Server recommendation

[navychop]

Our Dell server, with 2003 SBS, will be 8 years old this fall. That is when we plan to replace it. However, as we are having some problems, we may need to replace it now. For various reasons, I have decided to place Dell near the bottom of the list of possible brands.

Any recommendation on brand or type of server? Heaviest use is an accounting program and I doubt we have ever had more than 10 concurrent users. Looking at 2009, RAID-1 & USB 3 as minimum requirements. Will likely shift to EHDs for backup.


Also, our s/w support vendor, who does not deal in h/w, is inclined to keep the current server and use it as a separate Exchange server. Nice idea, but at 8 years is this wise?

 

[mike123abc]

With our accounting system I just built a quad core with Windows Server and TS licenses. The quad cores are great for this and really no special hardware. If building a new one I would probably go with an i7 quad, a SSD (Intel brand only) for the OS and a Raid 1 for the accounting software.

For backup we use USB drives and Jungle Disk. We do a daily backup of all the accounting software and data, and all documents with Jungle Disk. 1-2 USB EHD backups per month using system image.

Jungle Disk uses Amazon's E3 service. So, so they have backups in multiple data centers around the world.

Amazon S3’s standard storage is:
Backed with the Amazon S3 Service Level Agreement.
Designed to provide 99.999999999% durability and 99.99% availability of objects over a given year.
Designed to sustain the concurrent loss of data in two facilities.

8 Years is probably too long for a computer in a production environment. Too many components will be getting old and risk of failure goes way up. 5 Years we pretty much just put in an all new machine.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Check out tigerdirect.com for servers. We have ordered a number of them at my office and they have all worked well and their prices were some of the best.

I agree with your vendor on keeping exchange on its own box, but not sure if an 8 year old server will do. But if its running on it now and its working then it should work later.

 

[StevenD]

Im a big fan of the HP Proliant DL series servers. Our "standard" application server is a DL385 G6. I would strongly suggest doing a RAID 10 with SAS drives for maximum performance.

 

[SatinKzo]

Do you plan on upgradings to SBS 2008 with the new hardware? Reason I ask is generally you can get some killer deals on hardware if you mention to the vendor you are doing and SBS upgrade also and will be buying SBS from them. One recent client got SBS2008 with a new server for less than the price of the server if purchased alone. Exchange integration in SBS 2008 is much cleaner than SBS 2003. I swear they just shoe-horned exchange into SBS 2003. Gotta love the MS best practice documents of no exchange on same computer as other server functions.... oh unless that server is SBS. *sigh*

SteveD,

I think based on navychop's post, that a raid 10 sas setup might be a bit out of the budget. I am just guesing, but since he mentioned only mirroring, performance might not be a driving factor.

 

[navychop]

SBS2008, yes. Finger fumble in my original. RAID10 probably out of the que$tion. Have to look at pkg as suggested. This time around going cheaper is likely, despite success with Dell. One more lollipop and I'll explode. Besides, trying to configure a server on their site and get your questions answered was difficult at best.

 

[Van]

What are you plans for the old server? I may be interested if the price is right.

 

[navychop]

I'll keep you in mind, but outside support is pushing to keep it as an exchange server. I have my doubts, but I still need to learn the diff flavors of 2008 and review options.

 

[Foxbat]

For a small office server, we have been having great performance with our HP ProLiant ML110 servers. It looks like a desktop PC, but it is a server through and through. I am spec'ing out a ML110 G6 with a quad-core Xeon CPU and P212 SAS RAID controller. I'm debating between this and a DL360 G6 because by the time I add hot-swap SAS disk drives and memory, the two come out pretty close in price.

For an Exchange 2010 server, though, I'd lean towards a ProLiant DL series server.