I've made the decision to finally purchase a server for my company and our clients, but I need some help choosing the right one.

What are you recommendations for what type/brand of server to buy? I'm looking for a good, reliable server to host about a hundred sites.

Thanks for your help!

You need to either build one up/buy one ready made and co-locate it at a data centre, I guess you will not be running it from your company site. The way most people do it is rent from a data centre. Take a look at ThePlanet.com also LayeredTech.com

Thanks for the advice, Duport. I'm looking to attempt owning my own server for many reasons... partly because I want to see how well my company can handle managing all the hosting for our clients, and partly because I want to be able to monitor everything in-house. So, in this case, I would actually prefer to run it out of my office as opposed to renting out space on a data center's server.

Any ideas what type of server to get in this case?

OK well if you have got a lot of money to spend I would get an AMD Dual Opteron Server, a 244 is nice and will out-perform all XEON servers. There is a newer higher model 246 or 248 I cannot remember, it will last you many good years.

http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v20z/index.jsp

See the chart on that page, also I found a 248 but dam it is expensive.


http://store.sun.com/CMTemplate/CESe...lected=0&PROMO

Sun Fire V20z Server w/2 AMD Opteron 248 CPUs,2-GB Memory,73-GB 10000 RPM Ultra320 SCSI Disk,2 10/100/1000 Ethernet Ports,CD & Floppy Drives,PCI-X Slots,AC Power Supply,Power Cord,Linux/Solaris x86 Media Kit,Short Lead Time Promotion,Web Exclusive

Thank You! That information is very helpful. I take it you'd recommend a Sun Microsystems server as opposed to an IBM or other brand? Any reason for this in particular?

No reason just came across it and though you may find it useful

I think you can go with a server at LiquidWeb, very reliable and fast. It's not the cheapest, but suport is awesome and uptime is 100%

Regards.

Liquidweb is a provider, they want to store the server onsite.