Need recommendations for a new server

[jamsomito]

I have a friend who is looking for a new server for his small company (3-5 employees in one office). It needs to run AutoCAD Civil 3D, and act as the office's file server as well. Apparently, it really bogs down when multiple people are accessing files on the machine while someone is using it for AutoCAD. Current specs are below:

Intel Xeon E3-1241 v.3 @ 3.50GHz 4-core processor
16GB of RAM
250GB HDD
64-bit Windows 7 Pro
NVIDIA Quadro K2200 graphics

They are looking to add a wired network (currently just wireless, don't know other details but it sounds like just a consumer router), and upgrade this machine or find another solution.

My first thought is to buy a Drobo or something similar for file storage and keep this machine as AutoCAD only, but I don't really know anything about servers or enterprise equipment. Thus I turn to you. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Brian_B]

Off the cuff, I would say splitting the share directory off onto it's own hard drive would go a long way, and/or dedicating an SSD to AutoCad. That would be the first thing I would try, it would be the least expensive, and with only 250G of HDD they could probably use a bump in capacity.

A NAS isn't a bad idea either, a bit more cost on it, but ultimately more flexible.

I would look at that WiFi network too - if everything is over congested WiFi channel, that isn't helping matters at all anc oucld be as easy as finding a less congested channel. At least make sure the file server is gigabit hard wired over to the router or access point.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

If you need a file server, you're better off going with a NAS.
ESPECIALLY if you're pushing something like AutoCAD on an app server.

And no, you don't want a Drobo as a NAS.

If you're not going to build yourself a NAS server, look for QNAP or Synology.

 

[jamsomito]

If you need a file server, you're better off going with a NAS.
ESPECIALLY if you're pushing something like AutoCAD on an app server.

And no, you don't want a Drobo as a NAS.

If you're not going to build yourself a NAS server, look for QNAP or Synology.

Can you elaborate on why Drobo is a bad idea? I will look into QNAP and Synology.

 

[piker28]

Off the cuff, I would say splitting the share directory off onto it's own hard drive would go a long way, and/or dedicating an SSD to AutoCad. That would be the first thing I would try, it would be the least expensive, and with only 250G of HDD they could probably use a bump in capacity.

A NAS isn't a bad idea either, a bit more cost on it, but ultimately more flexible.

I would look at that WiFi network too - if everything is over congested WiFi channel, that isn't helping matters at all anc oucld be as easy as finding a less congested channel. At least make sure the file server is gigabit hard wired over to the router or access point.

I would agree with both of these. The main being the wireless network. Autocad is very resource intense program and running that off wifi could cause alot of issues.

 

[rhansen5_99]

Question about AutoCAD: are they using any kind of versioning control software like M-Files or a Vault Server of some sort? If so a dedicated machine for the file store will make a huge difference.

As for the network the centralized file hub should be hardwired at the very least. And you probably want to make sure that you get gigabit to that connection. As for the other machines it really depends if hard wiring makes sense, mainly if the cabling is already in place and how much cost it is to deploy. (Monoprice.com) has some pretty decent deals on the cable, connectors, and wall plate stuff you would need, or even long patch cables. You might also evaluate the wifi capabilities of the other machines as in if they do Wireless n or ac, and upgrading that router might give a bit of breathing room.

If you are wanting that machine to also serve as an autocad machine, it would be a good idea to have a ssd for the os/apps drive and a discrete GPU that would accelerate Autocad, I know you listed a Quadro, but the Nvidia GTX 9XX series work very well as well. Also depending on the workload like converting file formats and the complexity of the designs will eat memory in a hurry, so 16GB or more might be a really good idea. Also for a traditional 3d load it is generally important to have a single core higher IPC than a ton of cores, for a lot of the workflow is very serial in nature until you get into the rendering or video production in the final promotional product stuff.

I actually have a cisco 24 port gigabit switch, and a machine I used in the similar workflow, I am selling in the ebay auction forum: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1875271

As far as nas machines I can personally say that a Synology DS 1512+ was a monster at serving up files, and could push connections in the 175 MB/s when using NIC teaming and a good Gigabit router, but the Atom CPU was pretty weak for apps running on it.

 

[Deleted member 126051]

Can you elaborate on why Drobo is a bad idea? I will look into QNAP and Synology.

Other than Drobo's disk-spanning tech being completely proprietary? As opposed to standardized RAID?

That and the Drobos tend to be measurably slower than QNAP and Synology. They're also not anywhere NEAR as featuresome.

 

[Deleted member 88227]

If the current server can handle the AutoCAD tasks as is then off loading the file server portion to a new server would make the most sense.

However, if you need more processing power for the AutoCAD tasks then I'd consider building a new server for that and using the current one for file serving.