I need some help from the computer gurus on this board. My friend runs a small photo lab and wants me to help him set up an ftp server so that his clients has the convenience of uploading files to him for printing instead of always driving over to his shop and bringing him the dvd.

He had a company quote him a system and they recommended the following specs:

2 xeon e5630
Tyan 5520 dual processor board
2 600gb 10,000rpm drives
1000W power supply
Windows Server 2008
2 blu-ray writers
Server chasis

All for 4,100 just for system and windows install only. No FTP setup yet.

My question is, since he will only be handling ftp traffic, is it really necessary for such a monster of a computer? Could an i7 sandy bridge do just as well?

He only has DSL connection of 6Mb/s down (I forgot how much upload is) from ATT if that makes any difference as an idea of how many people will probably be on the connection at once goes.

Trying to save him some money so any help is appreciated.

 

I don't mean to oversimplify, but if he wants to save cash, has he looked at dropbox?

For $10 a month you can have a 50GB repository for transferring files from clients.

2GB is free, but may not be big enough if he has high volume.

 

Stogie, I was thinking about that too actually. It would seem to be less headache as far as setting up static IPs, bandwidth usage, server maintenance, etc..

I will suggest it to him and see what he thinks since he's not sure how many of his clients will be using this option.

Do you have an opinion on i7 vs xeon as far as ftp server goes? The last ftp server i built was back when Pentium 4 and rdram was the bomb so I have very little clue on what is going on with the processor industry.

 

Wow those guys are assholes!!! Get a BAS box that supports FTP for a few hundred if all he needs is network storage. Or dropbox like stogie said

 

I would go with what Stogie/Stunna said.

That being said. I would do a i5 or i3(i7 is overkill for an ftp server).
Also use some Linux distrib, it is free and has FTP built in
I would also so 3 drives in a raid 5 config on the MB (and no need for 10k drives this is going across the internet and that will be the bottleneck not the disk)

 

Thanks for the input guys. Just wanted to confirm xeon is overkill for what he wants to do.

 

I think he found a vendor who wanted to sell him a Ferrari as a grocery getter. EVERYTHING there was overkill.

 

Just how much traffic is your customer expecting?

What was detailed in your post is great, if 10,000 people are connecting to that server every day. If it's just a dozen or so uploading a few megabytes per day, then the specs are so overkill it's like hiring a tractor trailer to do your grocery shopping with. Yeah, it's that bad.

Given that he has a DSL connection that is asynchronous, then buy the smallest processor you can find, run a 64-bit O/S, I would suggest Linux, with 8GB of memory, along with 2 TB of HDD space in a RAID array, probably RAID 10. Why so much memory? So that the system can handle several users coming in at once, 8GB is a bit of overkill, but memory is cheap, and you never know if all 10 customers may try uploading at once. The big thing that would add a ton of cost here is a RAID card. Built in controllers are not enterprise quality at all, and as a matter of fact I refuse to use their RAID capabilities in any of my builds, it just isn't worth it to me. Adding a decent 3rd party RAID controller will add $200 to $500 to the build

Uptime requirements will add a lot of cost. If he needs more than 95% uptime, which is what a desktop is typically considered, then it will start getting expensive, but considering he probably does not have an SLA on his DSL connection, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

How much should this cost?

Without 3rd party RAID controller: $600 to $800. Depending on how many drives you stuff in.

With: Add ~$300 to the above.

 

For what he's trying to do - way overkill. Dropbox is probably best. Another option is a hosted FTP service thru any major web hosting provider - probably ends up costing $10 a month for that.

And WTF to 2 blue-ray writers on an FTP server? If you need to get data off, just use a USB HD?

 

The cheapest PC at Walmart would make a kickass FTP server.

The question is how technical are his users? Could they handle uploading to a straight FTP server or do they need a web front end?

If it's really just straight FTP I agree with Pete2010, have it hosted somewhere for a few bucks a month. Much less headache.