Server Suggestions

swinnie

swinnie

swinnie

Soldato
Joined
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Kent
Hi Guys,

A company I work with support a network of around 20 users, who currently have a poor server - a single Xeon box, a single 1TB drive which runs SBS 2011, including Exchange 2010 which is running to 49GB in size which is causing a lot of performance problems.

They (the company I work with) really want to build their own box to supply to the customer, but I think it would be best to use a pre-built solution, and migrate over to the new box over the bank holiday weekend at the end of the month.

What are your thoughts? Do you have any recommendations of models to look into?


They have shared folder on the network, which has around 140GB of data on there plus a 10GB personal storage folder. They house a lot of AutoCAD documents on the server so need something that can handle the requests and the file size. I have already made provisions for some Gigabit switches in whatever upgrade we choose.
 
Poor hard drive doing all that on it's own! I completely agree with you with regards to buying a pre built server or barebones and add the additional components that you wish. This way if it's someone like Dell or HP the warranty stays intact.

Things to consider now are that SBS2011 is no longer resold although I believe if bought with HP gear you can buy it OEM if your current copy is not retail.

With regards to a server something like a HP ML350P will be more then adequate with the correct amount of memory and hard disk configuration.

You'll want the additional power supply for redundancy, disk configuration wise as you aren't using much space you could go for 3x450Gb 10k SAS (raid 5) for OS and data partition with an additional 2x300Gb 15k SAS (raid 1) for the exchange DB. If money is an issue you could cut that down more and possibly go for a different disk configuration.

Make sure you get a good storage raid controller that supports Raid 5, most half decent servers already do but may require additional memory and battery backup.

As it's a core server a good warranty with four hours parts and labour would be best and for piece of mind they are worth it. Have you thought about a backup solution as well? Ideally you want as much ram as possible with Exchange 2010 so in an ideal world 64Gb of ram although not needed it would enable the server to last a little longer before being upgraded.

It might be worth as Microsoft are no longer going down the SBS root migrating mail to Exchange online/Office 365. This way you could save hardware costs on the server and go down to something like an ML310 with it's roles only being a DC and file server.

Sorry if its a bit of a mess posting from my phone!
 
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What services are you actually running? The biggest issue with your proposal is that you are still going to end up with only one domain controller at the end of it all, which is a single point of failure for authentication, DNS, DHCP etc. This is a point you will need to address before you talk about replacing the hardware - for what it's worth I have never managed to price up a white-box server that was cheap enough to make me forget that Dell exist. You miss out on iLO/DRAC, support, a known platform for a compatibility list etc.

The simple answer is put the mail on Office 365 and get two cheap Dell boxes with 2012 R2 on with the appropriate CALs for your DCs and file storage with the appropriate backups in place. If the budget doesn't exist for two servers then that makes an even stronger case for not hosting your email on it.
 
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SBS 2011 is now EOL and as of the 1st of Jan can no longer be purchased even as OEM from Dell or HP and as far as I'm aware anywhere else.

So first question is what’s your current license? Is it OEM or Volume? If it’s a volume license then happy days you can move it to some must faster hardware if it’s OEM then that’s another story...

If its OEM I think it might be worth posting the full specs so we can see if adding a new decent raid controller and some faster SAS 15k HDDs is an option, you could then look to image the existing install onto the new drives and raid controller, messy and far from ideal.

Is it SBS 2011 Standard or Premium?

In either case the maximum amount of ram is 32 gb for 2008 R2 which is what SBS 2011 is afterall which for 20 users is more than enough so unless you’re going to virtualize it 64GB of memory is pointless.

Office 365 is not a bad idea however I would only consider this if you have a decent internet connection and use office 2010 or newer.

Hardwise wise Dell and HP both make good server I think and would not touch a custom build for a server thats being used in the business world personally.

I would go for the Dell R420 or T420 (depending if you have a rack or not) with the Perc 710 and 3x 600GB 15K 3.5" SAS drives with 32gb of ram and either dual quad core or six core CPU I would think for a setup like this. I tend to be going for Dell these days because they offer such better value for money over HP from my experiance.
 
