starting comp biz, in charge of hardware purchases, advice?

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LadyJaqie

I Have No Title
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Jun 9, 2002
Messages
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New infrastructure specs...
this is, of course, a long post. please bear with me.

Me and a few associates are going to be starting a computer business. We are going to purchase a building that has a second story for an apartment for all of us along with the first story for the business. In order to apply for grants, we need to get a list of the hardware we are getting along with the cost of such hardware. The business is going to cater to as many audiences as it possibly can. We will be a computer sales/repair store, networking store, full onsite service shop, internet cafe, gaming centre, and LAN party central. We plan to cater to as many audiences as we possibly can... Gamers, businesspeople, people wanting just a cheap system, SMALL LOCAL businesses needing servers and LANs set up, everything. I know prettymuch what i want, in general, to happen, but I find myself floored on just what, specifically, to get hardware-wise to start the store out. As to what specifically I need advice on, Well here goes.

Full T1 with a failover to cable. (NOT cable with failover to T1 as someone misinterpreted)
Going to play the bandwidth game by ear and add more T1s as needed.
small rack room, maybe a wiring closet? air conditioner running directly to it.
I plan on running a backup server taking snapshots of each server nightly.

router:
I am still all for running a freeBSD software router despite comments here... if it fails we will failover to a SOHO NAT router setup... I am thinking a 5 port 10/100 switch hooked to the NID and then a seperate SOHO NAT router for each subnet we have. cheap and functional as backups, itll work while the main one gets repaired. Here is how I plan on configuring the router.
Tyan Tiger MPX
Duron 1.6Ghz
ATI RAGE XL PCI
Kingston ECC registered 256MB DDR*2
Cheap 4U rack case
Alpha PAL6035MUC HSF
WD 40GB 7200RPM pATA drive*2
IDE RAID card(maybe I should get a promise instead?)
Enlight 300w PSU (active PFC)
Intel PRO/1000 MT DUAL PCI-X NIC*2
Intel PRO/1000 MT desktop NIC*3
The PCI-X NICs will tie to 3 of the seperate private subnets... gamers, thin clients, wireless hotspot... and the fourth will tie to the T1 interface. I figure run the bandwidth suckers on the PCI-X slots to minimize the standard PCI bus getting saturated.
The desktop nics will tie to the lesser bandwidth/less critical subnets: business systems, home PCs. The third desktop NIC will tie to the residential cablemodem. (only reason Im even involving the router with the home stuffs is to get the failover available with the cable connection)
As stated before, this system will be running freeBSD.

Game servers:
this will be 3 to 6 servers depending on funds.
Enlight 2U case with 480W PSU
Chaintech KT600 motherboard w/SATA
radeon 9200 pci 128MB
Crucial 256MB PC2700 DDR*2
Intel PRO/1000 MT desktop NIC
Volcano 10+ low profile HSF
WD Raptor 36.7GB 10k RPM SATA HD
Athlon XP 2500+ barton
Win2000 pro OEM
I am wanting to run Symantec's corporate antivirus program on these...

backup server:
Enlight 2U case with 480W PSU
Chaintech KT600 motherboard w/SATA
ATI RAGE XL PCI
Crucial 256MB PC2700 DDR*2
Intel PRO/1000 MT desktop NIC
Volcano 10+ low profile HSF
WD WD 200GB SATA 7200 RPM HD*2
WD 40GB 7200RPM pATA drive
Athlon XP 2500+ barton
FreeBSD. just a basic file server set to dole out the system images as needed. and accept new ones. I think Ill be making it be a game server too, maybe, during LAN parties.

Thin client server:
Enlight 2U case with 480W PSU
Chaintech KT600 motherboard w/SATA
ATI RAGE XL PCI
Kingston 1GB PC2700 DDR*2
Intel PRO/1000 MT desktop NIC
Volcano 10+ low profile HSF
WD 40GB 7200RPM pATA drive*2
IDE RAID card(maybe I should get a promise instead?)
Athlon XP 2500+ barton
Running the same OS the thin clients should be running (of course) Im not sure on the OS for this one. Ill have to think about it a lot, but I am fairly sure I want to run freeBSD with X and WINE... not positive though. Ive thought of linspire but that would up our costs a lot I think.

networking gear:
honestly... I see no need for what people have reccommended for the switches. The ones I am listing, I think, will do fine.
Netgear 24*10/100 & 2*10/100/1000 switch(thin clients)
Netgear 16 port copper gigabit switch(business subnet)
another Netgear 16 port copper gigabit switch(LAN gaming subnet)
yes, I know the last two are not rackmount and that WAS like a thorn in my side until I realised they dont need to be IN the rack.

thin clients
Via EPIA V8000A mini ITX mobo
EverCase microATX slim case/220w PSU
Kingston 128MB SDRAM PC133
Keytronics PS/2 black keyboard
Logitech black optical mouse
something like this used SUN FD trinitron 19" for a used monitor.

more to come as I hash out just what I want...
 
