On Wed, 19 May 2010 18:18:28 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> Even today, I see people selling "servers" which are really like
>>> "desktops". (1.2 GHz Intel Celeron with 512 MB RAM? I don't think
>>> so...)
>> 
>> Depends on what the server is doing.  If it's just serving files up,
>> that's more than adequate; hell, I used to do file & print on an 80286
>> with 16 MB of memory.
> 
> Depends on how many files, of what size, to how many users.

Generally not, because file/print is I/O intensive, not CPU intensive.

Unless you start adding things like compression, encryption, block 
suballocation, and the like to the picture.

> Now the Domain Controller? *That* requires almost no hardware at all...

I can remember running 8 DCs (Windows 2000) on a Dual processor P2 
Proliant 6000.  Not for production, of course, but for testing an AD 
design.  VMware was pretty good for that setup. :-)

CPU becomes important when the server does actual processing tasks; 
memory when the server is doing other things as well - for example, 
running Apache, or using memory as a disk cache.

Jim

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