Caged said:
I'm not seeing anything that this box is doing that would make 15k SAS disks worth the expense.
Click to expand...

Certainly not if exchange is migrated away. If kept locally then potentially it could be beneficial depending on the planned life cycle of the server and company expansion. Although 10k disks would probably suffice 'perfectly well whilst being considerably cheaper.
 
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Thanks guys for all of your responses, all really useful stuff!

So, the actual box is -

Fujitsu Primergy TX150 S7 Server
Intel Xeon X3430 2.40GHz CPU
12GB RAM
1TB Single HDD - consumer grade as well, in a very old 5.25" to 3.5" bay adapter as when the server was purchased the guy that did it didn't realise you had to use Fujitsu 'modules'
SBS 2011 Standard

The roles running are - DC, AD, DNS, DHCP, Exchange 2010 and File Server.

Poor hard drive doing all that on it's own! I completely agree with you with regards to buying a pre built server or barebones and add the additional components that you wish. This way if it's someone like Dell or HP the warranty stays intact.

Things to consider now are that SBS2011 is no longer resold although I believe if bought with HP gear you can buy it OEM if your current copy is not retail.
Click to expand...

The copy of SBS 2011 is a retail box as far as I know. Personally I would rather see Exchange migrated into Office 365, a couple of Server 2012 boxes purchased for the onsite data requirement and configured for failover, but I don't know what the costs would run too for the equipment required to do that. As pointed out elsewhere, we still have a single point of failure. The customer has FTTC, and we are already doing an offsite backup via PerfectBackup each night (including Exchange) as well as a local system backup to an external disk.

What services are you actually running? The biggest issue with your proposal is that you are still going to end up with only one domain controller at the end of it all, which is a single point of failure for authentication, DNS, DHCP etc. This is a point you will need to address before you talk about replacing the hardware - for what it's worth I have never managed to price up a white-box server that was cheap enough to make me forget that Dell exist. You miss out on iLO/DRAC, support, a known platform for a compatibility list etc.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. The Director has spoken to me about his desire to have something like HP iLO, despite me stressing that to do that we've got to really get an out of box solution and just supply, rather than build and supply. They're keen to build their own box as they've done so well with their own brand towers that they build and supply to the general public. Although this is a rather different kettle of fish!

With the iLO/DRAC solutions, would I be able to connect via the internet, as we're not onsite and provide remote support and would be useful to get a better picture of things, rather than just relying on the RDP connection?

What the cost of a sensibly specced HP ML350p be? If you could trust me some details of suppliers that would be useful and very much appreciated.
 
swinnie said:
Thanks guys for all of your responses, all really useful stuff!

So, the actual box is -

Fujitsu Primergy TX150 S7 Server
Intel Xeon X3430 2.40GHz CPU
12GB RAM
1TB Single HDD - consumer grade as well, in a very old 5.25" to 3.5" bay adapter as when the server was purchased the guy that did it didn't realise you had to use Fujitsu 'modules'
SBS 2011 Standard

The roles running are - DC, AD, DNS, DHCP, Exchange 2010 and File Server.



The copy of SBS 2011 is a retail box as far as I know. Personally I would rather see Exchange migrated into Office 365, a couple of Server 2012 boxes purchased for the onsite data requirement and configured for failover, but I don't know what the costs would run too for the equipment required to do that. As pointed out elsewhere, we still have a single point of failure. The customer has FTTC, and we are already doing an offsite backup via PerfectBackup each night (including Exchange) as well as a local system backup to an external disk.



Absolutely. The Director has spoken to me about his desire to have something like HP iLO, despite me stressing that to do that we've got to really get an out of box solution and just supply, rather than build and supply. They're keen to build their own box as they've done so well with their own brand towers that they build and supply to the general public. Although this is a rather different kettle of fish!

With the iLO/DRAC solutions, would I be able to connect via the internet, as we're not onsite and provide remote support and would be useful to get a better picture of things, rather than just relying on the RDP connection?