One thing, to start with... Cliffs notes. :p They can actually be helpful, not just to readers, but can condense and solidify your ideas.

I'd say, pick some scalable hardware. Keep costs down, reliablity up, and all other maintince factors down. Remember, you can keep fixed costs, such as electricity, lower if you use fewer systems. SCSI is going to take a LOT, and yes, I do mean A LOT, of power. Using IDE might yeild lower performance, but honestly, slightly slower load times aren't going to kill you. Running one SCSI array with 6 disks in it cost me around $2/day, on the power bill. Running 2 top of the line systems and 3 lower end systems uses half that power. Also, if you're going to have these nice servers in a small or closed space, you're going to need a heat vac. 5X10k X 3? is a LOT of SCSI drives, and those drives make heat, and a lot of it.

Look around. Maybe use higher capacity drive clusters, maybe use IDE RAID. It's not as powerful, but it won't kill your power bill, nor will it generate heat. Large capacity HDD's in a mirror or RAID 5 should be just as secure and reliable as a set of SCSI drives in a similar setup. That might be a little easier to maintain, too. If you're going to UPS any of your systems, don't forget that each SCSI drive will drain that UPS faster. I don't know if you're going to use fileserver or external PSU setups for your SCSI drives, but either way, you will need an extra heavy duty UPS for a Dual system, and something like 5 or 6 extra heavy duty UPS' daisy chained for a Dual CPU system that has a large bank of SCSI drives in it. I'd have to get 3 UPS bricks for my main box if I was going to do that: one UPS for the actual system; one UPS for the first bank of SCSI drives (3 drives); one last UPS for the second bank of drives.

For machines in the cafe, I'd say start small and add them as you need them. If you have lots of demand, just add more machines. For the gaming rigs, get everythign setup before you setup a display. :p That's a killer idea, though. Maybe get a big TV that has DVI or VGA input and hook up a switch board type thing, so it'll cycle from each gamer's system in the line? Be kinda neat.

Also, for the gaming systems... Have some 'slots' for people to bring in their own machines? There is a place local that does that, and it's pretty neat. They have a monitor or you can bring your own. On that note, setup a Wireless network for people with laptops to come in and browse.

For the Cafe clients that will just browse the web, Win 2k should be fine. Maybe when Longhorn is out, upgrade them to XP or something. Although, a few *NIX, Linux, and maybe a system running Win 98 would be a nice choice of variety.

I'll be sure to drop by your thread again if I get any other ideas. ;) Oh, and good luck with this. :D
 
I know about SCSI and power. its why I want to run a single SAN. and with what im envisioning, Ill need the bandwidth and performance that only SCSI can provide. on the UPS front, I want to run them with deep cycle marine batteries. should make better uptime, but uptime isnt what I want, its clean shutdowns. the ups to tell the system shut the hell DOWN and they do it... you know.
maybe I can go with a hybrid IDE/SCSI setup but really, I want SCSI for them.

I forgot, yes I plan on making a LOT of places for people to bring their own gaming systems and game.

I also forgot. I want to run a wireless 'hotspot' too. but configing it to only give people access when I want them to have it is going to be a headache... this is beyond my knowledge and all I know is that it will require something called RADIUS to do.

The game PC? you gave me an awesome idea. a huge plasma HDTV running the game system. and/or a projector monitor. SWEET! ultimate gaming system.
 
I planned on running some sort of AC system dedicated to the server rack up through it from underneath.

and I think ill run the game servers without drives, and run them off the SAN, its what I built it for, right? the net servers may be able to do with IDE...but im shaky on that idea.
 
jaqie said:
I know about SCSI and power. its why I want to run a single SAN. and with what im envisioning, Ill need the bandwidth and performance that only SCSI can provide. on the UPS front, I want to run them with deep cycle marine batteries. should make better uptime, but uptime isnt what I want, its clean shutdowns. the ups to tell the system shut the hell DOWN and they do it... you know.
maybe I can go with a hybrid IDE/SCSI setup but really, I want SCSI for them.

I forgot, yes I plan on making a LOT of places for people to bring their own gaming systems and game.

I also forgot. I want to run a wireless 'hotspot' too. but configing it to only give people access when I want them to have it is going to be a headache... this is beyond my knowledge and all I know is that it will require something called RADIUS to do.

The game PC? you gave me an awesome idea. a huge plasma HDTV running the game system. and/or a projector monitor. SWEET! ultimate gaming system.
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Yeah, if you need the throughput, SCSI still can't be beat. :p Just, uh, find a mainboard that uses PCI-X slots, which would entail a Xeon motherboard.

If you just want the UPS to be a safe shutdown procedure, I think it should work. I'm not farmiliar with *NIX, but you will have to search around for a UPS that comes with the appropriate software and compatability.

