File Server (FTP), is hardware sufficient for the workload?

[96redformula]

I am working on a network that has < 75 concurrent users that might possibly connect at the same time. I setup an extra computer with a new installation of Windows 7 Pro and installed Filezilla to run it as a FTP server.

This computer is for school use in 3 classroom labs and will have at most 75 students connecting to the FTP server. Realistically, probably 20 students will logon at the same time, with the transfers of small MS office files at different times, pictures, and other small files < 1MB.

Computer/Server specs are more or less 2Ghz Core Duo, 2GB Ram, 1 TB WD Green 5400 Drive, and OS 7200 Samsung F3 Drive. It seems like the biggest bottleneck is the network, of which I have no control over. I have the FTP files setup on the 5400 drive, not sure if a 7200 would help any if at all.

It has been running 1 day and so far so good, much better than the school provided solution that was being run by a non-reliable server. The school provided solution was on a full on server, but it was run by somebody else and was never consistently reliable with it only available about 25% of time. I do not have a raid setup, but I am going to use the built in windows backup to do a nightly backup of the windows and student files.

In summary I am doing the best I can with what I have. I am more or less wondering how much the hardware might be limiting things if at all or any recommendations to improve things without a complete rehaul. I am really unsure as to how much a computer running as a FTP is affected by users connecting and transferring files. We could possibly order a server if one is available for less than $800, but I really don't know at what point the district office will step in and want to take over or give it to the previous person who couldn't run the previous server.

Thanks for the help.

 

[XOR != OR]

You mention file size, but not the quantity. That said, your biggest bottle neck on the server will be the harddrive, but even then I wouldn't expect to see any issues. Now, granted, I would have used something like CentOS + vsftpd, but honestly for the work load 7 will do fine as well.

If you are looking at reliability options, then yes RAID is definitely recommended ( RAID isn't a backup solution ). But it's all a question of the needs of the business owners vs the resources they want to dedicate to it. If they are ok with the downtime between rebuilding and restoring the server in the case of catastrophic OS loss, then they can get away with cheaping out on the hardware.

 

[shinygecko]

One thing you did not mention is the speed of the network. If this is on a 100mb network that would definitely be your bottleneck unless of course the hdd is only capable of 12.5MBps which is highly unlikely as most hdd's are capable of at least 50 nowadays.

If this is gigabit then i would agree hdd is the bottleneck.

All in all though for that file size and that amount of users i think this will be sufficient regardless.

 

[96redformula]

One thing you did not mention is the speed of the network. If this is on a 100mb network that would definitely be your bottleneck unless of course the hdd is only capable of 12.5MBps which is highly unlikely as most hdd's are capable of at least 50 nowadays.

If this is gigabit then i would agree hdd is the bottleneck.

All in all though for that file size and that amount of users i think this will be sufficient regardless.

I am pretty sure that the network is 100mb and not gigabyte. Thanks for the information guys, so I know if we go up to gigabyte LAN, then I should upgrade the hard drives to faster 7200RPM drives.

 

[Thor]

This is way over kill, but it was what was required when I made the system, server used gigabit to a managed switch, 100t to unmanaged switchs in each building, 100t to hubs 5 pc's to a hub. The server ran a 4 disk raid 0 array (10krpm scsi). That was backed up to sun systems that I don't know a ton about, they had 2 racks 8 boxes per rack 8 hdds per box, ran fiber channel to the boxes, and rack 1 was set to fail over to rack 2, both rack where backed up on site by dat tapes.
This one box served 8 buildings with 12 classrooms per, the most load it ever saw was about 90 logins at a time...at the time. It was a clipart server for the kiddys to get images from so they could make up fancy looking reports without actually haveing to hit the initernet. Basic html drilldown initerface, ftp transfers once the images were found. If I remember correctly the hdds where 20gb with a P3 coppermine 700mhz and 1gb of ram on win2k. Way more than the school needed but it was fast, and that's what they wanted.