New Rig! HELP! File Server, Domain Controller, 40 Clients.

[DD_nVidia]

Hey there folks.

Well myself and my uncle do the IT support for a small accountancy firm and we are looking to replace the current server structure.

They use various SAGE apps, MS Office 2003, Works and Lotus (We're trying like hell to get them away from Lotus 123 and Works 4.5, yes they're clinging!)

The Clients are running XP Pro SP2/3 (Depending on system although we're replacing the last of the SP2 systems this year anyway, save any service pack update problems!)


As for the Servers, just now there is.

Domain Controller - P3 900Mhz 512MB RAM
Main File Server - P4 - Server 2003 - 3.6GHz 4GB RAM
Backup Server - Dual P3 - Server 2003 - 900MHz 4GB RAM

Data Useage is around 40GB and is increasing more and more, due to more business (hopefully anyway as we get out of the recession haha) and also the fact that updated version of SAGE etc. are producing larger file sizes, and the SAGE client database gets larger.

My idea was to get rid of all 3 servers, build 2 new servers from scratch and have perform them Domain Controller and File Server duties. 1 being a backup of the other server incase something goes totally tits up and we can't fix it in time. (with 40 staff, sometimes with time-limited work to be done, having no server at 9am would be BAD!)

We want something future proof anyway. And preferably rack mountable so we can have it all in a nice rack with the 2x24 port switches and incoming ethernet sockets. In terms of storage I know we don't need much but the price of drives is almost nothing these days.

Here's the specs I had in mind.


CASE - £xxx - Unknown (Rack mount, take 7 HDD's.
PSU - £130 - Corsair 850W HX Modular PSU 80% Efficiency
MOBO - £280 - ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution
CPU - £194 - Intel Core i7 920 2.6GHz D0 Stepping 8MB L2 Cache
RAM - £110 - OCZ 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz CL8 1.65v (Tripple Channel)
GPU - £40 - NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT Passive Edition 512MB DDR2 (PCI-E)

RAID Controller card???????????????

HDD1 - £28 - WD 160GB Caviar Blue (16MB Cache)
HDD2 - £28 - WD 160GB Caviar Blue (16MB Cache) - RAID 1

HDD3 - £32 - WD 320GB Caviar Blue (16MB Cache)
HDD3 - £32 - WD 320GB Caviar Blue (16MB Cache)
HDD3 - £32 - WD 320GB Caviar Blue (16MB Cache)
HDD3 - £32 - WD 320GB Caviar Blue (16MB Cache)
HDD3 - £32 - WD 320GB Caviar Blue (16MB Cache) - RAID 6


For off-site backup, we were considering SSD because tape is still expensive, and is slow unless you pay crazy money, in which case it still isn't anywhere near as fast as SSD.

7 x 64GB SSD's would do us just now by the time they get to full we'll be able to grab some 128GB's (Or we could squeeze some more out of it with compression, which our backup software does, and we could enable compression on the drive if we REALLY needed too) We were wondering if there is any thing that fits in the 5'2.5 bay that takes a 2.5 inch drive so we could just pop them in and out like we do the tape backup.

The clients arn't complainign of severe slowness yet, but I'm guessing with the next big (no doubt bloated!) update to SAGE's software they might be. Even on Dual Core Athlons (X2 4400+ to 5000+ most of them, some are a bit faster) with 2GB RAM but we think the problem is perhaps to do with getting data of the server. So we'll be changing the switches to GBit and using dual GB LAN on the servers to provide higher bandwidth etc.

Might seem like overkill, but we want it to last. We may choose to upgrade to Server 2008 and Windows 7 but right now, clients are happy, everything works perfectly so we're in no rush.


Any thoughts? Suggestions? Tell me I'm a complete twat and that what I've said was stupid? haha!

Thanks folks!

 

[-=Antimatter=-]

Add more RAM to the server boxes; I think you can find a cheaper video card too.

