Help...the ITs about to hit the fan

[RaveyDaveyUK]

Ok lads n lasses... I need your help!!

So one day I'm minding my own business... And then I'm put in charge of the companies servers!! The general opinion was "he plays games... He must know IT". Ummm... No.

We are only a small company with six staff, but we support 40 consultants.

We have 2 servers of mixed age, but let's say about 3-4years old. Let's call them server A and server B.

Server A runs SBS 2008 and hosts our exchange server and Data. A mix of exchange profiles, outlook and The DFS for documents etc. it contains 2x250gb drives and 2x500gb drives. Both are raid 1. It has 31gb left on the data drive partition!

Server B runs 2008 standard r2? and hosts our client management software and the DFS' second part. It has 3x146.8gb drives in raid 5 and has 80gb free.

So my problem is how to increase the drive space on the servers with minimal downtime and cost.

The exchange store is currently 188gb and has never been defragged!! I'm worried to even try it as I can't have any downtime. Anyone care to guess how long that would take. Can I stop n start it. I understand it has to be offline to defrag.

Will try and answer any questions, but truly am out of my depth here.

Local support firm said to either replace the lot or replace data drives on all servers. About £1500-2000. We just don't have that sort of budget. :/

Any advice greatly appreciated.

 

[RaveyDaveyUK]

Thanks all... a lot for me to take in.

It certainly isnt a job I want to take on single handed and would outsource... just didnt want to be taken for a ride.

I'm hoping the opportunity to replace sbs server will come up this financial year, but am worried about the here and now. 30gb doesnt seem a lot.

There is a lot of old reports and docs on the server and so hopefully archiving will reduce the immediate risk of a new consultant joining us and eating up the remaining space.

Back ups are handled by Cobian back up to 2 encrypted usb hard drives. Been like that since before I joined. Not great, but it works. I haven't tried a restore, but am told that the data is there if necs.. :/

I had looked at hosting exchange, but was unsure. Presumably we would need to improve our broadband for that? We currently have a bonded dsl connection.

Thaks for the Event 1221... I'll check that in a mo and see what it says.

Appreciate the help and will update thread at some point when things progress. Cheers all.