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- Liverpool, England
We are moving to a new large office and I am taking the opportunity to update our IT systems. So I am posting this so I get some input and advice from people on this forum. I would be grateful of any advice that can be offered. I am thinking of a budget of about £20,000 (Less will always make the boss happier 
)
At the moment we have several NAS devices which have been built in house (A mixture of Windows XP and SUSE server machines). The storage capacity on these ranges from 1TB to 2TB and the storage amount is not enough at all. These NAS devices don’t have 2 network ports or 2 PSUs and there is no load balancing. All this has worked before because the company was quite small. But the company is now growing quickly and we are now starting to struggle. We create maps and 3D Maps, so a lot of data comes in and a lot of number crunching is done by our processors (Users). There are network switches spread about everywhere at the moment, but in the new office there will be only 2 x 48 port switches. I am also gaining a dedicated server room. All CAT6 cables are in, but not terminated (This includes the CAT6 cable for all the IP phones), so we are going to have fun
.
We can split our users into 3 groups (Simplified):
Group A – These people process 200mb to 1Gb files but the data is more like video files and so it is more like just reading the data. They do of course at the end stick it all together to create a final image which before it is stitched together involves 100,000’s of really small files.
Group B – These people create 2D and 3D images, which involve a lot of number crunching and filtering. These files range from 100MB to 10GB.
Group C – CAD department. These people stick all the data together creating the finished charts.
There are also a lot of other type of data processing and of course report writing. I want to give Group A and B at least 12TB of storage each.
We are also going to implement an Exchange Server for our Emails. At the moment we have our email system with BT which is horrible and restrictive.
NB...I know what I am going to do with daily and weekly backups (NAS).
OPTION 1
Dell PowerEdge R710 - SBS 2008 Standard (30 users to start with) -> Intel® Xeon® E5520, 2.26Ghz, 12GB Ram. Report folders and final images also stored on this server maybe (Work well where they are now).
2 x Netgear Readynas 3200 – 11TB or 22TB (7200rpm SATA HDDs, RAID 0, 1, 5,6 and X-RAID2)
http://netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNAS3200.aspx?for=Business+Networking
2x GIGABIT, STACKABLE SMART SWITCHES - GS748TS (48 Ports)
http://www.netgear.co.uk/stackable_smart_switch_gs724ts_gs748ts.php
OPTION 2
Dell PowerEdge R710 - SBS 2008 Standard (30 users to start with) -> Intel® Xeon® E5520, 2.26Ghz, 12GB Ram
2x Dell PowerVault MD1200, Direct Attached Storage (Connected to the Dell PowerEdge R710)
Each with 11TB (1TB SAS 7200rpm x 12)
2x GIGABIT, STACKABLE SMART SWITCHES - GS748TS (48 Ports)
http://www.netgear.co.uk/stackable_smart_switch_gs724ts_gs748ts.php
Will there be problems having everything connected to one server (The two MD1200) other than if it dies? The R710 does have 4 Ethernet ports. Should I be thinking of having another 'simple' server (SBS2008) running the direct attached storage units?
OPTION 3
Dell PowerEdge R710 - SBS 2008 Standard (30 users to start with) -> Intel® Xeon® E5520, 2.26Ghz, 12GB Ram
For Group A - 1x Dell PowerVault MD1200, Direct Attached Storage (Connected to the Dell PowerEdge R710)
With 11TB (1TB SAS 7200rpm x 12)
For Group B - 1 x Netgear Readynas 3200 – 11TB or 22TB (7200rpm SATA HDDs, RAID 0, 1, 5,6 and X-RAID2) and put fast drives into each workstation for processing the data locally.
http://netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNAS3200.aspx?for=Business+Networking
2x GIGABIT, STACKABLE SMART SWITCHES - GS748TS (48 Ports)
http://www.netgear.co.uk/stackable_smart_switch_gs724ts_gs748ts.php
How much do I have to worry about cpu speeds?