It makes no sense to buy anything lower than a 1TB hard drive brand-new these days. Go for the Caviar Black 1TB drives to future-proof.

What's the budget anyway?

 

[DD_nVidia]

The Budget is Cheap as possible, but make it last as long as possible. So...Best bang for buck.

Only putting 6GB in since we're running Server 2003 X86. We'll lob another 6GB if we upgrade to Server 2008 although we really dont want to do that since stuff is working fine haha!

I was looking at the 500GB Caviar Blacks and even looking at the RAID Editions for the RAID 6 Array, but not sure how much differences there would be.

We've just been discussing budget. Theres only about £2,500 left for this year. I think we can put of upgrading any clients this year anyway, We've got a few Athlon 64 3200+'s that are chugging along but no one is complaining so can't be that bad.

What we're really haggling over is this SSD Daily Off-Site backup system instead of Tapes. New tape system is near enough a £700-900 for brand spanking new tape drive and tapes. So for the price of 7 SSD's and a hot-swap bay in the 5'2.5 bay its not much in it. But that and 2 Servers of the spec I want is pushing it to far.

For the servers we're talking roughly £1,300-500 each. So we could build one server now, Get the SSD backups and maybe push to get the bare bones of the next server so if anything horrible did happen we'd be able to switch critical components like Motherboard, RAID Controller and have it up and running within a hour.

So Buy All of Server 1, + Spare Motherboard and RAID card for Server 1, then once the budgets reset, grab the rest of the parts we need.

We're Just in adding some new client machines just now and the boss man should be back in at some point so we're gonna break the news to him then. For the lot, Servers, Switch (Gbit), SSD Backups we're talking £4,500 abouts Including spare parts (HDD's Raid Cards)


Also Any suggestions on a good raid card for RAID 6 would be great. And Rackmonut Cases. We need space for at least 7 Drives, a Disk Drive (Normal or thin), and a spare floppy size bay for the SSD Hot Swap bay.

Thanks



EDIT - I found this http://www.overclock.co.uk/product/...ess-Hot-Swap-Mobile-Rack-Backplane_19950.html online. Fits in where a floppy would go. So the case needs that

 

[unhappy_mage]

Get Dell to build it for you. ECC memory, RAID, bigger drives, don't use SSDs for backup (why?!), warranty. Don't use gamer parts for a work server. Buy Tivoli (yes, it's a lot of money; yes, it's worth it) and use it to back up to hard drive or tape. Tape is expensive because it's proven, low-volume technology.

i7 is overkill by a lot. Take a look at, say, a 2970 or an older 5400-series Intel box and see what's cheapest. It's a domain controller for 40 people, and a pentium 3 is currently handling it. Performance will not be an issue.

 

[lizardking009]

Get Dell to build it for you. ECC memory, RAID, bigger drives, don't use SSDs for backup (why?!), warranty. Don't use gamer parts for a work server. Buy Tivoli (yes, it's a lot of money; yes, it's worth it) and use it to back up to hard drive or tape. Tape is expensive because it's proven, low-volume technology.

i7 is overkill by a lot. Take a look at, say, a 2970 or an older 5400-series Intel box and see what's cheapest. It's a domain controller for 40 people, and a pentium 3 is currently handling it. Performance will not be an issue.

This. A Dell PE T300 will do what you need and won't cost too much.

Don't build mission critical computers for your clients. You want Dell's NBD hardware support or better. Don't skimp on backups. Ever.

 

[DD_nVidia]

That Dell was really expensive once i get near spec'ing it out.

Why is something that isnt a "xeon" instantly "gamer parts" ?

Socket 1366 is the Workstation/Server socket, 1156 is the one for normal consumers and gamers. Just because Intel are releasing high end CPU's that arnt Xeons doesn't make them any less suitable for the job.