As for having multiple SCSI arrays, in different machines... I think there is a setup you can do using an external SCSI enclosure where one set of drives can be used by two different servers at the same time. You'd have to run a ribbon cable from each machine to the drives and then to the other machine. Might be something Dell dreamed up (or was that HP? I can't remember anymore). It solves the termination problem, though. ;)
 
’m‚³‚ñ said:
Just, uh, find a mainboard that uses PCI-X slots, which would entail a Xeon motherboard.
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simple answer: no.
complex answer: 64 bit 66Mhz PCI that can even be found on the tyan tiger MPX has plenty of bandwidth to play with... just need to find a multi gigabit card for the other server slot in it. or maybe Ill go with an A64 system just for more slots...
As for having multiple SCSI arrays, in different machines... I think there is a setup you can do using an external SCSI enclosure where one set of drives can be used by two different servers at the same time. You'd have to run a ribbon cable from each machine to the drives and then to the other machine. Might be something Dell dreamed up (or was that HP? I can't remember anymore). It solves the termination problem, though. ;)
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thats called clustering. dont know who made it but I want to run it if at all possible.
 
jaqie said:
simple answer: no.
complex answer: 64 bit 66Mhz PCI that can even be found on the tyan tiger MPX has plenty of bandwidth to play with... just need to find a multi gigabit card for the other server slot in it. or maybe Ill go with an A64 system just for more slots...
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Uh... :p That 64 bit 66Mhz PCI is PCI-X. ;) I forgot that some of the Tyan's had PCI-X. Let's just say, before today, I haven't really had much interest in computer hardware. It sorta stagnated, so I've had to file a few things away. :p

jaqie said:
thats called clustering. dont know who made it but I want to run it if at all possible.
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I know the Dell PCI SCSI RAID card I have does that. Might look into that. I know you can find the cards, I can get ahold of the software stuff again and get you server names, if that would help.

Bed time for me. I'm going to basically know tomorrow if I'm getting a new car or not. :D
 
john doe 182 said:
What city in Missouri? I'm in St. Louis and Chicago is freakin windy and cold.
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yes chi is too windy for me. cold I dont seem to mind tho. I like cold. just not all the time.
Im actually thinking my friends said its in kansas NEAR but not AT kansas city... so Im not sure, I just dont remember the city right now, hehe sorry :(
 
The city we were thinking of is Lawrence, but that's not completely decided. ^_^
 
Ok, I'm going to structure my response in 2 parts: business vs. technical. Business first.

I have had a few friends who have had similar ideas, and worked with a few mom&pop technology shops, even in the golden days of 98-99. Your idea, however intriguing it might seem, has some pretty glaring holes. Let me explain.

I have no idea of your corporate experience, but I can tell you from working with a 25mil/yr company (175 employees, not incredibly big, but growing out of "mom&pop") it took an INCREDIBLE amount of nagging by the high levels of the IT staff to get them to upgrade their servers (they were running old Unisys 6-way PPros and Cubix Blades) What did we end up going with? HP. Why? Reliability. Any self-respecting IT manager will look to the global trends for reliability and service and see HP/Dell way up there. Where is your company? Down the street, where all those kids hang out to play games. Sometimes you can't please everyone, so be mindful of that when you are planning for capital expenses, you will have to lean on one or more aspects (internet cafe, LAN party place) than others (high margin servers, business desktops)

For your business PC's, what support options are you going to give? What will be your turnaround time for parts be? Will you offer phone technical support? If so, who will you have to staff it? If not, why not, all the other vendors have it, and if I have to give this new desktop to our VP in California, how is he going to get support on it if he has a question? How will the troubleshooting process go over that distance? These are all questions that I can think of off the top of my head, and definitely stuff that will be asked by anyone who wants to buy any sort of business machine off your company.

Summary: Companies want to see a brand name. They don't want to roll the dice and take chances with a machine from a little company down the street that holds their entire company data, and is the linchpin for their entire day-to-day operations.

Technical: Your initial capital expense is going to be ENORMOUS for everything that you just said. Your talking about dual this and tri- that. Let's start at the beginning.

First, you need to make a Visio diagram of your proposed network layout. This will help immensely in your planning. I will try to go without that.

Router: Yeah, you can go with a FreeBSD router, but in the end, you have a PC running your routing. Better to go with a Cisco PIX, probably something like a 505 or a 515. VPN capabilities are also available over the PIX.
Cost: Router itself is about 450. VPN licenses I'm not too sure on.

Switches: If I were you, I would invest in some Catalysts, but we use 3Com SuperStacks, and they are OK. Some do have built in bridging, and if necessary, you can deploy fiber interconnects. For the internet PC browsing thin clients, I would run gigabit. You can pick up some pre-made thin clients, not sure of the name exactly, but we were testing some out for our usages, and found for our use they were less than epic. Might work for you though.
Cost: Not sure, I would run some eBay searches.

Servers:
Clearly you are going to build your own. That being said, I'm really not sure that a LAN event will necessarily need dual procs, possibly a single 3.06 P4HT might do the trick. Previous posts were accurate, if you want to get SCSI involved, you are getting a 64bit slot (if you want to take full advantage of Ultra320), and therefore you are probably getting a Xeon. I know for a HP DL380 2U dual server, we had about 3-4 38GB SCSI drives and a 75GB SCSI drive in a RAID config, that was about 9K a piece. Your config will be different, obviously, but price will probably be about 6-7K per server, top of head estimate.

