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Hardware for SBS

V

V4705

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Joined
Jan 12, 2011
Messages
60
Updated, Please read post #20.


Hi,
Our (future) SBS will provide services to 35 workstations,
Active directory, Exchange, And the "heaviest" job will be storing the "private folders" on the server.

I'm not looking to spend more money than I must. But still I don't want to make the workstation slower just because the server can't handle the job.


I don't have specific budget, but need the most economical solution (quality is important so the the budget is negotiable).
Basically, I am seeking a cost effective solution (not lacking quality).


Any tip/opinion will be great.
Thanks.
 
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HP ML350/370 with a quad-core Xeon and 12GB RAM minimum. Make sure you get SAS and not SATA disks, too. SBS 2011 runs Exchange 2010, SQL and Sharepoint 2010 Foundation, all products that don't run very well on slow SATA drives. I would recommend a pair of SAS disks in RAID1 for the OS drive and 3+ SAS drives in RAID5 for your data volume (Exchange, WSUS and file shares.) You need to make sure you have at least 120GB free on the drive you will install the OS on, the install will not finish otherwise.

I would expect to pay at least $5000 for a decent SBS server with a three year warranty and business grade hardware.
 
Captain Colonoscopy said:
HP ML350/370 with a quad-core Xeon and 12GB RAM minimum. Make sure you get SAS and not SATA disks, too. SBS 2011 runs Exchange 2010, SQL and Sharepoint 2010 Foundation, all products that don't run very well on slow SATA drives. I would recommend a pair of SAS disks in RAID1 for the OS drive and 3+ SAS drives in RAID5 for your data volume (Exchange, WSUS and file shares.) You need to make sure you have at least 120GB free on the drive you will install the OS on, the install will not finish otherwise.

I would expect to pay at least $5000 for a decent SBS server with a three year warranty and business grade hardware.
Click to expand...

Agree with the above. Personally we use dell but the key is to just buy a system with a good warranty. For that many users sas is pretty much key. For sbs 2k11 I'd prob go for 16 gigs of ram to be safe. Server 08 is going to be able to use all of it. Exchange 2010 for a single server install calls for like 8 gigs plus 5 megs a mailbox. Considering everything else on there I'd spring for the extra ram.
 
I agree with above, I almost always use HP/Compaq. Some of the most decent servers ive ever used, and never had one fail me. whether it was a vmware box or what, they were always strong. and Yes. SAS is the best.
 
Agree with above.....if you put it on some glorified desktop wannabe server with SATA drives you'll be kicking yourself (or...at least the employees will complain of slowness). Don't skimp on the RAM, get real server grade disks...setup like mentioned above.
 
Dell T610 or Rack unit if you need.

2 x Quad Xeon
16GB or more memory
2 x SAS 146GB or Larger for OS
4 x SAS in Raid 5 for Data, Exchange
1 x SAS in Global Hotspare
SBS 2011

May want to get to know a dell reseller....I am =)
 
35 users. I'd almost want to suggest not going with SBS and going with two separate 2008 servers, one for primary DC/file/print/etc server and a 2nd physical server for Exchange alone. I realize SBS can go up to 75 users on the domain, but if they are hammering the server, I would think it would slow down a lot. Whereas if you had two separate boxes, the server load would be more reasonable. Plus if Exchange was ever down, your office could still somewhat function with access to the main DC for files and whatnot.
 
marley1 said:
Dell T610 or Rack unit if you need.

2 x Quad Xeon
16GB or more memory
2 x SAS 146GB or Larger for OS
4 x SAS in Raid 5 for Data, Exchange
1 x SAS in Global Hotspare
SBS 2011

May want to get to know a dell reseller....I am =)
Click to expand...

I agree with this setup but I am also a Dell reseller.