The i7 may be overkill today but it might not be in 5 years. the P6T WS or WS R are both boards marketed towards workstation/servers no? We'd love to grab a Xeon and 6GB of ECC DDR3 but its just not in the budget so we have to work with what we can.

Also we build all our servers and workstations for our clients, they all work fine. Don't think we've had a server go down for our 4 or 5 clients in 5 years. Worse we've had is a hard drive fail but its been mirrored so we just went down at the end of their working hours, popped another drive in, job done. The Dell stuff just costs to much, and this is just a side thing we do for specific clients we know since running a computer shop is my uncles main business.

Also we have a backup application we pay for (can't remember it off hand) and we use tapes just now, 10 tapes, daily backups, 2 week rotation which are taken off-site daily. We also do a weekly backup to an internal Raid 1, 500GB's and then off load that once its full to an external drive which is then labeled and taken off site and stored in a safe.

Tapes are so slow its unreal and really, If we use the 3 x 2.5 inch SSDs for rotating daily backups and a 2.5 inch 500GB for storing 2 or 3 weeks worth of daily backups then deleting the oldest one and adding that days backup.

The files are rarely edited more than once a week, so the daily backups are just as a procaution incase anything happens. during the week. The SSD's will allow us to restore the data even faster and get things up and running quicker meaning less down time. Tapes would take forever! Obviously thats why I also suggested a Raid 5/6 setup so we could prevent total failure in the first place incase of a drive going down, but i know RAID isn't a replacement for backups, which is why we'd continue doing weekly backups to a set of 1.5TB Drives in Raid 1 which would hold 1 Years worth of backups then we'd take them out, put them into storage and replace them, start again.

So we'd have a years worth of weekly backups and daily backups both on-site and off-site, a fast server more than able to handle the next 4 years or so. Along with an identical one incase of a TOTAL failure. Plus UPS units. If anyone can find me an equivalent speed Xeon system for under £1,500 then i'd have a real good look at that. Thats the TOTAL MAX we could spend on a single server I think.

 

[lizardking009]

Look at SuperMicro white box servers or a chassis plus motherboard. You want a redundant PSU.

 

[DD_nVidia]

I'll look them up when i get home tonight. Yeah we were considering redundant psu's if we could fit it in the budget. but wern't sure if we'd be able to afford it. I'll look it up though.

Thanks mate.

 

[unhappy_mage]

That Dell was really expensive once i get near spec'ing it out.

Well, yes. A warranty costs money, and it's not something your solution provides. If downtime costs money, putting less money into preventing downtime is a value proposition.

Why is something that isnt a "xeon" instantly "gamer parts" ?

Because it lacks ECC memory and a LOM solution.

The i7 may be overkill today but it might not be in 5 years. the P6T WS or WS R are both boards marketed towards workstation/servers no?

"Marketed toward" and "suitable for" are different things. If you really want to go whitebox, try a Supermicro board like an x7dwe or so.

Also we have a backup application we pay for (can't remember it off hand) and we use tapes just now, 10 tapes, daily backups, 2 week rotation which are taken off-site daily. We also do a weekly backup to an internal Raid 1, 500GB's and then off load that once its full to an external drive which is then labeled and taken off site and stored in a safe.

What kind of tapes? Do you have an autoloader?

Tapes are so slow its unreal

Depends on the tape. LTO3/4 are quite zippy.

and really, If we use the 3 x 2.5 inch SSDs for rotating daily backups and a 2.5 inch 500GB for storing 2 or 3 weeks worth of daily backups then deleting the oldest one and adding that days backup.

Why use $2/GB SSD for backups when hard drives that write at the same rate sequentially are $.2/GB?

So we'd have a years worth of weekly backups and daily backups both on-site and off-site, a fast server more than able to handle the next 4 years or so. Along with an identical one incase of a TOTAL failure. Plus UPS units. If anyone can find me an equivalent speed Xeon system for under £1,500 then i'd have a real good look at that. Thats the TOTAL MAX we could spend on a single server I think.

