What are the Benefits of Server Hardware? [closed]
So the question is, what are the differences between server and desktop hardware and what do you gain by using server hardware for servers?
Others have mentioned management features which is a huge plus. Some have mentioned better supported products so I'll stay away from those solid points. All-in-all, with server hardware (in general) you typically gain 3 things (IMO):
Durability - Granted not everyone has an identical experience but server grade equipment seems to last a bit longer than their desktop counterparts. But even for prolonged (and stressful) usage, server hardware tends to hold up to the demands under the specifications provided by the manufacturer.
Stability/Reliability/Longer support - Usually better driver support for the appropriate OS. Desktop equipment may or may not have solid drivers but server hardware wouldn't sell without some serious attention to detail. Driver support is critical as well as serious testing of equipment. I find that once I pay for the server hardware, I worry less about this issue. If an issue does arise, manufacturers usually update the drivers/firmware/software/etc.
Scalable - The majority of most core server hardware (motherboards, CPU, RAM) anticipate upgrades to one degree or another. Most desktops do not anticipate a larger quantity of resources. This is usually a function of the motherboard chipset more than anything, but server chipsets are significantly different from desktops.
And for my specific case, are those gains worth the time and effort if it's a small time server for small time projects?
It sounds like a 'small-time' server is all you need but you may want to invest into the lower-end server hardware to gain more flexibility and try newer technologies such as virtualization, clustering, etc. etc. Granted the costs are higher for server hardware but just as in life, you get what you pay for.
I doubt the time and effort (and cash) is worth all the effort in your case. If you think you might someday (1-2 years) not too long decide to put more effort or energy into more services, then some server hardware might do you some good. Otherwise, save your cash for now until you know you're going to really use that server hardware to a greater extent.
In my experience, it's the little details that are put into server hardware that makes all the difference. Using desktop hardware or uber-cheap server hardware will be 95% fine (of course, 76% of all statistics are made up on the spot...) but it's that last 5% that will nickel and dime you, possibly to death.
For example, on desktop machines network cards will probably not have SNMP, WoL or other mass management capabilities. Javier's experience with NICs is an excellent example of desktop hardware simply not being robust enough.
Consumer/desktop hard drives are not manufactured for long run times, vibrational resistance, quite the level of error correction or quite the level of error reporting. You could, of course, buy more robust hard drives. But will the disk controller be able to detect those errors and report them? Which brings me to my next point...
Disk controllers are most certainly not going to be as fast nor, most importantly IMO, will they have the amount of error detection and reporting. ::casts contemptuous glance at a HP ML115 with nVidia onboard controller:: That ML 115 is a true-blue server, but a lowest-end model and even that has given me fits. I regret not being able to get a good disk controller. Don't skimp on disk controllers!
In general, the resources will not typically be up to handling the load, management capabilities or reliability standards that you would expect from something that's going to be running 24/7 for multiple users.
Also, server hardware manufacturers offer many software management tools for free like the ProLiant Support Pack for HP that can help manage the plethora of drivers and other system information points that lurk here and there.
For me, someone who uses small time servers and works on small time projects, I shudder to think about the 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there and even a whole weekend once in a while that have been taken up stepping on little bugs here and there because I didn't have something quite as robust as I could have had. Life's too short. Spend some extra cash and get some nicer kit!
Or not. It's up to you. There is certainly a lot to learn when you're running around spending so much time trying to patch up flaky systems. Just don't expect one of those things to be the name of your wife's new boyfriend. =P
For me, it's mostly about physical management, it's a lot neater if all your boxes are the same width and installed inside a rack or cabinet, instead of an assorted mix of desktop faceplates, with different heights.
It's easier to order the appropriate configuration, maybe big disks, or many smaller, or lots of RAM, always with skimpy onboard VGA. with desktop boards you get a lot of what you don't need, and too little of what's important. For example, it used to be very hard to get a good board with support for more than 4GB RAM.
some years ago, some 'desktop grade' (3Com) network boards had very limited drivers, and if you saturated the bandwidth for a few hours, they started to drop a lot of packets, seriously degrading performance. The 'server grade' board with the exact same specifications had the expected behavior for roughly twice the price.
Server hardware tends to be optimised for performance and reliability whereas desktop hardware tends to be built to a budget.
When you start looking at the Tier-1 server hardware vendors (IBM/HP/Dell, etc) you start seeing that a huge amount of work is done by these vendors to optimise the hardware by ensuring that they have reliable, standardised components. You will also find that added functionality such as hardware-level remote control and administration (using DRAC/iLO boards) and the vendors also usually offer massive software stacks that simplify OS installation and deployment. Server hardware also tends to have longer warranty periods.
Something which nobody else seems to have mentioned is that a lot of "real servers" (although not all, usually only the more expensive models) have out-of-band remote access cards, like Sun RSC/ILOM/ALOM cards and Dell DRAC cards. These have their own network connections, and let you do nice things like remotely power on/power off the server or get a console, eliminating the need for an IP-KVM in some cases.
Most allow you to access the system via a web interface, some allow telnet and SSH access. These are most useful when you have a separate out-of-band connection to the system, but even without that it can be a lifesaver to access a local tty without actually being there (ever accidentally break networking or SSH, or set your firewall to block all traffic?).
While this may not be useful to your specific use case (if the machine is sitting under your desk anyway, none of this will really be useful), it's a lifesaver when you're working with machines that are in a data centre/far away.
Edit: Just saw that AlexTEH mentioned DRACs :)