UPS: If you don't get a APC Symmetra RM you are a fucking moron, plain and simple. You can't jury rig some marine batteries and all that other shit together man! Not going to happen. The Symmetra RM is rackmountable, and able to sustain an entire cabinet FULL of HP SCSI Xeon servers.
Cost: not cheap. 10K?

Wireless:
You either have a secure hotspot or you have an open one. There's not much in between. To the best of my knowledge, RADIUS servers have to do with authenticating to AD accounts in Windows 2000, and are used in VPN. I've never heard of RADIUS used in WiFi. Even if you used WEP (VERY problematic), all it takes is one person to spread that key and it's over. Change keys, you'll have to keep reconfiguring EVERYONE's laptop, even if they don't have automatic text-hex conversion. Too time consuming.

Cabinet will easily be about 2K, plus shipping. Cooling is an absolute necessity, so having it in the middle of the room isn't exactly recommended, since whoever's behind it will get baked.

So I don't know, initial capital expense for hardware and network infrastructure, maybe 50-60K? I'm not sure what grants you are referring to, but this isn't like that asshole on TV that says the government will give you money just for starting a biz, they will give you LOANS that you have to PAY BACK. This means CREDIT, and also now you have assumed debt. If you can't pull this off, someone gets to pay back about 100K in debt.

Anyway, that's my .02, take as you will.
 
I saw this thread title and I was thining "Hmmm HIRE ME!" just as a joke, then I saw your location as chicago and I got even more excited... the I saw where the business is going to be :(. I wish you and your friends luck.


stu-
 
Cheech said:
I have no idea of your corporate experience
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I am not going to be the boss, I am going to be the lead of IT. that is where my (year plus head tech of a computer store plus many more years as a lesser tech) experience lies. It's not easy to become head tech of a computer store when you are female. That should give you an idea about my experience and skill levels.
but I can tell you from working with a 25mil/yr company (175 employees, not incredibly big, but growing out of "mom&pop") it took an INCREDIBLE amount of nagging by the high levels of the IT staff to get them to upgrade their servers (they were running old Unisys 6-way PPros and Cubix Blades) What did we end up going with? HP. Why? Reliability. Any self-respecting IT manager will look to the global trends for reliability and service and see HP/Dell way up there.
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I was considering dell PowerEdges, in all honestly, and thinking of trying to become an authorized distributor for Dell office PCs and servers.
Where is your company? Down the street, where all those kids hang out to play games. Sometimes you can't please everyone, so be mindful of that when you are planning for capital expenses, you will have to lean on one or more aspects (internet cafe, LAN party place) than others (high margin servers, business desktops)
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all too true, this is a problem I have been well aware of since I came up with the idea to cater to both. Its going to be difficult, and maybe we have to just go with one or the other to begin with but I do want to eventually do both.
For your business PC's, what support options are you going to give? What will be your turnaround time for parts be? Will you offer phone technical support? If so, who will you have to staff it? If not, why not, all the other vendors have it, and if I have to give this new desktop to our VP in California, how is he going to get support on it if he has a question? How will the troubleshooting process go over that distance? These are all questions that I can think of off the top of my head, and definitely stuff that will be asked by anyone who wants to buy any sort of business machine off your company.
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Again, distributing dells will give us an incredible edge here, as all our business PCs will be supported directly by them, but we will offer a second tier of support to the local businesses - ourselves - for when they arent satisfied by those (someone else's words) "thai speaking people" they cant understand in dell's support.
Summary: Companies want to see a brand name. They don't want to roll the dice and take chances with a machine from a little company down the street that holds their entire company data, and is the linchpin for their entire day-to-day operations.
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Again. Dell. I hope anyways...
Technical: Your initial capital expense is going to be ENORMOUS for everything that you just said. Your talking about dual this and tri- that. Let's start at the beginning.

