Skip to main content

Server Spec Guidelines

The following features and options should be included when purchasing a new server:

  • Rack-mount form factor with mounting rails
  • Fully licensed IPMI, iDRAC, out-of-band management interface with remote control
  • TPM (Trusted Platform Module)
  • 2 system disks, to be mirrored. If the vendor offers a basic hardware RAID mirror (like the Dell BOSS card), get that. Otherwise, we'll mirror the disks in software.
  • For ARTSCI, get 10G SFP+ network interface, or plan to also buy the appropriate adapters and transcievers to connect to our 10G fiber network. It's single-mode SR with LC connectors.
  • For ENGR, work with someone from the Linux infrastructure team to determine what network interface type you need
  • If possible, do not get the front bezels
  • If possible, do not get the rear cable management arms

Helpful Information​

Hard disk sizes​

Vendors advertise disk capacity in terabytes, which is a base-10 count of bits in the disk. Computers allocate space in tebibytes, which is a base-2 count of bits. Be aware of the differences in advertised sizes when calculating how much you need.

For example:

10 TB (terabytes) = 9.09 TiB (tebibytes)

RAID configurations and capacity​

When planning for a large storage volume, be aware of the space consumed by general filesystem overhead and the amount of space consumed by parity data. RAID6 and RAIDz2 volumes use 2 disk's worth of space for parity data. Some configurations require multiple RAID6 or RAIDz2 volumes to achieve a desired capacity.

Basically, plan to purchase ~20% more disks than the required capacity.