nothing but a plan?

Do you have any current customers that will pay for this or is it just all speculation?

[AustinS]

Im just getting the hardware to start with a few people ready to purchase a site from me.

[Mayaa]

1 minute ago, AustinS said:

Im just getting the hardware to start with a few people ready to purchase a site from me.

These "few people" need these 10 completely overkill servers for web hosting?

Just seems weird. And why would they choose you, instead of a more reputable host?

[AustinS]

I am planning to grow largely and do game hosting along with Web hosting. The people wanted a game server and that can use a lot of power. The number of servers is for redundancy and one server will be a backup server to keep zipped versions of services.

[tt2468]

Go on ebay and get some poweredge r610s. They are great for start ups, and you can get the same performance for less the cost.

[leadeater]

28 minutes ago, AustinS said:

I am planning to grow largely and do game hosting along with Web hosting. The people wanted a game server and that can use a lot of power. The number of servers is for redundancy and one server will be a backup server to keep zipped versions of services.

Personally for what you are describing I would get for the compute nodes 3x HP Apollo 2600/2800 or Dell C6320 with 4+3+3 nodes populated and for the backup server an HP Apollo 4200 24LFF. Or something similar to this from supermicro etc.

 

My question would be how are you planning to do redundancy with local storage? A distributed file system? If it's not properly shared storage between nodes then it would only be manual redundancy which from a customer standpoint isn't that appealing.

 

Also do you really need all SSD storage, it is very unlikely you actually do for the proposed work loads and is extremely costly. I would be looking at external storage systems like a Netapp E-Series with SSD cache, you could then purchase a large storage E-Series and use Snapvault to backup with deduplication.

 

Ignore all list prices for HP servers etc they are not what you will actually be paying, it will be significantly less. Self building the servers may not save you as much as you might think, especially when it comes to support and warranty.

 

P.S. If my rough (very) math is correct using the specs you described the total cost of the 10 servers is going to be massive.

[AustinS]

Okay, now my question is when it comes to an hp server will it give me the availability to have 12 drives, 4 cpus, 128 GB of ram, the network cards, etc.? Also with Ebay purchasing a server for a decent price with the specs I want could be still around 5 - 10 thousand dollars, as well as the fact that with Ebay they could be selling you a highly used server from another data-center.

[AustinS]

I actually looked at using this server as a bare bones system for the build. 

RAXXT16-2260V3-10G

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, AustinS said:

Okay, now my question is when it comes to an hp server will it give me the availability to have 12 drives, 4 cpus, 128 Gb of ram, the network cards, etc.?

Yes they have many different models that would allow for this. I would get ones with dual 10Gb rather than quad 1Gb though, not much price difference.

 

HP DL560 for example has what you are looking for or Supermicro 2048U-RTR4, Dell R930.

[leadeater]

9 minutes ago, AustinS said:

I actually looked at using this server as a bare bones system for the build. 

RAXXT16-2260V3-10G

That's only a dual socket system not quad. Mind you I would recommend a dual socket system rather than quad like you were originally asking for, the price jump to support 4 CPU's in a single system is huge. More than what it costs to run twice and many dual socket systems.

 

Edit: Also I'm dead certain those are just Supermicro rebrands

[AustinS]

Now if I go ahead and were to get 10 of those systems how would I go about asking Intel for a sponsorship for the project? 

[leadeater]

14 minutes ago, AustinS said:

Now if I go ahead and were to get 10 of those systems how would I go about asking Intel for a sponsorship for the project? 

Either literally be Linus or buy a lotto ticket. Even if you were Linus 10 of these systems would never be given for free as part of a sponsorship deal, the total value depending on configuration is between $150,000 to $300,000.

 

First of all what do you have to offer Intel as part of this deal, sponsorship is a mutual agreement and both parties must benefit equally. I'm fair sure Linus released a video recently covering this topic and how to go about it, I suggest you watch it.

 

If you are actually going to buy these servers the same still applies, Intel won't just sponsor anything.

[Mikensan]

Quote

 could be still around 5 - 10 thousand dollars

You'd spend more than 10k per server with the specs you've outlined. I wouldn't piecemeal hardware for an enterprise solution, you will very much want vendor support for your hardware.

 

To get sponsored you're going to need to be a celebrity of some sort, not a successful business. Successful business = customer.

[Mornincupofhate]

From what I've been reading on This thread I advise you not to buy any physical hardware. Again, your best bet is to rent a few $10 / month vps servers from ovh (for web hosting of course) and start from there. Keep in mind, if you buy shitloads of hardware and servers, it can get pretty expensive. And keep in mind, you don't 100% know that you'll have any customers upfront. If this fails, you're going to be down a couple thousand bucks. You already said above in a post that your "business" is small, so it would be an absolute waste to buy 10 poweredge servers, rent slots and bandwidth in a data center, and then have no Income coming in. Unless you're a millionaire, sorry to say, your plan youve been thinking of, is probably going to fail. 

[twisties]

This plan sound a little misguided. A quick look at the RAX system configurator mentioned above with your selection comes out to around $40,000 per server, and that's for only 2 of those CPU's 

 

For a 'company' with only a handful of potential customers, it's not sustainable.

Start small, and scale when you need to. I too suggest starting off with a cloud provider, like AWS.

 

The hardware you're talking about would indeed be awesome, but it's not at all necessary.