I need help choosing a server for the workplace

[Crusty]

Wrong forum, I would ask a Mod to move this to the right place.. but I'll give you some tips anyways.

There's a difference between hosting a domain on a Windows Server box vs. hosting a domain on a Small Business server. Small Business server will also do all of your Exchange hosting, MSSQL, IIS, Active Directory, Printer Sharing and File Sharing whereas a Windows Server Box typically only hosts a subset of those services. So when speccing out a SBS I recommend to not skimp on the hardware.

The first thing you need to do is decide which version of Windows Server you will be going with. If you do NOT need Exchange, MSSQL, or IIS then you could get by with just a Windows Server 2003 box hosting AD and file/printer sharing and then as you need those extra services purchase the hardware and correct Windows Server to supply those services.

I would suggest first defining your needs, and what services can supply those. Then decide which version of Windows Server will fit the bill, and then go forward picking out the hardware.

 

[msound]

Err I don't have a lot of Windows Admin experience but I'll still share my thoughts. If I'm wrong I'm sure a more experienced admin will catch and correct me

If I were I'd look into purchases 2 boxes. One to act as your domain controller and the other to act as a NAS file server. Splitting the roles will allow you to spec out your machines to their respective roles a little easier. A file/print server doesn't need an uber fast CPU. You would be more concerned about hard drive capacity and network bandwidth.

For the domain controller I think those Dell specs sound good, but you could probably drop back to just 2 hard drives and go with a RAID 1 array (drive mirroring for redundancy in case of a drive failure). You could also scale down the hard drive size.

For the network file/print server, you could bump down the CPU, and increase the hard drive capacity.

Get a decent Gigabit switch to tie it all together and you should be set.

I seem to remember reading that you should have 1 domain controller for every 50 users/machines that authenticate off of it. So with 20 employees and only a couple of servers, you'd be fine for a while without having to worry about an immediate upgrade.

Putting all of your file storage on a separate, dedicated box will probably save you some headaches later on down the road.

As Crusty said, without listing the actual services you need, it's kinda hard to give you an exact answer.

Good luck!