Conclusions, Troubleshooting, and Documentation

Choosing the right server platform for your project is essential to achieving a server solution that will be satisfactory today and will be able to grow with your needs. Here are some methods that will help you avoid problems and diagnose them when they appear:

• Gather system and chipset-specific documentation for your platform. You can find countless pages of documentation from chipset and system vendors, most of it available online in HTML or PDF format. You should download as much of this information as possible and order anything not available electronically in paper or CD-ROM format.

• Familiarize yourself with the features and limitations of your server platform. The chipset is the server! If the chipset isn't designed to work with a particular type of memory or with a particular processor type, you must do without that particular change or consider an upgrade.

• Use the troubleshooting and technical resources provided by the operating system and hardware vendors. Some vendors provide downloadable programs that can be used to check compatibility or perform tests on components.

• Keep your information up-to-date. Don't forget to download specification updates for your system and chipset.

• If you use a search engine to locate solutions, there are a couple ways you can save your information for easier access. You can use the Save as PDF option in Adobe Acrobat 5.0 or greater to create a PDF (Acrobat Reader) version of a web page. With Internet Explorer, you can choose Save as Web Archive to save all the contents of a web page in a single file.