Help with buying servers

W

wanko80

Erect Member
Jul 31, 2006
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I had mentioned this awhile ago, but I will need some servers for my network. Here is what I need:

-Windows server with SQL Server (for an application)
-Data backup server
-Email server

At one point before he disappeared, inhopsys has suggested getting all of them on one server and running Exchange. This sounds expensive to me, but maybe not.

I had also got advice from fly to get two servers, with one being a linux one for the email server.

I'm leaning towards the 2 server config as it is probably cheaper and I could put the email server oustide the network to protect it better (from my limited knowledge this is what I should do, right?).

So if I go with 2 servers, what exact configs should I really get. I'd prefer to go with Dell as we get all our PCs from them, but would be willing to do something else if someone feels really strongly about it.

But let's assume Dell is what we go with. I have absolutely no idea how to configure a server to fit our network. Sure I could build the best one available, but we don't need that and we don't have gobs of money to spend here.

The application server will have about 15 people at most access the application at any one time. As far as backups, we have about 25 computers that need to be backed up.

We have about 30 email users or so, so nothing massive there.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated. If no one cares, go ahead and close the thread and I'll go cry in the corner.
 
theacoustician said:
Aren't you rather non-technical though? Why are you in charge of buying them?
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I'm technical enough. I mean, I could buy something and it'd work, but I'd rather get some advice and buy the correct thing.

Edit: It's a small business with me being the most technical person. I'm capable, just don't really have tons of experience in it. I chose to leave the IT field as a career because it sucks, but I still do it for this as I'm able to. It just doesn't happen on a daily basis so my knowledge isn't usually up to date anymore.
 
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I think fly would be able to help you with whatever you need, hes pretty smart in this are if i remember correctly

edit - or the obvious one theac, lol
 
wonko80 said:
I'm technical enough. I mean, I could buy something and it'd work, but I'd rather get some advice and buy the correct thing.

Edit: It's a small business with me being the most technical person. I'm capable, just don't really have tons of experience in it. I chose to leave the IT field as a career because it sucks, but I still do it for this as I'm able to. It just doesn't happen on a daily basis so my knowledge isn't usually up to date anymore.
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Ok then. I thought you were a techno-doofus like Sarcasmo. Sorry for my confusion.
 
Sometimes it feels like our network is running ADD, cause it takes forever to do what I tell it to. *badumpishhh*
 
Two servers is a must, both SQL and Exchange are resource hogs. Beyond that you can typically contact Dell/HP/IBM and have them offer you free advice on what to order. Tell them that you have a budget in mind and you need to tailor the servers to your applications.

Once they have made a recommendation(s) bring the specs back here, you'll get better advice that way.
 
The easiest to meet the needs you mentioned is to just go with 2 Power Edge 1950s. You can get those scaled to your specific needs and add Exchange03 with you 20-30 CALs and stay under 10K.
 
I'll message Inphosys and tell him to log in and elaborate on his earlier suggestion. He does this stuff for small businesses and large ones alike so he'll have an idea about prices and what not. The boy's good so I'll let him speak for himself if he's not too busy.
 
I deal with vendors all day on design and implemention on a much larger scale (I also manage about 8 petabyes of SAN/NAS storage) with a little bit larger budget but I have alot of small GSU sites out there with 30 or less users that we create preconfigured cookie cutter networks that we send out along the same lines of what I mentioned above.
 
-I'm not running AD on my network. There really is no domain. Just a workgroup as we have only recently started to migrate from dumb terminals to PCs. I personally don't see a need to try and use AD in our network as we have very, very basic users.

-I emailed and PMed inhopsys and never heard back.

-I have very limited experience with Linux. I'm not opposed to using it though unless it requires tons of maintenance. I have people I can contact that can help me to learn it (you guys and my brother-in-law).

-I used Exchange 5 years ago and wasn't a huge fan. All the features are nice and all, but we probably wouldn't use most of them, so why pay for them?
 
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