Server for Architect's practice.

jezscott · 2 Jan 2012 at 00:00

I've been reading around servers recently and I'm still not sure what to do.

We are small architectural practice with just 5 of us working from our home, however in 6 months we are moving to an office and may expand to more than double.

We work on fairly large graphics intensive files, our email etc is through gmail, we need remote access and we scan all documentation that comes in to the office, so we need full text searchable indexing of PDFs.

We currently use an old PC with WHSv1 and a mixture of different sized HDDs.
As well as our office files, this also holds our music photos and recordings from our HTPC. This machine is old and slow and remote access is poor.

For future home use, I was thinking of a simple NAS or WHS'2011. However, for the office I need something more powerful.

Perhaps a simple NAS box, such as the Qnap TS-879 Pro Turbo would suffice. Or I build/buy a DIY pedestal server with a variant of Windows Server 2008 R2. Or both.

I even started looking into remote desktops using a Dell PowerEdge M610x Blade Server with a ATI FirePro V9800P for 3D & graphics (I'd like to see this sort of thing in person)

Can anyone point me in the right direction? It would be greatly appreciated.

nightmare99 · 2 Jan 2012 at 10:02

Or I build/buy a DIY pedestal server with a variant of Windows Server 2008 R2.

It is not really worth it these days, perhaps get a HP ML110 with 2008 R2 Standard / Foundation and make sure you get the 3 year ndb warranty.

jamesfreddie · 2 Jan 2012 at 10:54

I would look at a HP Microserver.

TRNC · 2 Jan 2012 at 11:44

Blade servers for remote connection is massive overkill and a huge waste of money.

I'd return to your initial idea of a cheap pedestal (from HP/Dell) and a NAS box if nesessary

aspirin · 2 Jan 2012 at 12:33

HP ML 350 G6 including iLO advanced.
SBS 2011 Essentials or Standard (depending on whether you want to continue to use cloud based email such as 365).
Use Outlook Web Access for remote email (if using Standard).
Free version of VMware to host SBS.
Back up using Symantec System Recovery for SBS within the VM.
For back up target use local HDD and perhaps something like Mozy.

Yamahahahahaha · 2 Jan 2012 at 12:40

To start with, for the livelihoods of 5 people (or even if it's money on the side) you need to have a proper server. Think about how much a day of downtime costs you.

Roughly how much storage do you need?
How fast is the amount of data growing?
Make sure you buy a server which will cope with the firm's demands for at least 3 years. This would probably be something like an HP ML server or Dell T server (both are freestanding tower ranges).

For the storage array itself, use 2.5" disks with controller that can do RAID6.
You can always expand the storage capacity later with DAS / NAS.

This would point towards one of the nicer HP ML servers (ML350 G6?) or Dell T servers (T610 / T710).

As for the software setup... There are more than a million ways of setting up the working environment.
Maybe have a chat with the others and decide what you want ideally, and work out what would fit best?

Edit: Aspirin's post is very similar, so I guess there is your answer :]

ecksmen · 2 Jan 2012 at 13:08

jezscott said:
I've been reading around servers recently and I'm still not sure what to do.

We are small architectural practice with just 5 of us working from our home, however in 6 months we are moving to an office and may expand to more than double.

We work on fairly large graphics intensive files, our email etc is through gmail, we need remote access and we scan all documentation that comes in to the office, so we need full text searchable indexing of PDFs.

We currently use an old PC with WHSv1 and a mixture of different sized HDDs.
As well as our office files, this also holds our music photos and recordings from our HTPC. This machine is old and slow and remote access is poor.

For future home use, I was thinking of a simple NAS or WHS'2011. However, for the office I need something more powerful.

Perhaps a simple NAS box, such as the Qnap TS-879 Pro Turbo would suffice. Or I build/buy a DIY pedestal server with a variant of Windows Server 2008 R2. Or both.

I even started looking into remote desktops using a Dell PowerEdge M610x Blade Server with a ATI FirePro V9800P for 3D & graphics (I'd like to see this sort of thing in person)

Can anyone point me in the right direction? It would be greatly appreciated.

Blade - you need a blade chassis for them to go into. This is not what you want, unless you can get it co-lo?

Remote desktops will not make use of physical graphics card using native RDP. You'll need something like Citrix ICA, VMware VDI or Remote FX for a more seamless remote desktop and even then there's further requirements on top of a single server for it to be worth while.

I think the others are right, and unless its going into a RACK tower servers would be fine. RDP isn't bad, but it sounds like you may struggle with graphics work.

Something like File server + remote desktop gateway + couple of remote desktop servers and expand outwards as required. You could combine roles as needed as well.

Yamahahahahaha · 2 Jan 2012 at 16:16

Remote solutions for CAD are a mixed bag. We support a couple of medium sized Architectural firms, and they have both asked us to look into desktop virtualisation, including for their CAD users.

RemoteFX is a real mixed bag, mainly due to the expensive hardware requirements - the card must be a high-end Quadro or FirePro, with oodles of RAM. Yet RemoteFX only supports 256MB of VRAM per instance currently...
HDX (Which is what you would want) from Citrix is an excellent product but you would need a Xen / Citrix environment to run it in, which leads to another issue.
Virtualising your desktop systems would need a robust and redundant servers, which is expensive. Not to mention the amount of configuration which would need to happen.
Unless you have a dedicated IT guy who is fluent of one of these technologies, I would recommend sticking with standalone workstations.