If you insist on putting all your computing eggs in one basket, buying two cheap baskets can be counterproductive. If, say, the power supply fails in one machine and nukes the rest of the hardware (potentially including any SSDs you have plugged in at the time!) getting a backup restored onto the other machine isn't easy or fast. And with no remote access and no warranty, you'll be the one doing the hard work.

 

[irrision]

Might I throw out a suggestion that you consider virtualization as an option for both servers (or just spend the money on one better redundant server). ESXi is free, HyperV is the cost of a server 2008 license, Xenserver is free, of course if you want support on ESX or Xenserver you need to spend a couple hundred dollars for that separately. If you've never played with virtualization installing any of these hypervisors is no more difficult than doing a server 2003 install just so long as you check the hardware you are getting against the hardware support list.

You really need to detach their hardware from their software/data so you can easily do upgrades, migrate to new hardware for replacement or because of hardware failures. Worst case scenario you can always spin up that old P4 server you are replacing and toss ESX (or your prefer hypervisor) and copy/restore you VMs onto it as a temp solution. So long as you work out a good backup strategy for the VMs your client will be about 100 times better off than they are now.

I picked up a Dell T605 with Dual quad-core 2300 series AMD Opteron's 8GB of memory and a pair of 250GB Hotswap RE WDs on a 6i controller with bbwc and redundant power supplies for around $1200 new from dell with the base 3yr warranty a couple months ago. I think if you shop around a bit you can easily get one good solid machine with better specs and consolidate with VMs with a nice unified hardware warranty. From experience you are better off buying a Dell with the smallest/cheapest SATA drive offered (if you are looking to really save nickels off) and buying your own WD RE's from a third party vendor like Newegg and mounting them in the hotswap trays (make sure you pick some up from a parts dealer or ebay ahead of time).

I don't mean to downplay your desire for redundancy with two cheaper pieces of hardware vs 1 but speaking from managing a datacenter running thousands of Dell servers the things that fail 99% of the time don't actually take a properly redundant server down (IE: Redundant power supplies, ECC memory, Mirrored/Parity RAID drives, redundant fans). Any of these things can wait until a replacement part comes in tomorrow and you can schedule a downtime off hours to swap them out in a couple of minutes. Just make damn sure you are keeping backups at another location just inc ase you get a dual drive raid failure during a rebuild.

It's also worth mentioning that you should absolutely put equipment on a good UPS. There is probably a study/whitepaper out there that speaks to this but the failure rate for hardware connected directly to street power is significantly higher from what I've observed not to mention its great for just trashing RAID setups completely (can we said abrupt power failure during a disk write = complete loss of array?).

 

[irrision]

I speced out a Dell T300 on dell.co.uk without any coupon codes (IE: Look around and save at least another couple hundred dollars). For 1,526 pounds with a 3yr next business day warranty:
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® X3323, 2.5GHz, 2x3M Cache, 1333MHz FSB
12GB Memory, DDR2, 667MHz (6x2GB Dual Ranked DIMMs) ECC
Four Hotswap bays:
Perc6/i RAID Card
4 x 500GB SATA WD RE Drives
DVD-ROM Drive

 

[Concentric]

Get Dell to build it for you. ECC memory, RAID, bigger drives, don't use SSDs for backup (why?!), warranty. Don't use gamer parts for a work server. Buy Tivoli (yes, it's a lot of money; yes, it's worth it) and use it to back up to hard drive or tape. Tape is expensive because it's proven, low-volume technology.

i7 is overkill by a lot. Take a look at, say, a 2970 or an older 5400-series Intel box and see what's cheapest. It's a domain controller for 40 people, and a pentium 3 is currently handling it. Performance will not be an issue.

These were my thoughts too after reading the OP.
If you really want to build it yourself, go for server grade parts and don't skimp on the backup solution - it should probably cost more than anything else.