First, you need to make a Visio diagram of your proposed network layout. This will help immensely in your planning.
Click to expand...
Yes, I was planning on doing that ASAP actually. this was the FIRST thing I thought of. However, I decided to ask some help before I began putting things in a chart. Maybe Im doing it backwards *shrug* Ill learn.
Router: Yeah, you can go with a FreeBSD router, but in the end, you have a PC running your routing. Better to go with a Cisco PIX, probably something like a 505 or a 515. VPN capabilities are also available over the PIX.
Cost: Router itself is about 450. VPN licenses I'm not too sure on.
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not as configurable as a PC will be, and to be honest I know someone that works for a place using freeBSD as a router, and frankly they are very pleased by it. to quote him "Well, it routes traffic for 900 machines quite adequately." when i voiced my objections to the idea.
Switches: If I were you, I would invest in some Catalysts, but we use 3Com SuperStacks, and they are OK. Some do have built in bridging, and if necessary, you can deploy fiber interconnects.
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I think, that this will be something we will have to run less quality on. something not so expensive like D link or netgear. Gigabit is tons of bandwidth and to be frank, even a cheap switch that is gigabit will outperform the highest end 10/100 switches. Maybe if we ever become literally mission critical on the switches we may gnab catalysts, but not until.
For the internet PC browsing thin clients, I would run gigabit. You can pick up some pre-made thin clients, not sure of the name exactly, but we were testing some out for our usages, and found for our use they were less than epic. Might work for you though.
Cost: Not sure, I would run some eBay searches.
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why run gigabit to them? in all honesty. ive talked with others about this and they seem to think that 100Mbps will be fine for thin clients. they will be doing no file copying or anything and they may take a while to boot but they wont be rebooting hardly ever. I planned on running linspire on them, actually...
Servers:
Clearly you are going to build your own. That being said, I'm really not sure that a LAN event will necessarily need dual procs, possibly a single 3.06 P4HT might do the trick.
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This is where I will have to flat disagree. I am by no means an intel fan. And a LAN event, if we are running as many game servers as I expect to run, WILL need that many. I may go with single processor systems, I will have to price them out and look at performance differences. and iron it out. this was a very tentative list, and as such is subject to a lot of change.
Previous posts were accurate, if you want to get SCSI involved, you are getting a 64bit slot (if you want to take full advantage of Ultra320), and therefore you are probably getting a Xeon. I know for a HP DL380 2U dual server, we had about 3-4 38GB SCSI drives and a 75GB SCSI drive in a RAID config, that was about 9K a piece. Your config will be different, obviously, but price will probably be about 6-7K per server, top of head estimate.
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No, I will NOT be going with intel. a good SAN will not require a dual processor system, I have realized, but a good mobo that can be had cheap that has PCI-X is the tyan tiger MP, or if I want to run one with integrated u160, the thunder MP. if the 160 isnt enough Ill end up putting a second SCSI card into it... distribute the drives across the cards. 160 cards can be found cheaper then 320s.
UPS: If you don't get a APC Symmetra RM you are a fucking moron, plain and simple.
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ok, no, I am not a f*** moron, {edit} I was thinking of a symmetra but not nessecarily.
You can't jury rig some marine batteries and all that other shit together man! Not going to happen.
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ok one it was just an idea and two I had heard about an APC that took marine batts.
Wireless:
You either have a secure hotspot or you have an open one. There's not much in between. To the best of my knowledge, RADIUS servers have to do with authenticating to AD accounts in Windows 2000, and are used in VPN. I've never heard of RADIUS used in WiFi. Even if you used WEP (VERY problematic), all it takes is one person to spread that key and it's over. Change keys, you'll have to keep reconfiguring EVERYONE's laptop, even if they don't have automatic text-hex conversion. Too time consuming.
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this would be an idea that can easily go by the wayside. and it was just that, an idea. honestly? if people can set up dialup servers to deny people when they hadn't paid their accounts, we could do the same with wireless clients. I had been told it was RADIUS that did that.
Cabinet will easily be about 2K, plus shipping. Cooling is an absolute necessity, so having it in the middle of the room isn't exactly recommended, since whoever's behind it will get baked.
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You did not understand what i had planned on doing with it. I had planned on having it in the lobby for everyone to see we knew networking very well, and servers, but Ive been worrying very strongly about it being a security risk. I bet this idea will get nixxed anyways, if not by the biz manager then by me. And you didnt even read what I had posted I think, about me running some air cooling solution into it from underneath.
So I don't know, initial capital expense for hardware and network infrastructure, maybe 50-60K? I'm not sure what grants you are referring to, but this isn't like that asshole on TV that says the government will give you money just for starting a biz, they will give you LOANS that you have to PAY BACK. This means CREDIT, and also now you have assumed debt. If you can't pull this off, someone gets to pay back about 100K in debt.
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Actually, no, I wasnt referring to that. And I do know how loans work. Also, I am going to be scaling this idea back very soon to deal with the cost. I even said that in the initial post, again did you not read carefully?
Anyway, that's my .02, take as you will.
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your two cents was pretty good, except the part you started insulting me.
 
bigstusexy said:
I saw this thread title and I was thining "Hmmm HIRE ME!" just as a joke, then I saw your location as chicago and I got even more excited... the I saw where the business is going to be :(. I wish you and your friends luck.
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Thanks! had we not already had more then enough hands and minds to do the job, I am sure we would consider you, but as it stands we have plenty of ready prospective employees.
 
after more consideration I am thinking of this UPS solution.

APC Smart-UPS XL 3000VA RM 3U 120V
Part Number: SU3000RMXL3U
Estimated Resale Price*: $1,425.00

APC Smart-UPS 48V RM 3U External Battery Pack
Part Number: SU48R3XLBP
Estimated Resale Price*: $679.00

should provide at least 15 minutes full cabinet runtime, and a lot less expensive then 10k.
I want to config the game servers to shut down immediately upon a switch to battery, that should extend runtime quite a bit.
 
jaqie said:
thanks for crapping in my thread. go away.
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lol

Give it a run. I'm interested to see how you do. ;)

I like your UPS selection. Just get lots of spare batteries, because the APC setups we had at School (we had the servers for the computer district, including the T1 hookups) ate batteries like I eat popcorn. Also get a dolly for those because they were so damn heavy that it took 2 of us to move one of them. :p
 
jaqie said:
thanks for crapping in my thread. go away.
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Easy there.

