Re: Server Specs- sans SCO

I'll give it a stab. First we have to sober you up and get you off the SCO sauce (-:! Seriously- SCO Openserver is a D-O-G. We were Openserver users until I fired SCO for failure to honor their maintenence contract. Every time I had a serious question/ problem, their maintence people would answer that they weren't responsible for supporting 3rd party hardware. My response was that they were a 3rd party O/S and that if they wanted my business then they had better start. My experience with SCO was a lot of promises, a sale, a bunch of junk left at my door and no support. This may be differant in other areas but they will NOT get a second oppertunity to make me look bad in front of my management. Period, end of sad story. We have since moved to Sun Solaris. Informix runs well on our HP Netserver hardware with the Solaris Operating System. Networking Solaris is easy enough for even ME to be successful with it! From a hardware standpoint, there are several tracks you could follow. If you spend the money and go with a Sun Sparcserver, you won't be disapointed. As I noticed that you are working for/with a school district, then it gets trickier. Intel x-86 based servers are everywhere. Everybody from AST to Zenith sell something they are calling a server. Here you have to be careful in that you have a serious application and don't need just another PC in a bigger box. My favorite servers come from HP (the Netserver line) and AST. A close 3rd is Compaq. They are serious, have the right kind of I/O capability to do serious work and are scalable. All of their most current crops of servers can be configured to do a reasonable job of the task you outlined. Take a look at the following sights for more detailed info: www.sun.com www.ast.com www.hp.com www.compaq.com Just for laughs, look at ALR. They make good stuff too but I think they got swallowed by Gateway. Gadgets that you'll probably want on your server: ------------------------------------------------ SCSI (or SCSI-2) I/O bus and Disks RAID DAT tape backup CD-ROM drive (you'll be surprised at the vendors that leave it off if you don't ask) UPS (Don't leave home without one!) Remember that in big DBMS applications, processor Speed is NOT the end all, be all (but it helps). There are other system parameters that also critically impact access time. You can NEVER have too much RAM and disk access time is also critical. Once the server is up and running, expect to TUNE it for peak performance. (Perhaps budget for a consultant for this if you aren't comfortable doing it yourself). I wish you plenty of good luck with your project. Server shopping is FUN! Just remember that the worst that can happen is that you'll be lynched by an mob of angry end users! ;-) Cheers, James Ware SysAdmin and Ner'do well Stubbs wrote: > > I need to submit the specs. necessary to order a > server. I would like to get recommendations on > the speed and number of CPUs along with the > suggested amount of RAM. There will be approx. > 200 tables across 3-4 databases. 40+ users. > Largest tables will be approx. 25 million recs. > Informix-SE 7.14.UD1 running on SCO OpenServer 5.2. > Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated. > > Barry Stubbs > Windham School District -- ==================================================================== | James R. Ware | No Spam for me PLEASE! | | Systems Administrator | | | MS Dept. of Archives | | | PO Box 571 | | | Jackson, MS 39205 | phone/fax (601)359-6888 | ====================================================================