Next stage of my first business customer, getting a server set-up (storage, sage etc)

DJMK4

DJMK4

DJMK4

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Hi all,

OK obviously putting my main job to the side I do a bit of work on the side targetting home users however one of these clients turned in to a business client and is a friend of family.

They have recently set-up a small warehouse where they are manufacturing items for diggers, didnt really get involved much with their ADSL or line install's, they seemed to happily get someone in to fit some RJ45 faceplates etc and run downs to the comm's cabinets.

I have set-up 4 x Dell workstations for them to which I have already invoiced them, at the time as they were start up he didn't have a server although I did recommend this being something that would become essential fairly quickly.......He's been trading some months now and its around the time to buy a server

So, how many users does he have there working on machines?

He currently has 3 but may stretch to 5 but wanting the footroom to allow more user licences

What's the server going to be used for?


Obviously I have recommended the setup of the server for centralisation (non-domain), file server, print server, possibly some web related services VPN (maybe) DHCP, however he also wants to run sage off this. Now I have no knowledge of sage tbh, I have done some minor changes in the past but its not something I do.

At present, they have sage installed on two of the workstations at this unit to which they have accounting data on, and have to back up etc, ideally we want to ditch this, utilise the server so that the users can RDP to the server with their own login, and load up Sage, once they get to the login, they can login with their Sage ID's.

I guess the sage data runs off SQL databases etc ?

How easy would it be to get this server up and running, install sage on the server, create some users and bring the data that they are currently using over on to the new sage set-up? They have a guy in house who sets up the sage stuff for them but he only knows how to set-up the accounting data within the software, I dont think he knows how to network sage centrally.

it's not something I want to be doing to be honest but if its an easy thing to do then I could be quids in, if not then I will set-up the server and the rest of the stuff, and they will have to outsource their sage stuff from someone else

Any help appriciated :)

Also if anyone has seen any good server deals going about at the moment (extra cookies if OS is available) then let me know :) I am going to start hunting around when I get a sec, is the Microserver worthy of fitting in to this small business set-up or should I go for the beefier one.
 
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Thanks for this info gives me a bit of an insight :) I will reply with a more lengthy response at some point but I'm on my phone at the moment and battery about to go

what I might do is take a p2v of one of their workstations or atleast do this backup or sage data. Ill then create a VM on my host at home to play around with. How does sage licensing work? Do you think I will be able to use their install disk etc on my test lab if i setup xp machine and a windows server running sage?
 
Ok, think I may go for this then :) just not sure what OS and licensing costs :/ I don't want to scare him off with high prices

Ill do some more research tomorrow and let you know what I come up with, but any testing I can get done now the better really in a lab with regards to sage, then I can roll out
 
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Cool thanks then that makes things even simpler than I thought migrating the data to a share and pointing their local sage installs to the data.

Thanks all :)

So it's the company000 directory, assuming that both machines have the same data, I should be able to pick up the directory and just swing
It over.
 
Arranging with the guy to stick the sage data on a disk for me, he is also going to hand me the install media

Time to get some test VM's set-up :) going to have a look around for some Microservers, additional memory and drives later
 
OK collected the sage installation DVD off them today, and took a USB external HDD down, they have done a backup directly to my external HDD

So I am just in the preparation of testing this in my lab environment now.

Will let you know if I run in to any issues.
 
Hardware I have selected for them is

HP Microserver NL40
Crucial 8GB DDR3 1333Mhz Ballistix Sport Memory
1TB WD 1TB Green SATAIII 64MB Cache (can add additional drives at a later date)

Going and also chuck in a 500GB external HDD to start with for backups, if they want to add another one and do the backup rotation then they can go ahead with this.

Does this seem ok?

I was going to plonk a 2TB drive in there which is around £70 for their data instead of 1, but I guess they can always add to it.

