Small business - What network hardware is needed?

[AmdEmAll]

Hello, I need to know what kind of network hardware I would need for a small company, lets say it's a local beer brewery, the whole business is in one building. Accounting, advertising, etc. There will be 4 servers. A web/email server, acct database, inventory & network storage. There are 100 computers that will be on the network. The 4 servers will be Newisys duel opteron 1U. What kind of racks, hubs, routers, etc will I need. Also how many spools or feet of cat 5? I need your opinion. I need to know how many of each thing is needed for a network to run 100 computers + 4 servers. BTW the connection to the net will be a T1.

 

[skyking]

From what you have posted, you need the assistance of a professional network person. The cable plant alone will cost several thousnd dollars in labor and materials, and placement of switches and networking components will depend on a proper onsite evaluation and design. This design is what will make up your parts count.
Setting up workgroups/domains/firewalls, routing of vpn as necessary, all those things will change your hardware requirements.

 

[AmdEmAll]

This isn't a real company, it's a virtual company. I need this information for a project though Can you give me an idea at least what hardware I will need? I picked duel athlon mp appro servers. Some sort of backup system will be needed. Also A large UPS. Where is some information on racks. It would help a lot if I could see a list of hardware for a small companies network.

 

[mcveigh]

look at dell's website, they have all that.

your servers sound like overkill, maybe not for database, but I would think so for email and websites, depending on est. load.

I'm sure others will chime in, BTW cabling depends on the size of building.

 

[Garion]

By the way - If you are doing this for a project, most profs frown on servers from a non-well-established vendor. Stick with Dell, HP, IBM, etc. and you'll do yourself a favor. This also is true in reality. If you have a major outage, there's nothing like a solid, well-established support organization with hot spare parts within 30 minutes of most major metro areas.

- G

 

[BarryAZ]

Regarding established hardware -- sort of a yes and no there. I work with both -- I have clients running 'brand name' (Dell's, IBM's, Compaq's) and others running servers which I have built up. Then again, I pretty well know what I'm doing when building up a server.

Heck, one of my 'no-name' servers has been running continuously for closing on 3 years -- no reboots. Then again, it is a NetWare 4.2 server -- they are pretty tolerant to begin with.

 

[Garion]

Originally posted by: BarryAZ
Regarding established hardware -- sort of a yes and no there. I work with both -- I have clients running 'brand name' (Dell's, IBM's, Compaq's) and others running servers which I have built up. Then again, I pretty well know what I'm doing when building up a server.

Heck, one of my 'no-name' servers has been running continuously for closing on 3 years -- no reboots. Then again, it is a NetWare 4.2 server -- they are pretty tolerant to begin with.

And when you decide not to do it anymore, it breaks and nobody else can figure out the hardware? They have to find a tech who is capable of that. Believe it or not, there's a very significant number of network "engineers" that couldn't find begin to troubleshoot a clone server hardware fault. With a name brand system, they have very mature tech support organiations that can help you troubleshoot things and be there to support it when you're gone. Definitely a plus in my book.

- Jason