Linux Server Hardware Examples

The minimum specifications for your Linux server hardware depend on the role the server is going to play, what processes will run and how many users it will have. To a lesser degree how you interact with your server will determine what hardware is required as well, if your machine is on the borderline of being too slow at the best of times performance will fall off the moment you type startx. A well run Linux server does not necessarily need to have the latest and greatest hardware to perform acceptably. Here are a few examples of some of the Linux servers I have been involved with so you can get a feel of what kind of hardware is required. These are real machines that are in operation right now and working just fine in their given roles.

Celeron 400mhz 512mb RAM 10gb SCSI Hard Disk	Apache 1.3.XX Webserver Sendmail Spamassassin ClamAV	Our first example of Linux server hardware is my own personal mailserver. It provides mail services to myself and my immediate family with a total of about 10 active email accounts. The machine also has a webserver that is used for developing sites such as this and was used in the past to display all of our websites that were written in XHTML. Despite its small specs this machine remains quite underutilized and is virtually idle the majority of the time.
Pentium IV 1.6ghz 512mb RAM 20gb IDE Hard Disk	Apache 1.3.41 Webserver PHP 5 Mysql 5.0.26 Radiator 4.4 ImageMagick	This Linux server does light duties as a general webserver and backup radius server. Traffic is fairly heavy as there are several commercial websites hosted on the machine, almost all of them utilizing PHP with a database back end. The machine is also a standby radius server that is rarely utilized but when called upon it fullfills this role perfectly without any noticable degradation in web performance.
Pentium IV 2.4ghz 1024mb RAM 2 X 80gb IDE Hard Disk (RAID)	Sendmail Spamassassin ClamAV Milter Greylist Apache 1.3.41 Webserver Open Webmail	This Linux server provides POP and SMTP email service to an ISP and hosts around 5000 email accounts at any given time. ClamAV antivirus is installed as a spamassassin plugin and every email the server receives is scanned to ensure that a minimum of spam and viruses reach the users inbox. 10,000 mailboxes would be the upper limit that this machine would function acceptably.
Intel Core 2 Quad 2048mb RAM 2 X 146gb SCSI Hard Disk (RAID)	Radiator Radius Server Mysql	This particular server is at the upper end of the scale. Its sole purpose is to collect and store all the radius accounting data for a large ISP. The data is stored in a Mysql database and is collected by an instance of Radiator radius server that is configured to act as an accounting proxy. Users are authenticated off another radius server that passes all accounting data to this machine. Without a doubt this server works for a living.