If you are going to have 35 plus people on a SBS 2011 server I would install 24GB of memory 20 may be fine as well. I have seen some performance issues with anything under 16GB though. If you think people will hammer the system I would go with 24 to be safe.
 
a. 5000$ thats a problem for me to get budget approval when I don't have critical reasons (the 35 workstations technically works ok on workgroup with no server). but maybe its because we're not aware to all the advantages - if you can help me with that it will be great.

b. If I won't store all private folders on the server, can we go down to a cheaper server and don't slow down the workstations?

c. This server won't do ALL the jobs in the office. we have Juniper SSG20 firewall, the main database (quickbooks) stored on a linux server and we also have an Asterisk VoIP server but thats a different story.

d. 5000$ includes the SBS license? If so, for how many users?


Thanks for the help, it really do helps us a lot.


Edit: I realize I can't ask my CEO to "spend" money on something I'm not sure what going to give us.
If they'll pay 5000$ (including software) what this server can give them?
Active directory - give them security policies and...? thats it? printer sharing is not a big deal because all the printers there are "network printers" and it works fine.
Exchange - email server, they have. the main think I see here is backup for all incoming and outgoing emails.
DNS - ?... why should they run they're own dns and not using the ISP's one?
Sharepoint - no need.

And the ability to store all private folders on the server is a HUGE liability because it can slow everybody's down if not working correctly.


So, if someone can help me get all the advantages down, it will help us a lot.


And again, please try to imagine, small business with only 35 employees. somebody suggested 2 separate windows server, I'm not sure how much it will cost but I'm pretty sure thats a over-kill for this kind of office.


Thanks again.
 
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Between the cals and the sbs licensing you will have 2 grand tied up. Might be able to hit it at 5 grand without a backup system(you can use external usb drives and the sbs backup though). SBS2k11 is like 800 bucks with 5 cals and 15 cal sets are like 600 and some bucks.

I'd store folders on the server to back them up. Doesn't add much to the cost.

Servers job would be exchange, active directory, dns(needed for ad), as well as group policy. I'm guessing file shares, antivirus management, possibly dhcp, printer shares, etc would be on it as well.

AD's biggest thing is central authentication along with group policy's, login scripts(to map drives), redirected folders(or roaming profiles), etc.

Exchange kicks the crap out of pretty much every other solution. Shared contacts, calendar, mobile syncing, etc.

Edit: SBS also has WSUS on it. Pretty much makes a local copy of windows update files for all of the machines on the network and manages them. Great way to push stuff down.
 
DDR3 isnt near the price it was a year ago. always spring the extra couple bucks for more ram.
 
Have you considered moving some stuff to the cloud? For example i've recently migrated some small offices to Office365 (hosted exchange/sharepoint/ocs etc) and i'm really pleased so far!

Also i tend to virtualise everything these days except for fileservers... Unfortunately this would mean you'd need a fileserver AND a hypervisor (and i normally recommend at least 2 hypervisors to allow for redundancy)
 
I consider that before but exchange is the only thing in Office365 that we need and it's not replacing SBS so I'll need to pay for SBS (software and hardware) and additional 210$/month for Exchange online (35 users).
About the Virtualization, I don't see how that can help my case, anyway we'll need good hardware and SBS software with enough CALs. so its the same price anyway.

My main problem right now is the price. 6000$ is really way more than they can spend on IT right now (as I said it's a small business with a new office and only 35 people, theoretical, right now they have 25).
 
When you say 25 people up to 35 people, are you talking 25 physical workstations with plans to expand to 35 workstations? Or are you talking about 25 users with fewer workstations that are shared amongst the employees?
 
V4705 said:
I consider that before but exchange is the only thing in Office365 that we need and it's not replacing SBS so I'll need to pay for SBS (software and hardware) and additional 210$/month for Exchange online (35 users).
About the Virtualization, I don't see how that can help my case, anyway we'll need good hardware and SBS software with enough CALs. so its the same price anyway.

My main problem right now is the price. 6000$ is really way more than they can spend on IT right now (as I said it's a small business with a new office and only 35 people, theoretical, right now they have 25).
Click to expand...