 

[FrostBite]

Might I throw out a suggestion that you consider virtualization as an option for both servers (or just spend the money on one better redundant server). ESXi is free, HyperV is the cost of a server 2008 license, Xenserver is free, of course if you want support on ESX or Xenserver you need to spend a couple hundred dollars for that separately. If you've never played with virtualization installing any of these hypervisors is no more difficult than doing a server 2003 install just so long as you check the hardware you are getting against the hardware support list.

You really need to detach their hardware from their software/data so you can easily do upgrades, migrate to new hardware for replacement or because of hardware failures. Worst case scenario you can always spin up that old P4 server you are replacing and toss ESX (or your prefer hypervisor) and copy/restore you VMs onto it as a temp solution. So long as you work out a good backup strategy for the VMs your client will be about 100 times better off than they are now.

I picked up a Dell T605 with Dual quad-core 2300 series AMD Opteron's 8GB of memory and a pair of 250GB Hotswap RE WDs on a 6i controller with bbwc and redundant power supplies for around $1200 new from dell with the base 3yr warranty a couple months ago. I think if you shop around a bit you can easily get one good solid machine with better specs and consolidate with VMs with a nice unified hardware warranty. From experience you are better off buying a Dell with the smallest/cheapest SATA drive offered (if you are looking to really save nickels off) and buying your own WD RE's from a third party vendor like Newegg and mounting them in the hotswap trays (make sure you pick some up from a parts dealer or ebay ahead of time).

I don't mean to downplay your desire for redundancy with two cheaper pieces of hardware vs 1 but speaking from managing a datacenter running thousands of Dell servers the things that fail 99% of the time don't actually take a properly redundant server down (IE: Redundant power supplies, ECC memory, Mirrored/Parity RAID drives, redundant fans). Any of these things can wait until a replacement part comes in tomorrow and you can schedule a downtime off hours to swap them out in a couple of minutes. Just make damn sure you are keeping backups at another location just inc ase you get a dual drive raid failure during a rebuild.

It's also worth mentioning that you should absolutely put equipment on a good UPS. There is probably a study/whitepaper out there that speaks to this but the failure rate for hardware connected directly to street power is significantly higher from what I've observed not to mention its great for just trashing RAID setups completely (can we said abrupt power failure during a disk write = complete loss of array?).

^^^ This. I manage the Sage/Pervasive software at our location. A bit more than a year ago, our physical server went belly up, and I had to drive to the datacenter and spend 2 days getting our data back. They than moved it to a virtualized server, and it is a hell of a lot better. We do daily incremental backups, weekly full backups, and we have off site tape storage. Even with all of that, you can't do a full server restore over to operating system, registry, and a ton of copy protected software. Now that we are virtualized, the server gets turned off, we copy the whole image, and we are back online. If there is a problem, we restore the whole thing and do incrementals. Also, we were upgrading Sage PFW 5.5 to 5.7, and we had massive problems because almost all our reports are customized. This saved me a ton of headaches and time.

Get good quality hardware as others have said, don't build it yourself. And than virtualize.

 

[DD_nVidia]

Ok so i've been reading a bit about virtualization and I'm thinking it might just be the way to go!

I did watch an episode of Hak5 and they used a Core i7 ... so ... I don't see why we couldn't?

The budget is even less than we first thought, they really want it for under £1000 if they even have to. Bloody recession. So the whole rackmount option is out, and probably raid 5/6 too along with any fancy raid cards.

So I'm thinking Raid 1 on the OS, Raid 1 on the Data, Daily full tape backups, Weekly full backups, Image the OS once a week?

So now the requirements are:

As cheap as possible, MAX £1000
Works with ESXi

 

[FrostBite]

I'd check out the virtualization forums for this information. More than likely though for a business, you should not go for a self build server.

