small school server

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Ish

Ish

Ish

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Hi

Please spec me a server operating system for a small school with 150 user accounts in total. Each person is allowed a 1GB mailbox and 1GB Home drive.

Something with exchange or it's own email client is ideal.

There are 30 windows 7 laptops and only one class uses them at a time.

It's a small independent school so the cost needs to be a minimal as possible.

Linux has been suggested but I don't know much about it.

Thanks
 
Windows 2008R2 Standard for the OS. A nice Dell or HP with a big chunk of ram if you want to virtualise and some nice fast hard drives. Depends on your budget tho tbh.
 
You say you want to use exchange but what else do you intend to use it for, are you intending to use it as a file server as well? (going by the 1GB home drive mention) Any other uses?
 
To be honest I would try and stear clear about Linux OS, like you said you are not familar with them, I am assuming it would be you supporting them? or just getting an idea of what to use?

If you are supporting them, and feel much more condident on it, then stick to Windows, and as mentioned, I would suggest keeping up with times and using Windows Server2008 R2 but try and get an idea of what you want to use it for, and anything that you "may need to use on it" in the future to see if you can encoporate it on to this server, or you may face planning buying a second one to run what ever else you plan to.

Build to you needs, and try not to skimp on hardware spec/vendors (stick to well known Vendors like Dell/HP), leave some room for manoeuvrability.
 
We would rather stick to Windows if possible and we usually buy Dell servers.

The main use is as a file server and exchange email.

How many users can you have on SBS2011?
 
Two things then, what's the likely hood of expansion over the next 5 years, is your network likely to grow in size, are more machines and users likely to be added on in the near future?

And what sort of budget are you looking at for it? I work in a Secondary school, 8 years ago there were about 90PCs here run off 1-2 servers, 5 years ago about 150PCs, now we have about 600 + about 150 laptops, 5 VMware servers running 30 VMs and 2100 exchange mailboxes. So schools can be a bit unpredictable in growth, what's the likelihood of something like that happening where you are?

Whatever you get personally i would go for VMware ESXi (free hypervisor) over using SBS and just use standard 2008R2 installs, split exchange and the fileserver in to two seperate VMs rather than putting all your eggs in one basket (technically 2 baskets inside one basket mind you :p lol) your only issue then really is backups but i'd assume you have some method of backing up the data and exchange mailstores currently anyway? .... note that this whole idea is mainly thinking along the lines that you're going to eventually expand, if that isn't the case you can probably get something cheaper and not bother with vmware :)
 
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The school won't expand beyond 150 pupil within the next 5 years as it's limited by the building it's in.

Looking at the timetable only one class would be using the laptops at any one time.
 
SBS will do exactly what you require with the minimum of fuss and cost.

Personally I'd at least half that mail box allowance a GB is far more than a school pupil should need and also big enough that by the time they hit there limits they will struggle to sort it out.
 
a1ex2001 said:
SBS will do exactly what you require with the minimum of fuss and cost.

Personally I'd at least half that mail box allowance a GB is far more than a school pupil should need and also big enough that by the time they hit there limits they will struggle to sort it out.
Click to expand...

In the case of not expanding then i agree with the above ^

Definitely agree with the mailbox allowance, i get quite a lot of emails and even with my 2GB allowance i'm only using 400mb, just cap the maximum email send and receive sizes to something sensible and it'll take years for them to fill it. (longer than the student is at the school anyway)

EDIT: K.C makes a good point, free service from microsoft that gives you all the benefits of exchange but without having to worry about the finances and server space involved with having it in house, also significantly lowers the requirements for your server.... for 150 users and doing nothing but acting as a file server almost anything with hardware raid is good enough no matter how cheap.
 
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a1ex2001 said:
SBS will do exactly what you require with the minimum of fuss and cost.
Click to expand...

I could be wrong but i've always thought SBS 2011 Standard (Essentials is something like 25 users) was limited to 70 odd user accounts (concurrent connections is even less from what I remember)?
Certainly the cheaper route if I am wrong though.

Also is it the 'norm' for students to be given school based email accounts?
Have worked in a few large secondary schools and it's always been restricted to staff only.
 
visibleman said:
Also is it the 'norm' for students to be given school based email accounts?
Have worked in a few large secondary schools and it's always been restricted to staff only.
Click to expand...

Yep, nowdays a lot of schools are blocking access to hotmail etc. and getting a tighter grip on what students can and can't do regarding communication in and out of school.

I can't speak for other schools but our ICT curriculum also has a section where outlook is taught to the kids along with email etiquette and so on, makes it far easier if kids can login, click on outlook and it takes them straight into their own email account without any setup.
 
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