Server for Architect's practice.

[jezscott]

Our current server is really bad, so temporarily I just spent £800 on:
HP ProLiant Turion II N40L MicroServer
2x Kingston 4GB DDR3 1066MHz Memory Non-ECC CL7 1.5V
4x Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 64MB Cache - OEM Caviar Green
Windows Home Server 2011
I will use this as our Home Server for when we move out of the house into the office.

For the office server, £7k is over budget really. Its the SAS hard disks that seem to be the major cost. Also, I need to understand the software, SBS 2011, Premium addon, VMware, Symantic recovery seems to be about £2k would I need the premium addon as well as VMware?

 

[Noobaside]

whats the budget?

 

[jezscott]

Was hoping £3k, but depends what I get pushing it higher.

The ML350 G6 looks highly expandable, what's the minimum I could start with?

Eg.
£1500 Server
£550 Win SBS 2011 5 CALs
£200 extra 5 CALs
£800? mix SATA (~4TB least accessed files) & SAS (~1TB frequently accessed files) to maximise cost performance?
what ML350 G6 integrated components need upgrading?

£195? Symantec recovery, does SBS provide a limited facility for this?
£380? VMware, is this instead of Premium Add on? is there an alternative?
£850? Premium Add on 5 CALs, do I need this for remote desktop?
£250? extra 5 CALs

To back up server, can I back up to my HP Microserver at home over Internet? Or would Mozy etc. be better?

 

[jezscott]

So, since you all last helped with my server specification, I have made a few hasty purchases. Where initially I wanted one server, I unintentionally now have the parts for three physical servers to divide between office and home.

I haven't decided how to divide up the hardware, or what configuration to put the hard drives in. I would like to install a free hypervisor on each of these, not sure exactly what virtual servers I should setup.

I'm sure there are one or two more things I need to get to get the most out of this stuff.

HP ML100 G6:, Xeon X3450, 16Gb ECC UDIMM
HP ProLiant Essentials Lights Out 100i Advanced Pack
2x OWC Multi-mount 3.5" to 5.25" bracket set
(Can fit 7 standard 3.5" HDD & 1 LP 3.5" HDD)

HP Microserver N40L:, 8Gb non-ECC
HP Micro Server Remote Access Card Kit
OWC Multi-mount 3.5" to 5.25" bracket set
(Modified to fit 7 standard 3.5" HDD)

Supermicro X8SIL-F:, Xeon X3450, 32Gb ECC RDIMM
includes 2x Gigabit NIC & IPMI 2.0 KVM
Old ATX Case + Corsair VX 450W
Supermicro CSE-M35T1 5 Bay SATA Hot Swap Rack
(Can fit 9 standard 3.5" HDD)

Other:
HP ROK Microsoft Windows SBS 2011 Standard + 5 extra user CALs
Kaspersky Small Office Security Software 5 PCs and 1 FileServer 1 Year + 5 extra PCs
2x Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011 64-Bit, OEM

HP NC382T PCIe Dp Gigabit Server Adapter
Highpoint RocketRAID 2720SGL 8x SATA
Highpoint Rocket 620 2x SATA
BlackGold BGT3650 Quad DVB-T2/DVB-C
HP PROCURVE SWITCH 1800-24G (for link aggregation)
HP PROCURVE SWITCH 1810-8G (for link aggregation)
HP PROCURVE SWITCH 1410-8G

Hard disks: (new & salvaged)
6x 2TB Western Digital WD20EARS
1x 2TB Seagate Barracuda ST32000542AS LP
3x 750Gb Western Digital Caviar Green WD7500AACS
1x 750Gb Western Digital Caviar Blue WD7500AAKS
2x 640Gb Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS
1x 500Gb Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKS
1x 500Gb Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD502HJ
1x 320Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS
2x 250Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250620AS
2x 250Gb Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250310AS
2x 250Gb Seagate Barracuda 250Gb 7200.12 LP
Western Digital My Book 2TB USB 3.0 External
Western Digital My Book 1TB eSATA USB2.0 External
StarTech eSATA USB to SATA External HDD Dock

 

[kerrgreg]

Haha Wow you have been busy!

Personally I would go with a break down such as this:

Most user active (presumed data active also) site = Supermicro X8SIL-F
2nd most active gets the HP ML100 g6
Finally the N40L used for home/offsite back-up (assuming this is possible)

Ideally I would look to set-up like this :-
I would put a raid 1 array of 2x 250hdds in both the two larger servers (Supermicro and ML1000)

And then you need to calculate your data storage requirements and then work out what space you will need for back-up (ideally needs to be daily incremental on n40L running WHS2011)
I would configure both the ML1000 (OS 2008R2) and Supermicro to (WHS2011) use shadow copy on the data volume to allow for accidental deletion.

Use the WD Mybook (either/whichever) to do manaual data transfer of the back-up (offsite) each day, Ideally I would use the 2tb to do a full back-up weekly an the 1tb for a daily.

Where possible (think you have enough drives) hopefully enough raid options to use raid 10 since this is both fast and redundent.

Without knowing where your offices are and the user split its hard to be more detailed than I have been.

 

[jezscott]

Sounds good to me.
At the moment the office and our home is the same building, I was thinking of setting up the Microserver at a family members house near by as an offsite FTP?
In about 6 months, we will be out in a separate office, so I could use our home server as the offsite backup & vice-versa (and take server out of family members house).
Although the supermicro has 32gb, the ML110-G6 16Gb is mainly HP hardware & ROK software for compatibility etc.
For home server use, a server would be for storage of media, ripped blurays etc, shared quad tuner, on the fly video conversion.
2x 250Gb raid 1 for system disks sounds good.
6x 2Tb in Raid 10 is plenty of storage for the office