Getting a server. Hardware requirements? Linux or MS?

krishna

John_Gray wrote:

You are getting some good advice above, but our next server for about 20 staff is likely to cost us at least £5K for hardware and software, particularly when you factor in the cost of adequate backup mechanisms. We are running out of space on DDS4 tapes, and may have to make the move to DLT (or similar). Our backup scheme uses 12 x monthly tapes, 5 x weekly tapes, and 4 x daily tapes, and the cost of the drives and the tapes will be an large (and often unrecognised) amount. A program like BackupExec can set you back (groan!) over £500, which is why we use the Microsoft Backup program built into Windows Server 2003 front-ended by an excellent Australian program called BackupAssist.

I have factored in the cost of the DAT72 drive (PV100T, from Dell) which is £354+VAT. I have also taken into account cost of tapes, but quite frankly, after having to spend around £25 per tape for Travan tapes, DAT tapes seem very cheap. Seems like we can get them for around £10 each. I was allowing for 4 daily tapes, 4 weekly tapes and 3 monthly tapes. That will give us a 3 month backup cycle which I was reckoning would be sufficient. Why do you have 5 weekly tapes? They way I have always done it was that the last Friday of the month used the monthly tape. So 4 weekly tapes was enough. Anyway, 11 tapes comes to around £110, which is affordable. A DLT drive would be way out of our budget (and I have no idea how much those tapes cost). I have also factored in exchange server addition for our Retrospect backup programme.

John_Gray wrote:

Yes, you MUST (in very large letters) have a hardware firewall, but these are comparatively cheap.

How do I choose. Again looking at Dell, they have
NETGEAR's ProSafe VPN Firewall 8 FVS114 for £45
3Com OfficeConnect VPN Firewall for £209

The 3Com seems to allow for a large number of simultaneous users, but we are a small organisation, so presumably the netgear would be fine? Would it offer a similar level of protection?

John_Gray wrote:

If you get Exchange, remember to double the amount of memory you thought you needed (our 1 GB is barely adequate).

Was planning on 2GB. Would that be sufficient, or should we be looking at 4GB?

John_Gray wrote:

Also consider Exchange server antispam solutions, and managed and centralised antivirus solutions for the server and the PCs.

Antispam: Planning on Cloudmark Server Edition + Cloudmark desktop for the PCs
Antivirus: Planning on NOD32 Enterprise Edition incl Exchange Mail Security. Already using NOD32 on desktops.

John_Gray wrote:

PS Have a look at Tech Soup and the fairly messy-to-understand Microsoft "software donation" scheme from the Charity Technology Exchange (e.g. Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition English R2 (Includes Software Assurance and 5 Client Access Licences)
Admin fee: £37 + VAT)

Many thanks for that. I had looked at this some time ago and then forgot about it. Even bigger savings than through Microsoft Select. So we could get Windows Server + Exchange server incl 5 client access licenses for around £78, or SBS for around £44. Any advantage of one over the other?

Do you know of any similar deals on hardware

krishna

Some more great questions and food for thought. Thanks a lot.

GreenNotM wrote:

but it is not clear where your current email server is hosted ?
Are you looking at taking your email server in-house ?
Could the current email server be made more spam proof ?

Email and web server currently hosted externally. We have a reasonably good deal as it's a company run by an ex-trustee. However the equipment is unreliable with frequent outages. It's a linux based server with pop3 access only and has SpamAssassin. We get in the region of 200 to 300 spam a day. Because we are an information service we can't change our email address. My experience with Thunderbird is that it catches around 75% of that spam. Tests with Cloudmark indicated that for us it was catching around 98% of spam. I thought if we brought the email inhouse it would make things easier. Also we need to have some shared mailboxes and shared address books. I've set up a couple of IMAP accounts in my own personal space through my home ISP (we use Zen at work and they don't seem to offer that as standard). That was really as a test and it has improved things a bit. But this can only be temporary.

GreenNotM wrote:

Access databases can be viewed as flat files - where the server consideration is concerned - the DB application is run on the client, so the .mdb files etc can be stored anywhere accessable.