I love Exchange since I got my start with MS Mail but for the number of desktops you are talking about and the small budget I would just go with a single Windows 2008R2 8GB memory and use Google Apps for email and Calendar. No need to get more then a single processor for that size. Could also get by with to large SATA drives mirroed.

This would do AD, DNS, CIFS, and run QB fine for everyone and have room to grow.

Check the dell outlet for good prices on servers that still have an option for 3yr NDB.


** If you are set on Exchange, SQL, WSUS, Sharepoint etc.. You need to pay for it.
 
When I said "25 to 35" people I meant that we have right now 25 workstations but the CEO planning to hire 10 more in the near future.

zEp - why do you think Windows Server 2008 require less resources than SBS 2011? everybody here advice for 2xquad xeon with 24gb of ram and you suggest single processor with 8gb of ram, that's sounds interesting and tempting but I must know what is the reason :)


Thanks!
 
Because you wouldn't be running exchange or any of the other services included with SBS on that server... you'd just be running the basics, ad, dns, file/print services, etc. Much less resource intensive.
 
V4705 said:
everybody here advice for 2xquad xeon with 24gb of ram and you suggest single processor with 8gb of ram, that's sounds interesting and tempting but I must know what is the reason!
Click to expand...

Dunno if I'd say "everybody here advice 2x quad xeon"...I know I just said a single quad core Xeon.

I'd also stick with SAS disks if you're going to do Quickbooks...over SATA. The newer versions of Quickbooks are quite bloated and require RAM and good disk i/o on the server.
 
OK so now I'm sure what I need and want.

I do need exchange, so We'll go with SBS
And I'll also would like to store the quickbooks enterprise 2011 server on it.

What is the "minimalistic" hardware I need to run everything flawless.
It can be 3000$ or 7000$ (with software and CALs) but I need the cheapest option that will be good for us.

Just a reminder, right now they have 25 workstations that will be on the domain. and all of them will store the "personal folders" on the server.
In the future they will probably have 10 more workstations, but I won't buy licenses and CALs until they will get the workstations (but the hardware must be ready for that).

They also need some kind of backup solution, RAID mirror and a software solution to backup to an external storage (maybe the SBS have something like that inside. I don't want to jump to 3rd-party solutions).


Thanks for all the help!/B]
 
Just what I mentioned, for that many users and plan to grow with CALS

You want Dell T610, Raid 1 Array with SAS drives for OS, Raid 5 Array with SAS for Data and Database (I suggest 4 drives), I also suggest a global hotspare. You could get away with a single Quad Xeon, but small upgrade to do it. 16GB of memory minimum or more. I would try to do 24GB.

Remember CALS are paper....but you should do the right thing.

Backup is easy, just get a few externals and use the built in backup. Rotate that.

Going with a reseller you should get something in that price =)
 
V4705 said:
When I said "25 to 35" people I meant that we have right now 25 workstations but the CEO planning to hire 10 more in the near future.

zEp - why do you think Windows Server 2008 require less resources than SBS 2011? everybody here advice for 2xquad xeon with 24gb of ram and you suggest single processor with 8gb of ram, that's sounds interesting and tempting but I must know what is the reason :)


Thanks!
Click to expand...

Why would you go with an older product? SBS 2011 is loads better just for having Exchange 2010.

Min requirements for SBS 2011 are a Quad Xeon and 12GB. SBS 2008 has less minimum but for that size I would recommend same specs.

I have a R510 going into a office of 15 actual users, and another 10-15 users that will be accessing outlook in another office over Exchange over HTTPS. So 30 users. 16GB, Dual Xeon, 7 SAS Drives. Axcient for backup =)
 
SBS 2011 $1,000

Cal's depending on where you get them shouldn't cost you more than $350 (per 5 user cals)

That R610 that marley mentioned should be more than enough for what you are doing just add some more memory and space to it for dirt cheap. Depending how hard you search you should be able to pick up what you need for around $3500 with a good warranty probably even around $2500 if you find a vender to bargin with you.
 
