[ale] Source for Inexpensive, Quiet, Low-Power, rackmount server?

[mike at trausch.us]

On 10/16/2012 11:52 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:
> I'm looking to offload my MySQL server off my MythTV hardware and onto
> its own server box.  This instance of MySQL handles not only MythTV data
> but also my Maia Mailguard, Zarafa, Gallery, and possibly other
> services.
> 
> I was considering an Atom-based 1U or 2U server.  Do you think this
> would be "powerful enough" for this application?  I'm not really sure
> how much CPU I would need, nor how well MySQL would run in this
> environment.

I think that even an older system (or a smaller one, like an RPi) might
actually work for you here.  As long as you have sufficient storage for
the database, that is.

MySQL doesn't require a lot of CPU to do most of its things, unless
you're doing very complex queries (and if you're doing that, then you
shouldn't be using MySQL in the first place, IMHO).

> I'd like something relatively quiet because it's living in my house, not
> in some rackspace machine room. I'd prefer to have 8GB of ram but all
> the Atom boxes I've found seem to max out at 4 (although I can aquire
> one for about $450 with an D2500HN Atom Dual Core 1.86GHz/4GB/160GB 5400RPM).

I don't have a single MySQL database server with that much RAM.  Most of
the systems I have deployed are for legacy systems, but I don't even
need to give PostgreSQL that much in the way of resources to get the
performance that I want out of my applications, which pleases me a
decent amount.  For something like a TV database I'd expect that 256M or
512M would work just fine.  All the production databases that I manage
take up < 2 GB on disk, and work nicely in 512M and 768M Xen DomU instances.

> Has anyone found any good sources for inexpensive servers?
>
> I was also considering an SSD for this application.  Do you experts feel
> that would help my application speeds?

BSD vs. Linux is more about footprint than raw speed.  Applications run
very similarly on both, IME.  I tend to use BSD when I have very small
things, or very old hardware, because it really shines there.

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                   --- Carveth Read, “Logic”

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