A Software Assured license of AutoCAD will allow you to install it in the office, and at home. Same goes for MS Office Professional.

With the Architectural firms I've worked with, the most important things have been:
1) Teleworking - Emails to phones, VPN or RDP access to files in the office.
2) Hot desking - Being able to log in to any machine on the network and have all the software configured for their use (Group Policy is your friend here).
3) Archive - Both firms have a policy of 15 year achiving of all job assets, and then an indefinite archive of all drawings for certain jobs. A combination of tape drives and moving the archives to new spinning disks every 5 years are the solution to this. The National Archives have a Best Practices guide for long term archive, contact them direct.

jezscott · 4 Jan 2012 at 01:44

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond in detail!

There's no IT admin to manage our network, just me, and my time is limited. I would like to find a local consultant to help setup our network, and provide occasional support.

I'm sure one day, graphics intensive virtual desktops will be simpler to setup and manage in the future.

I had been looking at both the HP and Dell servers recently. Quite a range of spec to consider. They do look expensive when compared to a standard PC. I assume that is down to the reliability of the parts used and hopefully the support.

We're using about 4Tb storage, includes folder duplication and backup to internal HDD. We do need to think about storage and locating the files that we access frequently on to the faster storage.

Our main CAD software Vectorworks can install on 2 PCs (eg work/home). We have some software (not graphics intensive),which we rarely use and is installed on a separate PC for people to remote desktop onto as required. Should this be a virtual desktop on the server for each? or virtual application?

Hotdesking would be very useful as half of us are currently part time and we may take on other architects on a project by project basis. We are already thinking who is going to be sharing which workstation this year as space is limited until we move office.

For hotdesking, what is installed on the client workstation? Is the whole OS, desktop and software downloaded from the server each time a user logs in? Or is the OS, software, drivers etc located on the server as a remote hard disk? I wonder if our software licenses are compatible with hotdesking.

Reliable and fast remote access to a workstation over the internet would allow our part time architects to access the software from home on days when it wouldn't be worth the time spent travelling into our office. When I'm on construction sites, I could do with access to my workstation from an iPad or the site laptop.

I've not thought about wether our email/contacts/calendar should be on cloud or local server. Seems a waste to have a capable server and then pay for a remote one. Same with remote backing up of the server, I was thinking of backing up to our home server (and vice versa).

Rroff · 4 Jan 2012 at 01:47

As an aside sounds like your data is quite important to your business do you have a decent off-site backup solution as well?

jezscott · 4 Jan 2012 at 01:53

Rroff said:
As an aside sounds like your data is quite important to your business do you have a decent off-site backup solution as well?

Just edited last paragraph. Basically not at the moment :-/

Noobaside · 4 Jan 2012 at 16:50

i work for an it support company in hampshire but we got a few customers in london could pass ur details onto my boss if you want we do anything from the most basic support to 24/7 monitored systems with multiple levels of redundancy.

jezscott · 4 Jan 2012 at 19:17

Noobaside · 9 Jan 2012 at 12:40

jezscott · 10 Jan 2012 at 11:01

Thanks guys, I got your info.

I'll get a Dell or HP, but would still really appreciate a bit more advice on general hardware/software specification.

aspirin · 10 Jan 2012 at 22:57

Hi jezscott
This is tried and tested solution. I don't know much about Dell as I work for a HP Gold Partner.
487930-031 HP ProLiant ML350 G6 Base - Quad-Core Xeon E5520 2.26 GHz Embedded HP Smart Array P410i/256MB Controller
534916-B21 HP 512MB Flash Backed Write Cache for P410i 6 GB (installed) / 144 GB (max) - DDR3 SDRAM - 1333 MHz - PC3-10600
2 x Gigabit Ethernet included
DVD Optical Drive included
412648-B21 ProLiant NC360T PCI Express Dual Port Gigabit Server Adapter
500656-B21 Additional 2GB Memory x 8
581286-B21 HP 600GB 6G SAS 10K rpm SFF (2.5-inch) Dual Port x 8 (or 900GB SAS)
512485-B21 HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) Advanced x 1
2.0TB External USB Hard Disk x 2
Symantec System Recovery Small Business Server Edition
Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard
VMware Essentials Kit
Subscription only for VMware vSphere

Yamahahahahaha · 11 Jan 2012 at 10:52

Looks fine.

Maybe get 12 HDs, so you can have RAID6 + Hotspare, with capacity to grow (5TB unformatted).

aspirin · 11 Jan 2012 at 22:27

The disk limit on the ML350 is 8 x 2.5" or 6 x 3.5" hence the alternative of 900GB SAS.

jezscott · 12 Jan 2012 at 09:00

Thanks Aspirin, that looks ideal.
I'm going to total up the cost, but should be fine.

Was wondering if Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard would allow more flexibility than SBS 2011?

aspirin · 12 Jan 2012 at 13:37

SBS 2011 will give you the option of Exchange at no additional cost. There is also the Premium version which permits a second Server running SQL or Remote Desktop (Terminal Services) or whatever. This can all be run in a virtual environment on the stated Server spec. The downsides of SBS - one DC and a limit of 75 clients which I don't think would be an issue in this case. I just can't see the benefit of running full 2008R2.
I have just done a quick calculation on the hardware only and it should be roughly £6.5K. I certainly wouldn't pay any more than £7.25K.