Ok I need some help from the 'interweb' We (our small engineering firm) are looking to upgrade our servers that have been working great for us for the last 5 years. Since I've taken on the task of being the 'IT guy', I've been asked to come up with a budget for servers that we can get another 3-5years out of. We contract out our IT work for the day to day stuff, but they are not very 'creative' when it comes to spec'ing out a server (usually it's what ever dell is currently offering)
We are a 4 person firm with one person who remotes in to do the accounting once or twice a week. I am in a 'remote' location working by myself with the backup server (running DFS over a WAN), so we have 5 full time staff right now, and it might grow by 2 or 3 in the next year.
Here is what we have currently:
Main Office
-Cisco 2811
-Cisco G/Bit level 2 Switch
-SBS 2003 r1 with exchange
-Supermicro 2U Dual Xeon 3.0 Ghz Xeons (604type) with 4GB of ram (this is a 2007 vintage)
-3Ware 9550x 8i(PCI-X) with BBU
160GB WD RE (7200rpm sata 1.5) x5 (1 hot spare) RAID 5
(This machine acts as our DC/Exchange/File Server - and DFS to remote office)
Total data over our 5years is around 200GB
I ran a kill-a-watt on it last week, it's drawing about 230watts at idle and runs up to 270watts under load.
Users at this office currently are 1 Admin, The boss, and 1 engineer (CAD, etc)
-We are looking to add another engineer and CAD technician in the next year at this location.
--I've got an old pc running WHSv1 doing nightly backups of the accounting server and the SBS server -I will upgrade this after we migrate to new servers
Remote office
Cisco 1841
Dlink 2208 G/b switch
Server 2003 standard
-Tower Server
-Intel S3000AHV (a very basic board)
-Xeon 3050 (2.13Ghz) with 3GB of ram
-3Ware 9550se 4i Sata II Raid 5 with BBU
-500Gb WD RE2 7200rpm x 2
-500Gb Barracuda ES 7200rpm x 2
Currently I have about 550GB of data on this end (most of it is not being replicated since it's large aerial photographs and terrain data)
Idles about 120watts peaks at 170watts
I do most of the GIS work for us, so the remote server sees most of the heavy file serving. I can and have so overloaded the network between me and the server (about 6 ft long) that my machine times out and kicks me to the main office!
This is how I see our overall options:
1. Put two new simple file servers in running server 2008 Foundation and keep the SBS 2003 and taking the file sharing duties off of it.
2. Ditch SBS all together and have exchange hosted offsite and run 2 foundation servers.
3. Replicate what we have now, SBS 2011 standard and the main office and use either standard or foundation server at the remote office, and ditch the old hardware.
On the hardware side of things I'm having an even harder time trying to balance performance and stability and price, (gotta love the flooding in Thailand!) Do I try to re-use any of the old hardware, is it worth it?
This is what I'm thinking:
Main office:
SSD boot/OS drive? -Like an Intel 510/520 or Samsung 830 series
4x500GB SATA server class drives running raid 10 on the MB chipset (1 hot spare?) for the data
Remote office:
Using the same config as the home office or,
A SSD boot drive
with a PCIE 600GB Velodrive or maybe even a Z drive for the data - Is this overkill? Since it's just me at this location and the data is replicating offsite could I just use a fast consumer SSD and do 1/2 day backups?
(Could I even get the data off the server fast enough though a gigabit pipe to my sandy bridge workstation? or would this saturate the link?)
Thanks,
Ken
We are a 4 person firm with one person who remotes in to do the accounting once or twice a week. I am in a 'remote' location working by myself with the backup server (running DFS over a WAN), so we have 5 full time staff right now, and it might grow by 2 or 3 in the next year.
Here is what we have currently:
Main Office
-Cisco 2811
-Cisco G/Bit level 2 Switch
-SBS 2003 r1 with exchange
-Supermicro 2U Dual Xeon 3.0 Ghz Xeons (604type) with 4GB of ram (this is a 2007 vintage)
-3Ware 9550x 8i(PCI-X) with BBU
160GB WD RE (7200rpm sata 1.5) x5 (1 hot spare) RAID 5
(This machine acts as our DC/Exchange/File Server - and DFS to remote office)
Total data over our 5years is around 200GB
I ran a kill-a-watt on it last week, it's drawing about 230watts at idle and runs up to 270watts under load.
Users at this office currently are 1 Admin, The boss, and 1 engineer (CAD, etc)
-We are looking to add another engineer and CAD technician in the next year at this location.
--I've got an old pc running WHSv1 doing nightly backups of the accounting server and the SBS server -I will upgrade this after we migrate to new servers
Remote office
Cisco 1841
Dlink 2208 G/b switch
Server 2003 standard
-Tower Server
-Intel S3000AHV (a very basic board)
-Xeon 3050 (2.13Ghz) with 3GB of ram
-3Ware 9550se 4i Sata II Raid 5 with BBU
-500Gb WD RE2 7200rpm x 2
-500Gb Barracuda ES 7200rpm x 2
Currently I have about 550GB of data on this end (most of it is not being replicated since it's large aerial photographs and terrain data)
Idles about 120watts peaks at 170watts
I do most of the GIS work for us, so the remote server sees most of the heavy file serving. I can and have so overloaded the network between me and the server (about 6 ft long) that my machine times out and kicks me to the main office!
This is how I see our overall options:
1. Put two new simple file servers in running server 2008 Foundation and keep the SBS 2003 and taking the file sharing duties off of it.
2. Ditch SBS all together and have exchange hosted offsite and run 2 foundation servers.
3. Replicate what we have now, SBS 2011 standard and the main office and use either standard or foundation server at the remote office, and ditch the old hardware.
On the hardware side of things I'm having an even harder time trying to balance performance and stability and price, (gotta love the flooding in Thailand!) Do I try to re-use any of the old hardware, is it worth it?
This is what I'm thinking:
Main office:
SSD boot/OS drive? -Like an Intel 510/520 or Samsung 830 series
4x500GB SATA server class drives running raid 10 on the MB chipset (1 hot spare?) for the data
Remote office:
Using the same config as the home office or,
A SSD boot drive
with a PCIE 600GB Velodrive or maybe even a Z drive for the data - Is this overkill? Since it's just me at this location and the data is replicating offsite could I just use a fast consumer SSD and do 1/2 day backups?
(Could I even get the data off the server fast enough though a gigabit pipe to my sandy bridge workstation? or would this saturate the link?)
Thanks,
Ken
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