Cobalt RaQ Servers

[Red Fox]

I'm curious about these servers and if anyone here has any experience with them. I am debating on the Cobalt RaQ550 1GHz,
512MB RAM, 2x40GB hard drives: or the Cobalt RaQ550 1.26GHz, 1GB RAM, 2x80GB hard drives. Most likely I will be swappping out the hard drives as I need more storage space than that.
I'm not worried about the cost of the hardware, I'm just curious about how they perform. I'm buying one to serve as an ftp platform amongst other things, as I have the need to privately host a file server. I am purchasing my own OC3 connection for this project, as I need to have an independant bandwidth source.
So if anyone has had experience with these machines, feel free to drop an opinion or two on me.
Thanks.

~ Fawks

 

[Red Fox]

To further add to this thought ..
I will be using a redundant OC3 and possibly a DS3 connection as well through Sprint, Group Telecom/360, BigPipe and peering through UUNet, Bellnexia and SaskTel utilizing Cisco 7200 routers and 3500/2950 switches. Call it a group effort if you will, there are about 15 of us going in on this venture.

~ Fawks

 

[sunsider]

I have used them before at work. We used to run them for our dial up isp service. We then got a contract with Dell and ended up having to swap over to the poweredge servers.
They are pretty relible for the most part. The only issue we had was as you said, not enough storage space, we upped our drive size, added a bit more memory (we were using the RaQ4r server model)
No real gripes, they did the job well. The only real issue I guess is the cost of the servers themselves. They tend to be pricy, but IMO they are worth it.
But not as expensive as that OC3 connection! That seems a bit extreme for an ftp service though, why not just go to a 3rd party host for that?

 

[Red Fox]

I was looking at the RaQ4 series, they were just a little slower proc wise than what we want it for. I have the hard drives already, and as you said they are a little expensive.
So, what kind of lines did you run from the server? Are we just talking typical dial up isp from the days of old? Or were you guys running the high speed connection?
We have been running test tracerts off the OC3 connection, and have some amazing ms times going from where the server will be based(with me) to some of the people who are furthest away. A friend from New Zealand drew an average of 64ms through the lines on high speed on his end. The closest to me which is about 3 hours off drew 15ms average !!!
But bear in mind, that was just the straight line, no routing or switches involved yet. So I do expect it to go up a little. But not much.
The OC3 is expensive yes, but it is well worth it. As having your own independant line to a server is priceless
It's not just for ftp purposes, there are a couple of the people who want to host sites from it, which is fine by us. May as well use it for that purpose too.

~ Fawks

 

[sunsider]

We would provide scalable dial-in, dial-out modem pooling and LAN-to-LAN connectivity for up to 96 (T1/PRI) or 120 (E1/PRI) simultaneous connections of remote analog, 56 Kbps- V.90, V.34 and ISDN BRI users.
For each server we ran, it would support service for up to 120 concurrent dial-up connections, either analog (V.90/K56Flex/V.34+) or digital (ISDN) Modem modulations: V.90, K56Flex, V.34 Annex 12, V.34, V.8, V.32bis, V.32, V.22, V.22bis, V.23, V.21, Bell 212A, Bell 103, Bell 202, EIA PN-2330 Software sync/async receiver/transmitter for V.14 V.42/V.42bis error correction and compression Make sense?

 

[Red Fox]

Thanks for the info. I'm picking up two of the RaQ550 models today, hopefully all goes well.

~ Fawks