I would be grateful for any pointers you clever people can offer....
Thanks,
Crazyswede
)At the moment we have several NAS devices which have been built in house (A mixture of Windows XP and SUSE server machines). The storage capacity on these ranges from 1TB to 2TB and the storage amount is not enough at all. These NAS devices don’t have 2 network ports or 2 PSUs and there is no load balancing. All this has worked before because the company was quite small. But the company is now growing quickly and we are now starting to struggle. We create maps and 3D Maps, so a lot of data comes in and a lot of number crunching is done by our processors (Users). There are network switches spread about everywhere at the moment, but in the new office there will be only 2 x 48 port switches. I am also gaining a dedicated server room. All CAT6 cables are in, but not terminated (This includes the CAT6 cable for all the IP phones), so we are going to have fun
.We can split our users into 3 groups (Simplified):
Group A – These people process 200mb to 1Gb files but the data is more like video files and so it is more like just reading the data. They do of course at the end stick it all together to create a final image which before it is stitched together involves 100,000’s of really small files.
Group B – These people create 2D and 3D images, which involve a lot of number crunching and filtering. These files range from 100MB to 10GB.
Group C – CAD department. These people stick all the data together creating the finished charts.
There are also a lot of other type of data processing and of course report writing. I want to give Group A and B at least 12TB of storage each.
We are also going to implement an Exchange Server for our Emails. At the moment we have our email system with BT which is horrible and restrictive.
NB...I know what I am going to do with daily and weekly backups (NAS).
OPTION 1
Dell PowerEdge R710 - SBS 2008 Standard (30 users to start with) -> Intel® Xeon® E5520, 2.26Ghz, 12GB Ram. Report folders and final images also stored on this server maybe (Work well where they are now).
2 x Netgear Readynas 3200 – 11TB or 22TB (7200rpm SATA HDDs, RAID 0, 1, 5,6 and X-RAID2)
http://netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNAS3200.aspx?for=Business+Networking
2x GIGABIT, STACKABLE SMART SWITCHES - GS748TS (48 Ports)
http://www.netgear.co.uk/stackable_smart_switch_gs724ts_gs748ts.php
OPTION 2
Dell PowerEdge R710 - SBS 2008 Standard (30 users to start with) -> Intel® Xeon® E5520, 2.26Ghz, 12GB Ram
2x Dell PowerVault MD1200, Direct Attached Storage (Connected to the Dell PowerEdge R710)
Each with 11TB (1TB SAS 7200rpm x 12)
2x GIGABIT, STACKABLE SMART SWITCHES - GS748TS (48 Ports)
http://www.netgear.co.uk/stackable_smart_switch_gs724ts_gs748ts.php
Will there be problems having everything connected to one server (The two MD1200) other than if it dies? The R710 does have 4 Ethernet ports. Should I be thinking of having another 'simple' server (SBS2008) running the direct attached storage units?
OPTION 3
Dell PowerEdge R710 - SBS 2008 Standard (30 users to start with) -> Intel® Xeon® E5520, 2.26Ghz, 12GB Ram
For Group A - 1x Dell PowerVault MD1200, Direct Attached Storage (Connected to the Dell PowerEdge R710)
With 11TB (1TB SAS 7200rpm x 12)
For Group B - 1 x Netgear Readynas 3200 – 11TB or 22TB (7200rpm SATA HDDs, RAID 0, 1, 5,6 and X-RAID2) and put fast drives into each workstation for processing the data locally.
http://netgear.com/Products/Storage/ReadyNAS3200.aspx?for=Business+Networking
2x GIGABIT, STACKABLE SMART SWITCHES - GS748TS (48 Ports)
http://www.netgear.co.uk/stackable_smart_switch_gs724ts_gs748ts.php
How much do I have to worry about cpu speeds?
I would be grateful for any pointers you clever people can offer....
Thanks,
Crazyswede
They have lost business from me in the past, regarding workstations, because of that.