How many users will be hitting the QB database on the planned new server at one time?
 
Wow that's a lot of employees hitting QB Ent. I have a client with 5 employees opening a QB database off of an older Poweredge server and QB Ent beats up the server pretty good. The database alone uses a couple Gigs of memory on the server. I wouldn't run QB Ent off of SATA harddrives, definitely need SAS for the better i/o as previously mentioned. QB Backups also take *forever* with the huge TLG files due to search queries in QB Ent done by employees looking up this or that.
 
marley1 said:
Why would you go with an older product? SBS 2011 is loads better just for having Exchange 2010.

Min requirements for SBS 2011 are a Quad Xeon and 12GB. SBS 2008 has less minimum but for that size I would recommend same specs.

I have a R510 going into a office of 15 actual users, and another 10-15 users that will be accessing outlook in another office over Exchange over HTTPS. So 30 users. 16GB, Dual Xeon, 7 SAS Drives. Axcient for backup =)
Click to expand...

If he is just talking about windows server 2008 I'd assume he'd get r2 so he wouldn't really be running an older product since sbs2k11 is running 2k8r2. I'd go with sbs for exchange as well.

Also the memory requirements for sbs 2011 are 8 gigs although I'd recommend at least 12. For that size office I'd prob try for 16.

They dropped the quad core requirement at some point as well. For a while(even when it first launched via vlk) they listed a 2ghz quad core. Not sure when they lowered it but I wouldn't want to run it on anything less.

http://www.microsoft.com/sbs/en/us/system-requirements.aspx

For the OP's question as others have said sbs has a much higher system requirement over server 2008r2 because it runs a lot more. Exchange is a beast.
 
hawk82 said:
Wow that's a lot of employees hitting QB Ent. I have a client with 5 employees opening a QB database off of an older Poweredge server and QB Ent beats up the server pretty good. The database alone uses a couple Gigs of memory on the server. I wouldn't run QB Ent off of SATA harddrives, definitely need SAS for the better i/o as previously mentioned. QB Backups also take *forever* with the huge TLG files due to search queries in QB Ent done by employees looking up this or that.
Click to expand...

I didnt thought it's a big deal because our old quickbooks server running "premiere 2010" edition with 5 workstations always working on in the same time and everything works fine with i3-540, 8gb of ram and 7200rpm sata2 drive.


I actually don't really need to run QB on the same DC server, I can setup a cheap i5 with 16gb or ram, Linux-based to run QB Database.

Intuit said the processor is not a big deal for quickbooks daemon, but you're right about Hard-drives.

Right now our QB server don't have any other controller than SATA (and not even RAID support).

What do you think we should do to serve 30 quickbooks workstations at the same time?
1 SAS 15K hard-drive should be enough? what about SATA SSD?
Or maybe I must get SAS controller and setup 2 SAS 15K drives on a RAID 0 ?

And again, its sounds a little bit too much for me because our i3 8gb sata2 doing great with 5 premiere workstations.
 
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V4705 said:
I didnt thought it's a big deal because our old quickbooks server running "premiere 2010" edition with 5 workstations always working on in the same time and everything works fine with i3-540, 8gb of ram and 7200rpm sata2 drive.


I actually don't really need to run QB on the same DC server, I can setup a cheap i5 with 16gb or ram, Linux-based to run QB Database.

Intuit said the processor is not a big deal for quickbooks daemon, but you're right about Hard-drives.

Right now our QB server don't have any other controller than SATA (and not even RAID support).

What do you think we should do to serve 30 quickbooks workstations at the same time?
1 SAS 15K hard-drive should be enough? what about SATA SSD?
Or maybe I must get SAS controller and setup 2 SAS 15K drives on a RAID 0 ?