I was gonna add some advice, but I'll have to sit down and read this short story when I got a bit more time.
 
The wireless shouldn't be so hard to do. Sonicwall and Firebox both make products that allow a seperate public wireless segment if you are going freeby. If you want to charge there are prepackaged products out there for becoming "hot spot provider" though I have zip experience with them.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/15/boingo_linksys/

Radius is just a means of authenticating remote users. Many places use it so that their VPN devices (the firewall on the edge of the network) can ask a common server if this account is valid. That one a user has a single account (say in an AD) and can authenticate with that into the VPN device. I think if you are going to tie this authentication on other requirements (like they paid their bill) you are going to need some additional software in between, but I have no idea what it is.

http://www.google.com/search?q=what...eid=firefox&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Any just for some more .02...I didn't think Cheech was insulting so chill a sec
 
1. I took your UPS solution to mean some marine batteries, a ripped apart APC, and a lot of soldering. It was not my intention to insult you, but that is what I was envisioning your solution to be. I apologize.

2. See above. You really need an enterprise solution if you are going to do this right.

3. My expertise wanes when it comes to wireless. I would seek a second opinion on this, but from what I know, it will be hard to pull off.

4. I understand very well what you had planned on doing with it. You can't have simple air cooling for a rack full of servers/APC/SAN/bunch of HD's/etc. To do it right you will probably need an AC unit. For that you will need to seal off the rack (putting an plastic/whatever enclosure around the entire rack) Problematic. Shove it into a room, knock down a portion of the wall so you can make a window, and call it a day.

5. I read the entire post, multiple times actually. I agree with your planning strategy, but this is going to get scaled down real fast once the numbers start crunching.

Also, I didn't clarify myself, you should run gigabit as a BACKBONE to the thin clients, then 100BT out to all of them.

Again, it was not my intention to insult you, I have seen a few of my friends see that asshat on TV screaming about free money, and I assumed you were one of them. My mistake, I apologize.

jaqie said:
ok, no, I am not a f*** moron, {edit} I was thinking of a symmetra but not nessecarily.

ok one it was just an idea and two I had heard about an APC that took marine batts.

this would be an idea that can easily go by the wayside. and it was just that, an idea. honestly? if people can set up dialup servers to deny people when they hadn't paid their accounts, we could do the same with wireless clients. I had been told it was RADIUS that did that.

You did not understand what i had planned on doing with it. I had planned on having it in the lobby for everyone to see we knew networking very well, and servers, but Ive been worrying very strongly about it being a security risk. I bet this idea will get nixxed anyways, if not by the biz manager then by me. And you didnt even read what I had posted I think, about me running some air cooling solution into it from underneath.

Actually, no, I wasnt referring to that. And I do know how loans work. Also, I am going to be scaling this idea back very soon to deal with the cost. I even said that in the initial post, again did you not read carefully?

your two cents was pretty good, except the part you started insulting me.
Click to expand...
 
’m‚³‚ñ said:
lol

Give it a run. I'm interested to see how you do. ;)

I like your UPS selection. Just get lots of spare batteries, because the APC setups we had at School (we had the servers for the computer district, including the T1 hookups) ate batteries like I eat popcorn. Also get a dolly for those because they were so damn heavy that it took 2 of us to move one of them. :p
Click to expand...

hehehe, did you have a Symmetra stand-alone unit? Those things are heavy as hell. The batts for the Symmetra RM's aren't too bad.
 
If you plan on doing some type of web hosting you are gonna need a different power solution than you have set out. Bisnesess are not going to want there web site down, you are going to need to provide them with some serious uptime. That brings generator into mind. Also, will you be alowing clients remote managment of their webistes. If so you need to setup a way for authentication and the such.

Also as far as putting the server cabinet in the middle of the sales room may be a problem. Especially with insurance company's. Not that anyone will run into it or something. But I mean that insurance company's will often require you to have it in an air-tite room that has the proper type of fire suppression system. You also need to check out your local building codes regarding this. Where I work the above suggestion is the very problem we have.

Personally as far as a router would go. I would buy something dedicated to the task. There are alot more points of failure with a PC doing routing than a dedicated network devices. This also brings to mind another point with hosting web sites. Say your a company and you want your website hosted by your company. I would probably want to see specs on everything that would have to do with my web site. The server its hosted on the network topology and the devices in it. The security, what type of firewall you have, bandwidth available, what type of virus protection etc, etc. If you start saying well, we have this little PC here handling all our routing for the entire org that might be turn off. Just some thoughts.

