[Qgis-user] Hardware for GIS Server

[Alex Mandel]

On 07/26/2012 03:13 PM, Marcos wrote:
> Hello list,
> I am starting to study programming languages, and, believe or not, I m
> doing this just to contribute with Open Source GIS software development. I
> finished to read my first programming book and I am starting JavaScript -
> The Definitive Guide and JAVA-DEITEL.
> Well, I want to buy a server, but I don´t have any idea of "how to" choose
> a good server for me. What I want at this time is develop some basic
> applications for brazilian NGOs and small business, with no cost, to train
> my skills and work on a development environment.
> My questions are: how to choose a hardware webserver for GIS applications?
> what is the best Linux distribution to work with webgis?
> 
> If somebody can point me a good "Python for begginer´s" book, it will be
> very usefull.
> 
> Thank´s in advance,
> regards,
> 
> Marcos

It's really hard to spec a server without knowing what it actually needs
to do. You can test all of the components you want easily on a laptop
(almost any recent laptop). You could also just pay as you go with
things hosted on Linode, Amazon, Rackspace, or pay as you go for
specific services like Mapbox, CartoDB, QGIS Cloud etc...

In terms of OS: Ubuntu LTS, Debian Stable, Redhat/Centos or OpenSuse are
the most common and have many Geospatial packages prebuilt already.
OSGeo.org wiki has links to all of them. It's personal
preference/features expected/required to choose between them.

For testing I would recommend a good laptop or desktop and that you run
your server environment in a Virtual Machine using Virtual Box. Then
when you know what you plan to deploy you can pick out the right servers.

If you need something up now, just convert an old desktop. Minimum specs
would be 4 GB ram, 2 cores (any speed), and SATA drives.

Enjoy,
Alex