And again, its sounds a little bit too much for me because our i3 8gb sata2 doing great with 5 premiere workstations.
Click to expand...

FYI - QBE workstation performance is more dependant on the network bandwidth and local CPU then the speed of the drives in the server.
 
Thanks for the information!
All our workstations are brand new (the slowest one is g620 with 8gb of ram and gigabit lan, most of them i3). I believe thats enough.

What do you think I need for the server ? (to serve 30 users on the same time)
I5-650 processor is enough?
8/16gb of ddr3 (regular udimm, not ecc) is enough?

what about harddrive? right now its just a 7200rpm sata2 drive. the cheapest upgrade will be sata raid controller and another 7200rpm sata drive on raid0 array. do you think it will be enough?
 
You'll want that as RAID1 nor RAID0. And not to question your plans, but what is your backup solution going to be? Assuming that you use a single HDD in the QB Server, what happens if that HDD dies? How much downtime is acceptable? What happens if the QB database gets corrupted or infected with a Virus? Or for that matter, the Motherboard dies on the QB server? It's happened. A rash of bad capacitors, and poof, 12 months later you have a dead mobo. How fast can you get a bonafide 100% compatible replacement, a year later?

The reason that most here have been making the higher level hardware reccomendations is that we've all been through crashes and restores and plan accordingly.
 
I don't really know what is the difference between regular pc and a server from hp/dell except for the performance.

The database of Quickbooks backed up on Intuit server (we have a service plan and the backups is part of it).
I imaged the OS after first installation so restore to a new HDD will take few minutes.
PSU/harddrive replacement will take few minutes as well (I have few extra)
About all others kind of failure, It is a problem. last time it happened I just took one of the extra workstations and made it a temporary server until I fixed the main one.

How dell/hp servers will help me in these cases?

BTW I planned raid0 just because of the performance. I'm sure raid1 will be much safer, but because I can always restore the image to a new HDD I chose raid0.
 
Ultimately what you end up doing is your decision, but you did ask for help and have basically discarded all answers given to you...

A proper server is a whole different grade of hardware. Reliability is Priority 1, and performance is a second. Parts availability is another benefit. If you have a 7x24x4hr support contract with Dell, and you have a PSU die even at 3am, you'll have a replacement by 7am. Even 3 years later. True servers are engineered for Uptime. Next question, what about the guy after you? Do you plan on being their forever? If you want to deal with the maintenance nightmare of using desktop parts for everything, good luck.
 
Sorry if its sounds like that, when I'm replying with a question is just because I want to understand deeply whats stand behind the suggestion and than I have more information that helps me convince the CEO to invest the money on the upgrades.

I do appreciate every reply and they all helps me a lot.

BTW, from your experience, which manufacture have the best/fastest/easiest support service?
 
V4705 said:
What do you think I need for the server ? (to serve 30 users on the same time)
Click to expand...
Well Marley and Captain Colonoscopy as well as numerous others kinda told you what you need for the server. So what exactly are you looking for now that won't be met by the recommended setups?
V4705 said:
I5-650 processor is enough?
Click to expand...
Go for a single quad-core Xeon at the least. The HP setup that Captain Colonoscopy posted is a good starting point. If you remove the second Xeon Quad-core from Marley's Dell setup, that should shave off a lot of cash as well.
V4705 said:
8/16gb of ddr3 (regular udimm, not ecc) is enough?
Click to expand...
As others have pointed out, you should be looking at 12GB to 16GB of RAM at a minimum.
V4705 said:
what about harddrive? right now its just a 7200rpm sata2 drive. the cheapest upgrade will be sata raid controller and another 7200rpm sata drive on raid0 array. do you think it will be enough?
Click to expand...
As many of the more experienced Network/System Admins have pointed out, you should be looking at SAS drives if you're planning on having 30+ users hitting the Quickbooks server. No one here has recommended a SATA RAID 0 setup so far. I would think something like would been the first recommendation. In fact, no one here has recommended a SATA drive setup at all.
 