Great

GreenNotM wrote:

Are you considering moving to web interface for your data applications ?
Do you want the data just available in the office or for the trustees to view off-site ? (No need for client software with a web-app, just a browser)

Ah I guess this is where I would need a database server, is it? Well, for the moment, mainly looking for access in the office, though there are a number of instances where secure off-site access would be useful. It would be helpful to think about this, but probably not implement in this phase.

GreenNotM wrote:

LAMP may be a solution - Linux Apache MySQL PHP .... + Samba (Windows File and Print) + email apps... but it does have a learning curve.
Perhaps use the old pc to try LAMP software out.

Good idea. Though the hard disk is failing! Perhaps once I've transferred everything and cleared it, a disk format would sort it out.

GreenNotM wrote:

As for the hardware - look at the warranty - on-site ( a must )- next/same day - and as long as possible - 3 years.
Do not bargain away the warranty on a server.

OK. I was planning on 1 year on-site. Why extend warranty for server? Surely they should be MORE reliavle than desktop PCs?

GreenNotM wrote:

Never use software RAID. Use Hardware RAID with redundancy (1 or 5 ) and a hot-swap capability - what has been said is wrong - the failing disk just comes out, the new one goes in and the controller rebuilds the disk - that is why it is called hot-swap. The same for hot-swap PSU's.
24/7 uptime of the server. Esp with a UPS added.
If you do not want 24/7 uptime look at a SATA RAID 1 controller and DVD back up - how much data do you have ? And in 2 years ?

So the RAID solutions I mentioned above from Dell; would they be OK?

GreenNotM wrote:

You never said how the P2P network was an issue.

Speed has been one part of the issue, though that may have been due to the apparent fault on my PC which was acting as a central file store and print server. Also inability to use a common addressbook in email, relying on POP3 accounts as mentioned above. I was also told that around 5 to 6 is the maximum normally recommended for a P2P network, so it seemed to me that having a server, while involving increased cost and a bit more of a learning curve, would improve our efficiency and make things more flexible. Ideally we'd like to store emails centrally so that people are not tied to a single desk/PC and I was finding the distributed admin requirements of a P2P network a pain.

GreenNotM wrote:

If you do get the W2K3 server, build it as an application/standalone server.

Can you expand on this? Not sure i understand.

GreenNotM wrote:

If you have to spend the budget - exam your network infrastructure, maybe time for a new switch or cabling ?

Cabling and switch are fine. I don't HAVE to spend the budget, but it is there at present to invest in IT if needed and since I'm having to replace my PC which WAS acting as a kind of server, it seemed like a good time to review our setup. Of course the one advantage of the P2P arrangement is that given the problems with my PC was just able to shift all the shared files over to a different PC and change the drive mappings on everybody's PC, so we were up and running again without too many problems.

GreenNotM

K I see the need for an email server




Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenNotM
Are you considering moving to web interface for your data applications ?
Do you want the data just available in the office or for the trustees to view off-site ? (No need for client software with a web-app, just a browser)




Ah I guess this is where I would need a database server, is it? Well, for the moment, mainly looking for access in the office, though there are a number of instances where secure off-site access would be useful. It would be helpful to think about this, but probably not implement in this phase.

I was thinking of security.



Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenNotM
LAMP may be a solution - Linux Apache MySQL PHP .... + Samba (Windows File and Print) + email apps... but it does have a learning curve.
Perhaps use the old pc to try LAMP software out.


Good idea. Though the hard disk is failing! Perhaps once I've transferred everything and cleared it, a disk format would sort it out. A chkdsk /r would be a better option - or set it to autofix errors from disk manager - for next time it reboots ... just don't get your coffee before you turn the pc on. A new disk would be £30 and you have a testbed server, or a gateway.firewall. spamfilter server etc ...


Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenNotM
As for the hardware - look at the warranty - on-site ( a must )- next/same day - and as long as possible - 3 years.
Do not bargain away the warranty on a server.


OK. I was planning on 1 year on-site. Why extend warranty for server? Surely they should be MORE reliavle than desktop PCs? If you are looking at 24/7 availability - a bought in generic warranty will cost more. But if something is going to fail - it will be DOA or within the first day or week or month, but a UPS would help. Not just black outs but brown outs etc...


Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenNotM
Never use software RAID. Use Hardware RAID with redundancy (1 or 5 ) and a hot-swap capability - what has been said is wrong - the failing disk just comes out, the new one goes in and the controller rebuilds the disk - that is why it is called hot-swap. The same for hot-swap PSU's.
24/7 uptime of the server. Esp with a UPS added.
If you do not want 24/7 uptime look at a SATA RAID 1 controller and DVD back up - how much data do you have ? And in 2 years ?


So the RAID solutions I mentioned above from Dell; would they be OK?
Sorry I did not look as there were no direct links. I predominantly deal with HP servers. But Dells are fine.


Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenNotM
You never said how the P2P network was an issue.

Speed has been one part of the issue, though that may have been due to the apparent fault on my PC which was acting as a central file store and print server.(see below maybe get some printer server boxes if the printers do not have NIC's already) Also inability to use a common addressbook in email, relying on POP3 accounts as mentioned above. I was also told that around 5 to 6 is the maximum normally recommended for a P2P network, so it seemed to me that having a server, while involving increased cost and a bit more of a learning curve, would improve our efficiency and make things more flexible. Ideally we'd like to store emails centrally so that people are not tied to a single desk/PC and I was finding the distributed admin requirements of a P2P network a pain. This will involve profiles and roving desktops etc see AD comment below


Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenNotM
If you do get the W2K3 server, build it as an application/standalone server.


Can you expand on this? Not sure i understand.
The alternative is AD Domains but as you are going the Exchange route - I just wanted to keep it simple for you..... W2K3 does have its own POP3 and SMTP services as standard which could be used. AD will need it own back-up solution - but then for 5 accounts ....
Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenNotM
If you have to spend the budget - exam your network infrastructure, maybe time for a new switch or cabling ?


Cabling and switch are fine. I don't HAVE to spend the budget, but it is there at present to invest in IT if needed and since I'm having to replace my PC which WAS acting as a kind of server, it seemed like a good time to review our setup. Of course the one advantage of the P2P arrangement is that given the problems with my PC was just able to shift all the shared files over to a different PC and change the drive mappings on everybody's PC, so we were up and running again without too many problems. Removing the server services from the peers will release bandwidth and make the clients more secure. It is also possible to run the printers as their own print servers - if they have the appropiate cards etc. The scanner too. You can also set up a DHCP server and centrally admin that.

krishna

GreenNotM wrote:

I see the need for an email server

Just spoken to the guy who hosts our website and email. He's changing servers (finally) so should be more reliable. But I guess he would just need to forward all email for our domain to us, and then we get Exchange to distribute it to the right mail box? He's keeping our website.

GreenNotM wrote:

If you do not want 24/7 uptime look at a SATA RAID 1 controller and DVD back up - how much data do you have ? And in 2 years ?[/I]

At present we have about 10G data. Likely to increase to around 20G in 2 years.

So the RAID solutions I mentioned above from Dell; would they be OK?
Sorry I did not look as there were no direct links. I predominantly deal with HP servers. But Dells are fine.

RAID controller options
SAS5iR
perc5 e and PERC5i

So can we use any of these?

GreenNotM wrote:

maybe get some printer server boxes if the printers do not have NIC's already

Hmm. never thought of that.

GreenNotM wrote:

If you do get the W2K3 server, build it as an application/standalone server.

krishna wrote:

Can you expand on this? Not sure i understand.

The alternative is AD Domains but as you are going the Exchange route - I just wanted to keep it simple for you..... W2K3 does have its own POP3 and SMTP services as standard which could be used. AD will need it own back-up solution - but then for 5 accounts ....

I can see it's starting to get complicated. I don't actually know what the alternatives are to Exchange. Just know we want a better inhouse solution to email management with possibility of shared mail boxes and shared address books.

What about processor. Pentium D seems cheaper than Dual Core Xeon. Do we need to worry about this?

Just found a way to buy from Dell with special charity pricing. Hee hee! very special. It works out more than going to their small business site!