Hardware Advice for Win2012 Server

[spyromike]

Hello,

I'm considering bringing my company's cloud server in-house. Please offer any hardware / OS advice based on what our needs are.

We currently have 17 users - 8 are in the local office and the rest are remote. All users RDP into this machine and use it for Outlook, Word, Excel, QuickBooks, Adobe Acrobat - just basic business applications.

Our server also runs SmarterMail for our company email accounts (17 accounts plus 5 aliases) and hosts our website which gets very little traffic.

Our company has just hired on a few more employees and our old Win 2008 R2 server is struggling. We upped the RAM to 14GB, server runs on dual Xeon E5645's @ 2.40 GHz. C drive is 100GB, D drive is 200GB.

The current server is on the east coast and we are merely renting it. I'm considering building a server to manage our long-term expenses.

Our internet connection is with FiOS, we get about 80MB down and 35MB up. We can bump up our bandwidth to a higher package if we need. All of our remote employees are also in the western US. Our current server is on the east coast.

How critical is it to have Xeon processors? Our biggest complaints with our current setup are:

1. Lag Time due to connectivity to East Coast or Server CPU
2. Processor gets maxed out frequently
3. Expensive.

I'd like to have redundancy on the new system with some sort of RAID configuration. We are a real estate management company. If the server hiccups it only affects internal employees - it doesn't affect thousands of buyers/website visitors...our website gets hardly any traffic (maybe 50 hits a day). Do I really need an expensive XEON CPU system? Or can we do fine with something else?

I'm very PC friendly and have always built my home computers. I've only built 2 servers so while I am technically inclined, it is not my forte.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Mike

 

[aigomorla]

Hello,

All users RDP into this machine and use it for Outlook, Word, Excel, QuickBooks, Adobe Acrobat - just basic business applications.

Mike

I am lost in this statement.

Why aren't the people running the software on the client end and the server just holding the data?

I assume RDP -> Remote Desktop Protocol.

It would honestly feel really tedious if people had to RDP to a server to access basic software like Outlook, Word, Excel, Acrobat.

I would understand QuickBooks as u would want the save file for that to be centralized.

 

[goobernoodles]

So you're using the server as a terminal server? Moving to flash storage for the OS would give the users a lot snappier performance. Call a local VAR (reseller) and have them quote you some options for a lower tiered server paired with some flash storage paired with cheaper, spinning disks for your storage needs.

Perhaps you could use something like a Dell VRTX server? They're rather new technology, but I believe they came out with a dual storage controller recently so you should have drive and controller redundancy.

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-vrtx/pd

Is noise a factor? Do you have a dedicated server room? Do you have a budget you're trying to meet or...

 

[spyromike]

I am lost in this statement.

Why aren't the people running the software on the client end and the server just holding the data?

I assume RDP -> Remote Desktop Protocol.

It would honestly feel really tedious if people had to RDP to a server to access basic software like Outlook, Word, Excel, Acrobat.

I would understand QuickBooks as u would want the save file for that to be centralized.

Yes - they are using remote desktop to connect to the server. There could be better options out there - and I'm open to them. But for a small company that has no IT department besides myself, it does make it more convenient to have all the apps and data in one centralized location. I'm not saying this is the best way to do it - I know that I don't know everything and may not be aware of a better way of doing things.

With QuickBooks we have to have the data files in one centralized locations. And about 1/3 of our employees are using QuickBooks so for this reason, we will always need to have this data centralized in some way.

Thanks,

Mike

 

[gmaster456]

For a mission critical server, don't build in house. Dells enterprise support is bar none the best. You can have someone on site in one business day should a problem arise reducing downtime and you'll be up and running in less than 24 hours. They take care of you and you deal with an american on the phone and not someone from a call center out in the sticks of india. We have our own representative we call whenever we need something and everything is prompt. Yes it is more expensive than building yourself but for mission critical equipment it is best not to scimp out. I am a one man IT department such as yourself for a small business. I get enough calls as it is, I'd gladly pay a premium for anything that helps me out.

Should you build it yourself, you will be the one diagnosing the problem, dealing with RMA, shipping the broken part, and waiting for a return. It could take days. Not to mention every single component will be under its own warranty should something go down. Some could be lifetime, some could only be a year, some only 60 days.

As for specs, yes, you'll want a XEON. Their role is for servers and you'll need one for ECC RAM. I went with a Raid 1 setup. 2 1TB drives mirror each other and is backed up to a 2TB external that is rotated with another off site every month in the event of a disaster, robbery etc. How much RAM is being used? Is 14gb working for you? If not, go up to 24gb or 32gb. Server 2012 standard would likely be the best option for your OS. You don't have any XP clients do you? Dual Ivy Bridge EP 6 core E5 2620's would handle the job plenty and leave headroom for expansion should you hire any more employees or your site gets more traffic

Call dells business line and spec out a machine with them.

 

[mfenn]

I agree with the others here. Since you're using the machine as a terminal server for everybody, it is absolutely mission critical and not something that you'll want to mess around with building yourself. Dell is probably the most friendly to deal with in terms of a one-off, but an HP VAR or Lenovo would be fine as well.