Danny Bui said:
In fact, no one here has recommended a SATA drive setup at all.
Click to expand...

I did due to his budget and the fact that it would be enough. SAS is ideal but adds up if counting dollars. Speaking about QBE specifically the bottleneck is rarely the server drives.

Below taken directly from Intuit's 2011 Enterprise notes.

Work done on QuickBooks data on any one computer must be
transferred between that computer and the database server to be
reintegrated with the data file. When a single computer or
connection is sluggish, processing time is delayed for everyone
while the server waits for commands entered by each computer in
the network to be completed sequentially. In this type of setup,
the network speed is constrained by the slowest computer or the
slowest connection.
 
I didn't see the 20 users hitting QB enterprise....get a second server

If really on budget Dell outlet
 
The I5/8GB/SATA setup was for separating Quickbooks from the SBS, for SBS I understand I need something like Xeon/24gb/sas, and tomorrow I'm meeting with Dell local distributor to see prices and recommendations.
I don't think I can separate Exchange, it will be too expensive, so I'll need a decent one for SBS.

For the QuickBooks Linux server for 30 users, what spec do you recommend?
Right now as I said its I5-650, 8gb ram, 7200rpm sata2 hdd, on-board gigabit lan.
About the problem with the workstations making others slower, can I set quickbooks to work in a different method?
Right now I'm trying to keep all the workstations with at least G620/4gb/on-board gigabit lan. but I might use couple of Celerons I have in the storeroom if I'll have too.



Thanks again.
 
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I can't even imagine QB Ent with 30 users (which is the max allowed) running in a conventional client/server mode. There is SO much data passing back and forth to the clients, indexing, sorting. Ouch. We've been running QB Ent at a couple client sites for years on Terminal Server, and now RDS. QB Ent on RDS/TS takes the client workstation limitations, as well as data I/O completely out of the equation. We've been doing it at one site since ver 4.0! They didn't even support it then. But now they do, and in fact it is their recommended solution for larger user bases, stating "Run and use Enterprise Solutions more quickly using Remote Desktop Services"

QB Ent on RDS/TS also eliminates the other single most annoying QB "feature"- Automatic Updates. No more scrambling to sync all workstations with the latest update, which is a PITA even with Shared Downloads configured correctly. So many updates are huge, and in essence almost reinstalls. When you're using RDS/TS though, you have ONE update to run, on ONE installation. Also, client PC performance is a non-issue. Since everyone connects via RDP, the only network traffic generated is the RDP traffic. No QBooks data at all.

Only limitation is horsepower on the server. Get lots. But remember, your databases are not that large, so you don't need an enormous disk arrary. You can live comfortably on Raid 1 w/SAS drives.

Downside? Server cost and RDS licensing. Upside? Too many to list.
 
On the DIY server/Branded server, there is a market for both in the small and medium business.

I manage IT for a 100 employee multi-site business and most of our server are business grade Dell (Including 4 rocking T710 with top of the line X5680 CPUs for VMWare). However, we also have some whitebox servers doing less critical tasks.

All our DB, DC, TS, Exchange, Fileserver, Citrix, VMWare, etc runs on high-end servers. However, we also have a DIY centralised IP camera system that runs on a whitebox Bromolow (Xeon 1270) with 6 hard drives that runs perfectly fine for less than 1.5K and would have cost at least the double if we bought from Dell, even with a rather good enterprise discount. If that server goes down, a couple of days downtime is no problem for us.

Same goes with a VMWare ESXi lab to test new servers and whatnot, which is ran by a recycled Q9550 w/ Asus P5N-D mobo. It is also hosting several test machines to test new software.

So basically, whitebox servers have their advantages, but not for critical business tasks. I have seen some strange stuff in other businesses, like the IT guys there build all their servers, even high-end ones for huge databases for a good chunk of people and always run unto trouble each months.
 
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