SHOPPING FOR PHYSICAL SERVERS

As an IT specialist, Choosing the right Server hardware that would service your clients,with high availability, fault tolerance,scalability, recovery...and all that good stuff is one of the hardest decisions you have to make. Most times for Us its a matter of trading off between choosing what's good for the company, what allows you the opportunity to research and learn new technologies and also choosing something that wouldn't be too expensive whilst ensuring good ROI(Return On Investment).
Server in their broadest of categories, like houses differ in shapes and sizes, a few notable ones are:

Small, floor-standing towers or rack-mounted 1U and 2U servers.
 Medium-sized, floor-standing towers or larger rack-mounted servers.
 Blade centers and blade servers.
 Large floor-standing servers, includingmainframes.
 Specialized fault-tolerant, rugged and embedded processing or real-time
servers.
 Virtual servers or virtualmachines (VMs) running on physical servers.
Cloud servers (essentially a VMservice offering).


Functionally, servers could be further classified as follows:


TIER 0:
•Mission critical
• Business cannot function without
• Time sensitive
• Highly available
• Low RTO & RPO
•Must be secure
• Time ismoney
• Downtime is a lost opportunity



TIER 1:
• Business essential
• Some impact to business
• Good availability
• Low to medium RTO and RPO
• Some downtime can be tolerated


TIER 2:
• Business important
• Little impact to business
• Some delay OK
• Basic availability
•Medium RTO/RPO
• Downtime is tolerated


TIER 3:
• Business optional
•Minimal disruption
• Delay tolerable
• Some availability
• High RTO/RPO

These means of classification still barely scratch the surface of the store of servers available in the IT market.Physical server manufacturers such as Apple Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. (Unified Computing Systems), Dell Inc., EMC (Vblock), Fujitsu, NEC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM, Oracle Corp./Sun, Silicon  Graphics International Corp.and SuperMicro Computer Inc. are represented by a mix of direct sales, direct touch markets and technical support, as well as channel value-added resellers (VARs) and solution providers tha tbundle their applications with different hardware offerings.So we can see that today's IT infrastructure department have their jobs picked out for them whether they are designing a new server infrastructure from scratch or integrating/consolidating a new server into an existing infrastucture.

three steps are key in making the decision as to what physical server  to buy:

MUST KNOW YOUR NEEDS AND REQUIREMENTS
what kind of services are to be hosted on the server?what are the virtualization /cloud needs? what are the storage needs? what are the availability needs to meet service level agreements(SLAs)? what are the existing Failover/clustering solutions(if any..)?amount of physical space available in the data center? what are your forecasts for growth requirements?

UNDERSTAND YOUR OPTIONS
consider the server categories and tiers talked about earlier.whether it be blade servers or just plain old rack servers or mainframes.talk about processors  if you'r buying a single socket,single core,single threaded processor then you know that that computer will at best execute one instruction in a cycle,single socket,dual core-2 instructions,dual socket,quad core-8 instructions then you start to wrap your head around 32-bit and 64-bit machines.talk about memory,Main memory or RAM, also known as dynamic RAM(DRAM) chips, is
packaged in different ways, with a common form being dual inline memory modules. DRAMmemory access
speed is referred to in terms of older DDR2 (667MHz) or newer DDR3 (1333MHz). RAMmain memory on a server is the fastest form of memory, second only to internal processor or chip-based registers—L1, L2 or local memory. In general, more memory is better; however, the speed of the memory is also very important.



Take a look at what functionality is built into the server or provided on server blades for general-purpose
networking along with attachment of disk storage. What is there in terms of 10 Gb Ethernet (10 GbE), and how many ports as well as 3G (3Gb) or 6G (6Gb) Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) for disk storage attachment
(internal or external), along with serial, video and USB ports? Also look at expansion capabilities for additional mezzanine cards for blade servers, or PCI-E cards for networking, storage and other peripherals.
PCI SIGMulti-Root IO Virtualization (MR-IOV), a relatively new and emerging feature for servers, enables
advanced connectivity, including adapter sharing.MR-IOV will enable multiple, physically separate adjacent
servers to share a PCI-E adapter card, allowing the virtualization of servers that otherwise could not be
consolidated.MR-IOV can also boost scaling capabilities beyond normal physical limits in high-density servers by placing adapter cards in shared external expansion slots.


FINALLY,PUT IT ALL TOGETHER RIGHT
simple, install the softwares that would optimize your server hardware.(e.g don't plan to install 32-bit software on your 64-bit machine)
Know your requirements,know your wants, stay within budget whilst ensuring high ROI. Have fun Buying!

TIPS FOR MANAGING YOUR COMPUTER SOFTWARE

I usually tell my friends that "computers dont just crash". more than likely, if anything goes wrong trust me ITS YOU!! either directly or in some remote way. I got two calls this week to fix one dell inspiron desktop(a very old model!!) and one LG laptop(cant remember the model). what they had in common was that their users' were doing things they shouldn't be doing. so i decide to let you guys know 10 things i think would improve youre general computer usage experience.Personallly, i believe software is always on top of hardware so i'm starting with software management tips. follow me:

1.Remember that the most important software on your computer is the Operating System.

2. Install genuine windows/provider Operating system.

3. As a benefit of  (2.) above, make sure you install any operating system patches in form of service packs or fixes.

4. Make sure you have a personal inventory of every application software  you install/uninstall.(the operating syatem itself keeps track of this information in event viewer(start-control panel-administrative tools-event viewer)) its only fair that you have yours.

5. Make sure you only install software from TRUSTED sources.

6. Make sure you always check the company website of important software that you use for sofware updates(this is essential because, your software provider works day and night to find and close-up loop-holes in their software, the closing up is in form of updates or newer enhancements)

7. Install a good anti virus software( i wont go into the argument of which is the best?!?!?!).

8. BE PATIENT. When users click a button and its taking more time than usual to respond,i notice that  users always respond to this by clicking more and more. i want to let you know that the OS now has to respond to the first click,and your zillion subsequent clicks.

9.If you notice any unusual computer behaviour just after u install a software. do a system restore(start-all programs-accessories-system tools- system restore) this restores your computer to its state before certain installations. simply uninstalling the software might not fully remove all the traces of the software(to make sure this works well you can use windows clean-up tool. download this at http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Windows-Installer-CleanUp-Utility-Download-18442.html

10. After all said and done, the software is meant to run over hardware. Make sure your installed hardaware meet the pre-requisite for any software you are installling.Not to mention that your softwares should be interoperable(see 9. above)


AND ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR CRITICAL DATA.

Keep pressing F8