File Servers for Small Business

[alkolkin]

I am looking to build or buy a server with the following chracteristics:
Dual Zeon or Opteron processors
Limited database processing - not really a database server, just a file and print server
Supporting 5 - 10 simultaneous users using XP Pro
Windows 2003 Small Business Server Standard operating system
2 - 4 GB ECC RAM
SCSI hardware caching RAID (with battery backup) 1 for Operating system
SCSI hardware caching RAID (with battery backup) 10 for Data
SCSI Spare drive for Shadow Copy backup of key data
SCSI external port
USB II connectors (4)
Firewire 800 connectors (2)
Redundant power supplies
Integrated graphics
Integrated sound

My experience with building is that unless there are plenty of spare parts available, it is hard to diagnose which part has failed. Therefore, more redundancy has to be built in if I go that route.

What brands do people recommend? Which processor works best for this application? Has anyone experience with building production level servers?

Any help would be appreciated.
Albert

 

[imported_Tick]

Originally posted by: alkolkin
I am looking to build or buy a server with the following chracteristics:
Dual Zeon or Opteron processors
Limited database processing - not really a database server, just a file and print server
Supporting 5 - 10 simultaneous users using XP Pro
Windows 2003 Small Business Server Standard operating system
2 - 4 GB ECC RAM
SCSI hardware caching RAID (with battery backup) 1 for Operating system
SCSI hardware caching RAID (with battery backup) 10 for Data
SCSI Spare drive for Shadow Copy backup of key data
SCSI external port
USB II connectors (4)
Firewire 800 connectors (2)
Redundant power supplies
Integrated graphics
Integrated sound

My experience with building is that unless there are plenty of spare parts available, it is hard to diagnose which part has failed. Therefore, more redundancy has to be built in if I go that route.

What brands do people recommend? Which processor works best for this application? Has anyone experience with building production level servers?

Any help would be appreciated.
Albert

Firstly, rackmount? Secondly, the greater number of arrays, the harder it is to maintain. Get one RAID 5 array for everything. Secondly, Opterons are a far better choice ATM. Much better thermal charectoristics. Right now, dual socket single core oppys is the way to go, as it can be upgraded later, to 2 cores a socket, and that size of workgroup dosn't need more processing oompf than that. 2 gb ECC RAM per socket is a good choice. For a server, you don't even need integrated sound... Redundant PSU's help up time, also make sure to get an enterprise level UPS. A budget would help.

 

[alkolkin]

Thank you Tick. I appreciate your help and value your input.

Yes, an enterprise UPS and backup is in the budget, which is $7,000.

I am interested in a tower because growth is not an issue and I have no experienc with racks.

I need minimal sound for errors and some websites.

One of the Board of Directors has strong views that data and OS should be on separate physical arrays. What extra work is involvedin managing 2? It seems that RAID 10 for the data gives us both redundancy and speed, no?

I would appreciate your advise on buy or build.
Thank you!
Albert

 

[dexvx]

Judging by the traffic you described... a Pentium II era computer can handle it no problems. AFAIK, you should try getting a PCI-X board with GbE and a PCI-X SCSI or SATA Raid controller that supports Hot-Swap. You'll be much more limited by your IO than anything else.

If you want to build nice, stable servers, I'd look at chasis's/packages from SuperMicro.