[LUNI] buy server

[Ramin K]

Constantin Gavrilescu wrote:
> I'm building a Linux file server for a small business. It's going to be 
> their first server.
> 
> Dell Small business has a very good deal on their website:
> PowerEdge SC440 - $449
> http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/featured_server?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd 
> 
> It's going to have 2 hard drives for (sofware) raid and 2 gig of ram so 
> I upped the price to $779. Still a good price. But the estimated 
> shipping date is 2/21/07. That's way too late. And I'm having some 
> doubts about their Broadcom Gigabit ethernet support in the linux kernel.

We ran over the past year an SC 420, three SC430, an SC1425, and an 
SC830 as our dev environment. Software raid worked fine in the SC430s 
and Adaptec AAC-RAID cards were well supported in the 1425 and 830. 
Never had a problem with the BCM nics using the tg3 driver from the 
kernel, models were 5721 and 5751. We run Gentoo so the kernel was 
fairly up to date, from 2.6.12 on up IIRC.

The only odd issues was occasionally the 420 couldn't find the drives if 
you booted it too quickly after plugging it in or some such weirdness. 
Letting it sit for a few minutes plugged in and then starting the 
machine made that go away.

Ramin