Want to try and save money where possible as then I can apply the savings to the service cost of setting it up
 
Is it absolutely essential? They are not the biggest of setup a, quite small, can't see them
Holding a lot of data, I have a good backup plan in place, if I decided to go down the raid route could utilise 250gb included drive for OS then say 2 x 1 TB HDDs ?
 
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Prices are starting to go up a bit when you add all
The drives, can i utilise the drive that comes with it? Or obviously this is not going to be suited for one that runs 24/7.

So what am I looking at 2 x 250gb mirror and 2 x 1tb mirror?
 
So its not worth using the one 250GB drive that comes with the microserver? meaning I would have to purchase just one more?

Yeah I think I will just add another 2 x 250GB drives to the order and get it over with.

All hardware will be purchased, I am sending them a hardware list, they send me the money, I give them the invoice and any invoices from supplier, then after its all complete I will invoice them for my services.
 
So far hardware is coming to a cost of £427.00

Thats
NL40
8GB RAM
2 x 1TB RE4
2 x 250GB RE4

Seems quite high, thats without my service charges on top

Hopefully they will go for it...
 
If I do it that way and just go for 2 x 1TB drives, this will still offer redundancy over both the C partition and data partition also though?

If the one drive goes kaput, the OS partition and data will still remain on the other "working" drive until the failed disk is replaced meaning they still should have a functioning server os and access to data

can you confirm this?
 
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Sent them a hardware quotation, I am not including any mark up on the parts, however I will make back any extras in service charges, just got to work out how much I will be charging them for the services now.

Dont want to undersell my costings, however dont want to go OTT either. Do people tend to use fixed pricing when doing stuff like this? I have always charged by the hour and just estimate the times for the work being carried out.

I always see people charging quite a bit but I can never seem to work out how much to charge, generally I charge £35 per hour, not sure if this is too low, and for instance
 
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It's ok, I will keep this in mind on the service charges, with regards to parts I have missed out on the Margin thing I guess for this one as I have already sent the parts prices across, although usually I do charge margin on parts, I may let this one slip as I kind of know the guy personally, so I guess I could do him a small favour of no margins this once.

However I will keep firm but fair proceedings on any service charges when it comes to the work carried out as you are 100% correct, if you a bit leaner on the costings of you work, they will expect this all the time from then on.

Thanks
 
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True, I was thinking about cloud applications for their solution, however, I thought they are going to need local storage anyway, which means they are probably going to spend money on a RAID based NAS (at the very least) Which for a decent one is going to cost anywhere from £250+.

There is no qualms about backups they are happy enough doing this obviously I will schedule and set-up email alerts to myself

From the sounds of it yesterday when I gave them my rough price they seemed fine with product costings, said I would finalise it was a rough guestimate and the OS is not an issue.

I think it would be better for them in the long run than having a NAS device which limits them in the long run if they want to do more with the server, and why pay for cloud application hosting when you already have a server you can utilise, its not exactly demanding, set-up a shared directory to store sage data, point the local installs of sage to this directory, then include the sage data in nightly backups

I will still get any monthly or agreed support charges from support of their server, workstations and small network.
 
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Starting to set this up, although the microserver I have been sent doesnt seem to be detecting any drives :\

I have used the standard Seagate in as a test, and the 2 x Western Digital RE4 drives but still nothing tried fiddling about with BIOS but still nothing! Drives spin up on power on
 
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Hi all,

Is there any issues with regards to using the built in disk mirror feature in Windows? or is there a more proffered alternative to software RAID for the HP Microservers, anything with some good features would be a bonus like disk monitoring :)
 
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Mr-White said:
How have you set the sata controller mode in the bios ?
You should at least see the Seagate drive that it was shipped with, maybe check the connections or reset the bios.

MW
Click to expand...

Ignore the bit about not being able to see the drives now, thats sorted, just wanted to see if it was ok to use the build in Windows version of Software RAID using Disk Manager or if there is a more preferred version with better options (for free)
 
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