New Server Specs

[khizrs]

Our IT systems at work are becoming slightly dated and will be unable to perform with our new Accounting System.
I have good knowlege of computers for home use, I have reasonable knowlege of networking and not much knowlege of Windows Server 2003.
I would rather do it all myself and learn how to do it to cut costs and allow me to maintain it easily.

The server will be used for

1) Data Storage - Word docs, document scans, pictures etc.
2) Sage 200 - This runs on SQL so I believe I will need to buy SBS premium.


There will be 4 users accessing the system immediately, however we would like the scope for the addition of a further 4 users, total eight users.
The main thing would be using Sage 200 on SQL. There will be no exchange or anything like that.


I have always heard good things about Dell servers, I don't think it will be good idea to build one myself, however.

Any ideas on what specs I should be looking at?

 

[Genx87]

4 users isnt very much. You can get away with something like an 840 from Dell. If you feel like having a bit more power and expandability a 2900 series.

 

[spikespiegal]

You can easily get away with a small business Dell SC or 840 and a pair of big SATA drives in RAID 1. Now that (thank god) most of the crap Netburst Xeon's are out of the pipeline pretty much any dual/quad server is overkill for your needs.

Exchange is by far the biggest pig on SBS along with the 50 or so related services required just to run it.

 

[khizrs]

Cool, OK.

Are SATA drives reliable, will they be quick enough for 8 users and semi intensive data access on SQL?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Dell-Pow...VWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

would that do for 8 users?

 

[spikespiegal]

That box will do just fine.


Rant = on

I've had to apologize to supported clients due to 15K SCSI based RAID 5s taking a dump so many %^$& times in my career I've lost count. I've also lost count at the number of times I've wanted to buy a %^$& baseball bat and hunt down the technician who installed the over-priced disk array for no justifed reason other than somebody even more ignorant told them 'you need SCSI if you are running a server'.

I've yet to lose a SATA / IDE based RAID 1 in a Server.

Unless that particular SQL database is brutally transaction intensive (I've yet to encounter a small business one that is) you'll be fine.

 

[khizrs]

Coming to think of it, we currently have a poweredge 2800, surely it will be a better idea jsut to upgrade it?

All I really need is a tad more ram, possibly another processor (currently have a Xeon 3ghz)

 

[hanoverphist]

i run a 2950 (I think, been a while since i put it up) for storage as well as serving our financial/ contracting software. i have 20 users most of the day and have no real issues with access. it has a raid 10 in it, SATA drives. only prob i had was when dell delivered it, the 3rd start up of the server i had no raid at all. found out there was a bug in the raid version i had (known to dell at the time) that dismounted all my drives. they had me back up in a couple hours, even tho i had to reinstall damn near everything at that point. ram was the best upgrade i did, 4gb makes it nice. my previous server (built b y me and very underpowered) only had 768MB ram. it was also a P3, im actually surprised it lasted the 4 years i used it.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: khizrs
Coming to think of it, we currently have a poweredge 2800, surely it will be a better idea jsut to upgrade it?

All I really need is a tad more ram, possibly another processor (currently have a Xeon 3ghz)

I've had SBS 2003 clients with 25 PCs running a single-Xeon-processor SC1600 and 2GB of RAM. No complaints. It's highly unlikely that four or eight employees will generate high volumes of SQL transactions.

As spikespiegal notes, SATA drives don't seem to be any worse than SCSI drives for reliability. An acquaintance built large quantities of "backup boxes" used for data backups. They had both SCSI and SATA versions and claimed that the reliability was the samel.

 

[khizrs]

Cool, OK,
I guess I will chuck another gig of RAM at it,
I dont see the point in not using it as its meant to be expandable!!!

Can you mix processors, e.g. have 1 dual and 1 single core processor on the same PC?

I may end up having 2 single cores and 4 gig ram as it's not too expensive. Very unlikely they will generate large amounts of transactions, however will it perform as fast as possible? I don't like to keep customers on the phone when I am digging for information.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: khizrs
I don't like to keep customers on the phone when I am digging for information.

That's HIGHLY unlikely in your case.

PLEASE be careful how you handle Exchange. One of the big advantages of SBS is that all the SBS boxes ARE THE SAME. If they are properly and completely configured, I can walk into an office and immediately start working on their system. When clients start turning things off and using non-standard settings, there can be all kinds of unintended consequences that can affect SBS and the ease-of-repair.

Even if your users won't use Exchange, you'll still want it because you'll want to receive the daily server status reports, alerts, usage reports, etc.

 

[spikespiegal]

All I really need is a tad more ram, possibly another processor (currently have a Xeon 3ghz)

Not sure how much is in it now and I'd otherwise defer to watching your task manager to see if any more is needed. Some SQL apps are memory hogs while others are throttled to simply page more frequently. However, given the absurdly low price of RAM right now, 2 gigs is a good starting point. Not running Exchange is your biggest memory upgrade

Again, unless you see the current Processor is getting pegged a lot I don't think another Xeon will help much. While they weren't good at much else, the 3ghz P4 Xeon (with HT turned on) was/is a good multitasker (given the absurd amount of current it sucks it should).

My opinion, but if you have justification to requiring an additional processor than this, in my mind, would justify a move to a better processor architecture in general.

If they are properly and completely configured, I can walk into an office and immediately start working on their system

What I generally see with SBS is poorly configured SPAM filtering leading to some office 'genius' throwing some goofball mail fiter package on the box causing all kinds of problems. Or, they try to screw with the SPAM settings and foget about the SMTP virtual machine.

Adding an SPF entry on their DNS record, and tweaking recipient filtering and SPAM settings does surprisingly well. It's a tough box that's tough to hurt....if you can keep the owner's kid from messing with it.

 

[khizrs]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: khizrs
I don't like to keep customers on the phone when I am digging for information.

That's HIGHLY unlikely in your case.

PLEASE be careful how you handle Exchange. One of the big advantages of SBS is that all the SBS boxes ARE THE SAME. If they are properly and completely configured, I can walk into an office and immediately start working on their system. When clients start turning things off and using non-standard settings, there can be all kinds of unintended consequences that can affect SBS and the ease-of-repair.

Even if your users won't use Exchange, you'll still want it because you'll want to receive the daily server status reports, alerts, usage reports, etc.

sorry, i meant on our accounts package, I dont want to wait 10 seconds for a price to load.