Servers: Personally I prefer compaq/hp. Easier (in my opinion) to configure/buy the way you want them. I am not going to give any advice as far as gaming machines go because I dont have any expirience.

"No, I will NOT be going with intel" Like I said two points up. I would want my webisite run on a server that has garaunteed support from the vendor that has a quick turn around on parts and tech support. Having "Home built" server would be another turn off.

I'm not trying to insult you or anything just trying to provide you with some thoughts to help you furthur your idea. I wish you and your partners all the luch in the world and hope you trully succedd.
 
J said:
If you plan on doing some type of web hosting you are gonna need a different power solution than you have set out. Bisnesess are not going to want there web site down, you are going to need to provide them with some serious uptime. That brings generator into mind. Also, will you be alowing clients remote managment of their webistes. If so you need to setup a way for authentication and the such.

Also as far as putting the server cabinet in the middle of the sales room may be a problem. Especially with insurance company's. Not that anyone will run into it or something. But I mean that insurance company's will often require you to have it in an air-tite room that has the proper type of fire suppression system. You also need to check out your local building codes regarding this. Where I work the above suggestion is the very problem we have.

Personally as far as a router would go. I would buy something dedicated to the task. There are alot more points of failure with a PC doing routing than a dedicated network devices. This also brings to mind another point with hosting web sites. Say your a company and you want your website hosted by your company. I would probably want to see specs on everything that would have to do with my web site. The server its hosted on the network topology and the devices in it. The security, what type of firewall you have, bandwidth available, what type of virus protection etc, etc. If you start saying well, we have this little PC here handling all our routing for the entire org that might be turn off. Just some thoughts.

Servers: Personally I prefer compaq/hp. Easier (in my opinion) to configure/buy the way you want them. I am not going to give any advice as far as gaming machines go because I dont have any expirience.

"No, I will NOT be going with intel" Like I said two points up. I would want my webisite run on a server that has garaunteed support from the vendor that has a quick turn around on parts and tech support. Having "Home built" server would be another turn off.

I'm not trying to insult you or anything just trying to provide you with some thoughts to help you furthur your idea. I wish you and your partners all the luch in the world and hope you trully succedd.
Click to expand...

This is why I recommended the PIX. What if the PSU/HD/RAM/mobo goes out on the router PC? Bye bye income for a day/2/5. This is not acceptable to anyone, and it sure as hell shouldn't be to you. Get a dedicated solution.
 
from what im reading it seems as if you are dumping all your money in hardware for the servers/pc's as opposed to the structure that will support the servers/pc's.

You originally stated you wanted a t-1 as a backup to cable. Does this mean your primary isp will be a cable internet provider? If so, this is definately not a method of service that should be used for web hosting.

If you are going to be running a game center, internet cafe, webhosting and pc repair shop your cable internet connection is going to get flooded REALLY fast. Even a full t-1 can get swamped very easily. Your customers are going to care more about reliability than speed. If you loose power for three hours and one of your web hosting clients is not able to receive/send email, take web orders, process fullfillment etc.. then they will be one very unhappy customer.

One thing that should not be skimped on is the foundation on which your network will run. If you are going to have 5 workstations and 2-3 servers then yeah maybe a netgear or linksys switch will work for you. But take into consideration that there are reasons that cisco makes the switches they do. You will also need to be able to manage your switches to ensure that some kid doesnt come into your cafe and suck up all your bandwidth.

I'm sure you are competant but it seems that your focusing all your energy on these computers with massive power and not having the foundation for it to rest on.

Also, your going to spend quite a bit of money on a cabinet so that you can display the game servers and have them fully locked up in the showroom/retail area. It makes much more business sense to not have these out in the open and even risking the chance of someone tampering with the systems, i.e... placing htem in the back with the other pc's.


Not trying to crap on your thread of anything, just wanted to offer some suggestions.
 
well I missed the comment three posts up, and my comment pretty much said the same thing, sorry to double post
 
thanks a ton all! I really appreciate it!

I agree about the webhost, scratch that idea. I also talked with a friend and decided that if I have anything to say about it we will be contracting him out for setup(freeBSD part I can do the rest) and consulting. He and I have already talked at length about it and thus the setup I have in mind has changed radically. Ill be editing the original post in a bit to reflect the new setup.
 
i second the opinion regarding the Cisco PIX and Catalyst switches...With lower grade hardware, you always run the risk of problems.

If you need Cisco hardware, i'm more than happy to help....remember also, Cisco does not transfer warraties on software if you purchase the routers/firewalls second hand. you have to buy it new in order to get the full warranty. Also, their support packs are top-notch and would be worth purchasing along with the router.

cheers,

dave
 
deuce868 said:
The wireless shouldn't be so hard to do. Sonicwall and Firebox both make products that allow a seperate public wireless segment if you are going freeby. If you want to charge there are prepackaged products out there for becoming "hot spot provider" though I have zip experience with them.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/15/boingo_linksys/

Radius is just a means of authenticating remote users. Many places use it so that their VPN devices (the firewall on the edge of the network) can ask a common server if this account is valid. That one a user has a single account (say in an AD) and can authenticate with that into the VPN device. I think if you are going to tie this authentication on other requirements (like they paid their bill) you are going to need some additional software in between, but I have no idea what it is.

http://www.google.com/search?q=what...eid=firefox&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Any just for some more .02...I didn't think Cheech was insulting so chill a sec
Click to expand...

