Windows SBS 2011: Reasonable specs for a single user system?

[vbuggy]

I asked on the notebook subforums for suitable machines but I'd like to turn the question around on its head and see if I get more suitable responses that way.

I was looking at SBS 2011's minimum specs but I was wondering if anyone had a practical guide as to what I could get away with for a usable single-user server.

Here's the deal: I've always had a home SBS, from the 2003 days. I don't see any point in moving to the cloud at this time and I'm happy upgrading to the new 'full' SBS for a while longer. Eventually I'll be replacing this with an externally hosted private cloud thingummijig and just keep a single WHS at home but not right now.

Since about 18 months ago I've been running SBS 2008 on a spare Sony notebook - Penryn 2.5, 4Gb, 5400rpm HDD. It's the host to 1 account of any size, all my purely personal emails to my domain as well as hoovered up from my mobileme, hotmail, yahoo, etc accounts as well. It's worked out very well - comparatively silent (even with a silenced two-fan desktop), adequately responsive and surprisingly reliable.

For acoustic reasons more than anything else, I'd like to keep it laptop-based.

I'm trying to pick out a new laptop to run SBS 2011 on as I don't really have anything spare that's suitable - i.e. have nothing unused that scales beyond 4Gb. I'm thinking memory is the primary stumbling block here, but processor wise what should I be looking at for reasonably smooth operation of one fairly large (>3gb) mailbox, some Sharepoint, and general noodling around of the server? Will an e.g. i5-2410M do, or will I need something like an i7-2630QM? Do I need 8Gb? Will 6 do?

Thanks for any answers

 

[mvbighead]

For the load you're looking at, the i5-2410m should be plenty.

 

[vbuggy]

Anyone else confirm / have opposing views? Also the memory question.

 

[mfenn]

Pretty much CPU will be fine for as single user. You definitely do not need a current-generation i5. What's more important is that you have sufficient RAM and a decently fast HDD. Note that having a Sandy Bridge processor is perfectly fine, but you definitely don't "need" it.

Dell outlet has some really good deals on Latitudes with 3 years of warranty. You can get a Latitude 6420 with 8GB of RAM and a 250GB 7200PRM drive for $790. If your data isn't huge and you want Exchange to really scream, you can get a E5420 thing with 128GB SSD for $900

Also, I hope that it goes without saying that you need a backup solution for this thing. Being one HDD failure away from losing all my email would scare the shit out of me.

 

[vbuggy]

Pretty much CPU will be fine for as single user. You definitely do not need a current-generation i5. What's more important is that you have sufficient RAM and a decently fast HDD. Note that having a Sandy Bridge processor is perfectly fine, but you definitely don't "need" it.

Dell outlet has some really good deals on Latitudes with 3 years of warranty. You can get a Latitude 6420 with 8GB of RAM and a 250GB 7200PRM drive for $790. If your data isn't huge and you want Exchange to really scream, you can get a E5420 thing with 128GB SSD for $900

Also, I hope that it goes without saying that you need a backup solution for this thing. Being one HDD failure away from losing all my email would scare the shit out of me.

The only reason I felt Sandy Bridge was a requirement was the memory configuration really - that all of them are pretty much guaranteed to go up to 8Gb. My question was whether 8 is necessary for a single-user config as many consumer notebooks come with e.g. 6.

Storage - I have SSD's coming out of my ears and even I don't think one is warranted or particularly useful in this aspect. I'll whip out whatever it comes with and use a fairly standard 7200rpm drive, if it doesn't come with one already.

And talking about consumer laptops, I guess the Sony - which has given sterling service - is more in the rated duty cycle of the Latitudes and suchlike, so If the 2410M is fine I'm now looking at the HP ProBook 6360b - seems like a solid machine, goes up to 16gb, presumably easy to swap the standard hard drive out (or I guess since the standard drive is 7200rpm I could just clone the standard deployment image to LAN and wipe over it). Is that a plan, everyone?

As for the rest on the server software side... you don't need to teach grandma how to suck eggs

 

[vbuggy]

Correction: Looking at the 6460b with the 1600 * 900 screen - maybe more useful down the road say in ~3 years time when I give it away / put it to some other use.

 

[mfenn]

Correction: Looking at the 6460b with the 1600 * 900 screen - maybe more useful down the road say in ~3 years time when I give it away / put it to some other use.

Either one would work fine. The HP's still only have 2 DIMM slots, like most other notebooks. HP just supports 8GB DIMMs (read $$$$).

Regarding the SSD, I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to put one in the machine, assuming that you aren't constrained by the capacity. It'll be lower power, more reliable, and faster. Sure, it's not necessary at all, but if you've got them laying around, why not?

 

[vbuggy]

Well, two things - a hedge in terms of space. I'd rather install a 320Gb+ HDD than a 250Gb SSD in case I need to use the server to ping-pong something. And also, I don't think the need warrants it at all.

Am going ahead with the HP. Also ordering a 7200rpm 500Gb HDD. Hope it works and there are no nasty surprises in store...

 

[Xorp]

By default SBS 2011 has nearly everything on. Exchange 2010, Sharepoint, SQL, etc services. If you want to use and leave all those features on, you really need 16gb of RAM. Exchange really murders RAM. I recently built a customer a SBS 2011 server with only 8gb and they wanted all those services on and the thing really chugs. Another customer who requested a similar system with 16gb and needed all those service; the system ran great.

 

[vbuggy]

By default SBS 2011 has nearly everything on. Exchange 2010, Sharepoint, SQL, etc services. If you want to use and leave all those features on, you really need 16gb of RAM. Exchange really murders RAM. I recently built a customer a SBS 2011 server with only 8gb and they wanted all those services on and the thing really chugs. Another customer who requested a similar system with 16gb and needed all those service; the system ran great.

Well, SBS 2008 chugged along fairly happily with 4Gb on this single-user setup, so I'm calculating that somewhere between 6-8Gb should be fine for Exchange / Sharepoint use on 2011. Did you do a memory calculation of the running components?

As I said, all I need it to do is to basically, work. While this could be considered a 'production server', it has one user and that's me. I don't really care if it's a bit slow as long as it's fundamentally usable.

 

[SparksIT]

Why a laptop? Why not build a headless SFF desktop? Unless you haul the laptop around with you on a daily basis you would get much better performance for the money. Not to mention you can at least try to find a motherboard that supports Windows Server. Honestly if it were me, I would fine something that supports Visualization, such as ESXi, and run Windows SBS virtually, great if you like to dig around, with snapshots you can easily revert any negative changes.

 

[vbuggy]

Why a laptop? Why not build a headless SFF desktop? Unless you haul the laptop around with you on a daily basis you would get much better performance for the money. Not to mention you can at least try to find a motherboard that supports Windows Server. Honestly if it were me, I would fine something that supports Visualization, such as ESXi, and run Windows SBS virtually, great if you like to dig around, with snapshots you can easily revert any negative changes.

Primarily acoustics. Also a space aspect in that it doesn't have to be headless while remaining compact.

 

[aphelion02]

Why would a laptop be any more quiet? I'd think a well-built SFF system would be much quieter than a laptop.

 

[vbuggy]

Why would a laptop be any more quiet? I'd think a well-built SFF system would be much quieter than a laptop.

Maybe the only laptops you've used are like Mobile Pentium 4's or Alienwares?

To match an off-the-shelf reasonable laptop, you'd have to invest sizeable amounts of time in terms of of experimentation - low-speed fans, PSU's, etc.

Flippantry aside, it would be interesting if you would be able to come up with a full build list that would trounce a notebook in terms of acoustics.