New server for Small business

Tomsk · 4 Sep 2017 at 21:43

Our office has expanded from 4 PCs networked peer-to-peer to 10-12 PC & laptops, most running Windows 10 Home.

We've been quoted £3k + VAT for a Synology NAS with 4x3TB in RAID 5, 2 x 4TB for backup and an 800VA UPS. The quote doesn't sopecifically say what the backup system is.
The quote is for hardware only. This sounds very expensive to me.

We can backup all our data files to a 128GB flash drive. I don't think we'll need 9TB of storage!
We're not transferring gigabytes of data around, more like kilobytes. The network is gigabit capable.

for £3k I figure we could get a Windows 2016 Server Essentials system, an external drive (or two) for backups, and upgrade everything to Windows 10 Pro.

I'm not clued up on server systems, but I would be right in saying that my proposal gives us a lot more flexibility and security. One of the things we would like to implement is hot-desking.

Any of you more knowledgeable folks have any advice?

Tomsk · 7 Sep 2017 at 15:47

They've now come back with a quote for £6-7000 for a Windows server and upgrading PCs to W10 Pro + office.

Q.
Is it possible to hot-desk with a NAS?

Tomsk · 8 Sep 2017 at 19:58

We're out in the countryside and we don't want to be dependant on a cloud based system.

Tomsk · 11 Sep 2017 at 12:02

I've been asked to specify and price up a server.

My thoughts are:
HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 X3216 8GB 4LFF NHP SATA Entry Server - Is it worth getting a more powerful CPU and more memory?
Windows 2016 server essentials
Stablebit Drivepool and Scanner
250GB SSD for the OS - Is it worth getting 2 and having them in RAID 1?
2 x 1TB HDD for storage - 1TB useable with Drivepool
1 x 1TB external for on-site backup
2 x 1TB portable for offsite backup (will also use a cloud backup service)

All that should cost under £1000.

Do HP provide any extended warranty plans?

Is it possible to buy the basic server direct from HP?

Tomsk · 11 Sep 2017 at 15:19

Resilience. This would be software RAID by Drivepool. We already have UPSs because we quite often have blackouts.

Backup & DR. Current backup of all our data (including ~7 years of data logging) occupies about 80GB. We also make use of 'free' cloud storage (dropbox, onedrive etc) for some files. Backing up to onsite and offsite external HDs mean we can plug them into any PC if we need to access the data.

Users data. One of the reasons we want to implement hot-desking. All user data would be stored on the server.

Support. Our IT people are happy to support what hardware we have and provide. Our server is mainly just for file storage. No SQL databases (whatever they are) etc.