Cisco Aironet access points are better, IMHO and have better security. The 1200 series is just plain awesome.

cheers,

dave
 
maxedoutcc said:
from what im reading it seems as if you are dumping all your money in hardware for the servers/pc's as opposed to the structure that will support the servers/pc's.

You originally stated you wanted a t-1 as a backup to cable. Does this mean your primary isp will be a cable internet provider? If so, this is definately not a method of service that should be used for web hosting.

If you are going to be running a game center, internet cafe, webhosting and pc repair shop your cable internet connection is going to get flooded REALLY fast. Even a full t-1 can get swamped very easily. Your customers are going to care more about reliability than speed. If you loose power for three hours and one of your web hosting clients is not able to receive/send email, take web orders, process fullfillment etc.. then they will be one very unhappy customer.

One thing that should not be skimped on is the foundation on which your network will run. If you are going to have 5 workstations and 2-3 servers then yeah maybe a netgear or linksys switch will work for you. But take into consideration that there are reasons that cisco makes the switches they do. You will also need to be able to manage your switches to ensure that some kid doesnt come into your cafe and suck up all your bandwidth.

I'm sure you are competant but it seems that your focusing all your energy on these computers with massive power and not having the foundation for it to rest on.

Also, your going to spend quite a bit of money on a cabinet so that you can display the game servers and have them fully locked up in the showroom/retail area. It makes much more business sense to not have these out in the open and even risking the chance of someone tampering with the systems, i.e... placing htem in the back with the other pc's.


Not trying to crap on your thread of anything, just wanted to offer some suggestions.
Click to expand...


She meant T1 and if it goes out switchover to cable.
 
Cheech said:
hehehe, did you have a Symmetra stand-alone unit? Those things are heavy as hell. The batts for the Symmetra RM's aren't too bad.
Click to expand...

I don't remember. I do remember them being small and VERY VERY heavy. I accused the school of storing Plutonium in them every time I had to move them. :p

I'm still one for starting small and expanding. Once you get a small setup up and working smoothly, add in a few more things. Don't just get all of this stuff then spend like 2 years configuring it. Plus, it's easier on the budget. :p

You will also need to be able to manage your switches to ensure that some kid doesnt come into your cafe and suck up all your bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Kid: Look! b00bies!

Other customers: Why won't my pages load? Is the service down or something?

That actually brings up another point I had. Are you going to get a content filter for your intraweb access? You don't want that kid who comes in that eats up bandwidth downloading pr0n, virii, and all of that crap onto your network. I'm sure your *NIX systems are fine with it, but your Windowz machines will have hernias of the mobo. Plus, even if you do get a content filtering service, don't be surprised when someone gets around it ultra easily and looks at/downloads whatever they want. Hell, at HS, I brought in my own PC, got it hooked up, VPN'ed through a friend's cable server, and downloaded whatever I wanted to. It was being logged, so I didn't download anything bad, we just did it for giggles and shits.
 
one of the beauties of the setup im doing is...
1) bandwidth throttling to each subnet
2) the net browsers will be on thin clients, and that whole subnet is going to be under a TIGHT filter.
3) game systems will be on their own subnet and filtered pretty well too.
we WILL be monitoring the systems and making people register to use the stuff. with IDs.

I am still working on the repost to the first post with my SEVERELY altered configuration.
im making it really complete and detailed...

Also, I have decided to have a good friend of mine do the freeBSD setup and hardware consulting. I have conferred with him at length, and also thought about what people said here, that is the cause of the network system overhaul.
 
ok my .02 do you guys realize saying that home built machines arent good for servers is an all out lie??? look at the servers that hardocp and the hardforums sit on, and has anyone checked out rackspace...
 
bignasty said:
ok my .02 do you guys realize saying that home built machines arent good for servers is an all out lie??? look at the servers that hardocp and the hardforums sit on, and has anyone checked out rackspace...
Click to expand...
<rayden voice>EXACTLY!</rayden voice>
 
bignasty said:
ok my .02 do you guys realize saying that home built machines arent good for servers is an all out lie??? look at the servers that hardocp and the hardforums sit on, and has anyone checked out rackspace...
Click to expand...


and look how long harforums was down :)

Brian
 
maxedoutcc said:
and look how long harforums was down :)
Click to expand...
ugh. the stupid hosting service didnt do something right, it WASNT hardware failure :rolleyes: check the ANNOUNCEMENT at the top of each forum.
...when the hard forums was slow it was a software wasnt up to the task + hardware was too small to run the load. get your facts straight.
 
I thought the board had been upgraded to run on a top of the line dual AMD system a little bit ago? :confused:
 
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