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December 7th, 2009 13:00
I Need a Small Business Server Recommendation
We need to replace two aging servers with one new server tower with Small Business Server. I'd like to have SBS 2008 Premium (unless you recommend against 2008) and RAID 10. Which server model do you recommend and which RAID controller should I use? It would be nice to have high-speed hot-swap SAS drives but the cost of that might keep us down to some 7200 RPM hot-swap SATA drives instead. I would also like to have two Gigabit NICs so I can do NIC teaming but that isn't an absolute requirement.
For a bit of background, I used to work for another company where I performed server installs but now I'm working as a network administra so I was more in touch with the server world then. We used HP servers and I liked them but I've always been a Dell fan so I'm shopping here. In my experience it's pretty critical that you get the right server for the job. We'll be using this server to share files and two network printers on our network, perform DNS and DHCP, and host Quickbooks 2008 and Exchange Server. There's some possibility that we'll use SQL Server as well, although, to begin with we won't be using it. We've got 7 workstations that use the network fairly heavily every day and an additional four workstations that are only used occasionally or very lightly (one hosts a time clock app that uses MS Access).
We would also like to perform nightly image based backups using Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 8.5 together with the RD1000 or RDX drive.
As far as the price goes, we'd like to keep it as low as possible while still getting the right machine for the job - something that is stable and will keep up with our existing equipment. Our existing file server is a Dell PowerEdge 2650 Rack Mounted server running Server 2003 Enterprise (which is the wrong OS for what we're doing). It has two hard drives in RAID 1 hosting the OS and three hard drives in RAID 5 hosting the files. The RAID controller is a PERC 3/Di and the hard disks are 73GB SCSI 10K RPM drives. It also has dual NIC with NIC teaming and redundant power supplies, which is not a requirement but would be nice to have.
Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated.


pcmeiners
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December 9th, 2009 08:00
Some recommendations....
Go with SAS drives, you need the speed with Exchange and SQL, also SAS rebuild faster in the event of a drive failure.Also plan on getting an extra drive as a hotspare. Raid 10 is a good choice, compensates for SBS bloat
You need a fast processor, not the top end but fairly close, a dual core should be sufficent, I would go 8 Meg ram, if it fits on the rack get a large case vs than 1 or 2 u units, less dust , parts, capacity issues.
BE 8.5 recovery, don't use it but it may need to upgrade, double check.
HKColorado
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December 9th, 2009 09:00
Thanks pcmeiners for your advice. Is there a specific model you'd recommend? Also, is there a specific RAID card that you'd recommend?
We do plan to go with a tower instead of a rack mounted server.
pcmeiners
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December 9th, 2009 10:00
Dual vs Quad cores
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000942.html
Get the Perc 6I... as far as the servers, have not purchased any of the newest server releases in the last 4 months so I will let someone else chime in.