What the cost of a sensibly specced HP ML350p be? If you could trust me some details of suppliers that would be useful and very much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Yes you can, you simply connect via internet browser. You can then normally view hardware logs for any failures, remotely shutdown and console onto the server as well as quite a bit more.

As far as a single point of failure for office 365 you could get a Cisco router with 3G/4G failover. This would allow for Internet access to continue and as email is in the cloud it doesn't matter about the SIM not having the same IP address as the main connection.
 
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Xez said:
Yes you can, you simply connect via internet browser. You can then normally view hardware logs for any failures, remotely shutdown and console onto the server as well as quite a bit more.
Click to expand...

Wonderful - that would be extremely useful, as I guess it's like VMWare vSphere were you can get a remote access as if you was at the actual box.

As far as a single point of failure for office 365 you could get a Cisco router with 3G/4G failover. This would allow for Internet access to continue and as email is in the cloud it doesn't matter about the SIM not having the same IP address as the main connection.
Click to expand...

The single point of failure I am more concerned about if the server goes down, then in theory no-body can logon or access the internet as the server is providing DNS, DHCP etc.
 
swinnie said:
Wonderful - that would be extremely useful, as I guess it's like VMWare vSphere were you can get a remote access as if you was at the actual box.



The single point of failure I am more concerned about if the server goes down, then in theory no-body can logon or access the internet as the server is providing DNS, DHCP etc.
Click to expand...

ILO and Drac are brilliant, you can also mount images so ideal if you need to rebuild or do something remotely.

As above though if you offload exchange to 365 and you have a budget for say two HP DL160's then both could be DNS servers, GC, DC's etc. You could also use DFS to replicate the data from one server to the other.

DHCP isn't a massive issue unless your leases are very short. Either way this role can be moved to another device easily enough.
 
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It has to be said, that if you are going to expose the iLO board to the internet for remote control, you are opening up a whole load of pain. Having the ability to turn on and off the server on the internet for all to see :-(
 
DustyMiller said:
It has to be said, that if you are going to expose the iLO board to the internet for remote control, you are opening up a whole load of pain. Having the ability to turn on and off the server on the internet for all to see :-(
Click to expand...

VPN :p or access control lists to restrict access.
 
What tower servers would you guys recommend for my scenario - the rack at the site is pretty much full with the PBX, switches etc and wouldn't fit rack servers in.

Your thoughts would be very much appreciated!
 
What do you guys think to this:

HP ML350e Server
- Intel v2 Intel Xeon Quad-Core E5-2407 2.20GHz CPU
- 24GB RAM
- 2 x 500GB 7.2K SATA Drives OS - RAID Array
- 2 x 500GB 7.2K SATA Drives Data - RAID Array
- Server 2012 Standard

What is the difference between iLO and Insight Control, in practical terms? Is Insight simply a monitoring solution, whereas iLO is also a method of getting a low-level 'console' - or have I completely misunderstood?
 
I would personally go for something different, the 350P over the E any day. The CPU is fine as well as the ram especially if you are planning on moving emails to exchange online. The hard disks I don't personally like but I get that they are cheap. If disk usage isn't going to be high I would rather raid 5 all the disks for more storage space as 500GB just for OS is a waste and just partition it up.

If this server is critical I would choose a SAS 10K disks and not in-line SAS (sata drives). You could then get 2x146Gb for the OS (or 2x300GB if 146Gb's have been discontinued). Sata disks are fine for file storage, just remember to get a good HP care pack.

For that kind of spec you may want to look at the 310G8 and purchase a HP raid card as the integrated 120i's in the 310's and 350e is poor. Light's out is a must and allows you to remote control and perform basic hardware diagnostics such as a failed drive etc. The insight control looks like it expands on that even more and allows centralised management of HP servers from a quick read and having never used it!

Plus points with the 350 model is ability to upgrade far more as if remember right the 310 can only take 4 LFF hard drives.
 
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