Please recommend servers

[morland]

Hello,

One of my friends wishes to purchase servers and his requirements are as follows. Can someone please recommend a HP server along with exact model and details specifications including URL which can help him select. Details available are:

Server #1: To be used as the main server for DNS, DHCP, and MS-Exchange server

Server #2: Will be used an a application server

Questions/more available information:

1) He wishes to have raid 3 or raid 5 for server # 2

2) How much total hard disk should be ok for each server

3) what should be the min. RAM for each server

4) He wishes to have internal tape back-up unit for server #2

Thanks

[Tripredacus]

Considering the price of HDDs nowadays, 1TB should be plenty for both as the storage volumes. Make sure you get 2 volumes, one for OS and one for storage.

The amount of memory depends on a couple things. What OS are you going to use? Also it depends on the number of clients that will be served. More memory means more concurrent connections.

I can't tell you more than that.

[CoffeeFiend]

Not knowing how many users we're talking about (10? 100? 1000? more?) and what needs they have, we simply can't.

DHCP and DNS are a complete non-issue. But Exchange-wise, you could simply need 10 small mailboxes (a few emails a week), or a few thousand boxes of several GBs each... That makes a LOT of difference for how much disk space and RAM you need.

Same story for the "application server". Now knowing which actual applications it'll actually run (could be a simple php-based blog on apache, or a heavy app running on top of Oracle and what not at the same time), how many concurrent users (5? 5000?), and what kind of resulting load you'd have on the server, we have no way to tell anything. It should be somewhere between an old P2-class Xeon running SBS and a HP superdome-class super high end hardware with a high end SAN (multi-million dollar setup) There's just no way we could know with so little information.

If you post way more details then we might be able to help.

[morland]

Hi and thanks for your replies.

The application (running on one of the servers) will have either MS-SQL or Oracle as the back-end and will wither be a VB be client-server application or a web based application developed using ASP/PHP etc (the back-end and front-end have not been decided yet). There will be about 30 concurrent users.

As far as MS-Exchange is concerned, there will as at least as many mailboxes as the # of users. Which will be around 30.

Given the above, would it be a good idea to have the MS-Exchange server on the same machine as the Domain Controller (which will be running DNS, DHCP, and whatever other services).

I hope the above provide you with some more details based on which you can share some recommendations.

Thanks

[CoffeeFiend]

Ah, that makes it a lot easier already.

For only 30 users and such basic stuff, I'd be going with a fairly "basic" server (not low end or low quality -- you still want it to last) running Windows SBS 2008 Premium (R2 isn't out yet). That will very easily run everything you were asking for (including user profiles, file shares and so on), and it even includes Exchange, MS SQL Server and other nice stuff in the bundle (BIG savings!) It's easy to admin (not every ~30 employee company has a fully fledged IT department on hand) and it's relatively inexpensive too. There's no need for 2 servers here.

Personally, I'd likely go for a ML110 G6 if I was buying HP. With the "basic" Xeon X3430 (quad core) and 4x2GB of DDR2. That should be enough to run everything you were talking about for the next few years no problem. Of course, you'll want to pick enough storage for your needs along with that (at $419 for as basic 750GB SATA drive, I'd be tempted to install those myself, especially if you want a few of them -- but then no warranty for them, and it may be hard to find a replacement down the road should one fail). Then again, not knowing what kind of data you'll be storing, we can't quite tell just how much space you'll need. RAID0 is not really an option here (IMO), RAID1 might not provide you with enough space (again, no idea what you really need, much less what you'll need in the coming years), leaving you only with RAID5 as an option (well, or no RAID at all, which might be just fine).

Mind you, that might already be getting more expensive than what you were thinking. With the Xeon X3430, 4x2GB, the SBS 2008 Premium license (which includes Windows itself, Exchange, MS SQL Svr and more), four 750GB SATA drives in RAID5 (one online spare, one for parity) giving you 1.5TB usable, an internal tape backup (DAT), and 5 year warranty (4h, 24x7) it's already like $5000 (not including extra CALs). You could save a bit by foregoing the RAID5 though (it mainly means a longer restore from a drive crash, using tapes instead of array rebuild). Either ways it's not going to be really cheap. With 2 servers running Win 2008 and Exchange Standard and MS SQL Server Standard you'd be looking at about that much in software licenses and CALs alone (more if you want Oracle instead), hardware extra.