 

[Dan_D]

Get Dell to build it for you. ECC memory, RAID, bigger drives, don't use SSDs for backup (why?!), warranty. Don't use gamer parts for a work server. Buy Tivoli (yes, it's a lot of money; yes, it's worth it) and use it to back up to hard drive or tape. Tape is expensive because it's proven, low-volume technology.

i7 is overkill by a lot. Take a look at, say, a 2970 or an older 5400-series Intel box and see what's cheapest. It's a domain controller for 40 people, and a pentium 3 is currently handling it. Performance will not be an issue.

This. A Dell PE T300 will do what you need and won't cost too much.

Don't build mission critical computers for your clients. You want Dell's NBD hardware support or better. Don't skimp on backups. Ever.

Well said, both of you. Home machines and gaming boxes you can build yourself. For serious server work you want warranty and support. You want Dell, or HP/Compaq i(maybe even IBM) n regard to x86 servers.

 

[gimp]

why do RAID on the OS? pointless for a server.
Unless it's running a SQL database or something that requires a lot of read/writes.

if you put the data drives on a RAID, that's understandable.

and yes, go with business-oriented system from an OEM.
that way, when a part craps out, you don't wait 2 weeks for the RMA, or have to go out and purchase a replacement part.

Even for our desktop computers, we have Dell Gold Support. Get the call in by 5pm Alaska time, we usually have the part the next day (sometimes it's the following day).

you can NOT beat that for support.

 

[Dan_D]

I've used RAID-1 for the OS if the server is mission critical. For performance alone, no RAID for the OS doesn't make much sense.

 

[gimp]

I've used RAID-1 for the OS if the server is mission critical. For performance alone, no RAID for the OS doesn't make much sense.

ah yes... he did say RAID1. my bad.

 

[unhappy_mage]

The budget is even less than we first thought, they really want it for under £1000 if they even have to.

I don't think that's possible. Even licensing Windows SBS with 5 CALs costs $400 (or about 245 pounds, if you can find it for the equivalent price over there) and you'll need 35 more CALs. That's $800 for 20, or 490*2=980 GBP! I'm sure you can find discounts somewhere, but I think you'll find the only way to get what you need is a five-finger discount or the moral equivalent.

So, in short, a thousand pounds doesn't even buy you a copy of the OS, let alone hardware to run it on. Consider upgrades to the existing machines (better tape drive, for faster backups? more memory?) or another OS. One of those Mac Minis might be a reasonable choice; they're £799.00 and include real hardware and an OS that is licensed for an unlimited number of clients. You don't have to use it for a domain controller, so it's easy to drop in a replacement if you do more upgrades later. It doesn't have ECC memory, but you have to sacrifice things at that price point.

 

[Yamahahahahaha]

First post!

How much is that data worth?
I would say that accountants need bulletproof backup and disaster recovery procedures. They need to understand that losing that data is the end of the business.
90% of businesses who lose data close 2 years down the line.

Disaster recovery:
Tape is not expensive.
An LTO-3 Drive can be had for as little as £880 ex. VAT these days, LTO-4 as cheap as £1100.
Here; http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=272688&CatId=0
and Here; http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=303158&CatId=2646
800GB native per tape would be overkill for your needs at the moment. So an LTO-3 drive would be fine.
£1100 amortised over 3 years (+ 2 years extended warranty), as well as a controller card and cable, would be around £350 per year when you include media. That's less than £1 per day for good quality disaster recovery hardware. Software would probably be ~£1200 for Backup Exec 12.5 + 1 year SA, Windows agent and MS Exchange agent.

As you said, with those data sizes you could easily run a full backup every day.
Take one tape off-site once a month and hold it for 24 months as part of Disaster Recovery.

Servers;
Keep the main file server.
Identify the roles that the servers need to fulfil.
Off the top of my head; Domain controller, DHCP, Sage Sovereign (Or Line100, whatever they use), Exchange, File + Print, Backup etc.
Exchange and any DB servers run best on RAID10 unless you're spending thousands on a top-end RAID controller to do RAID5 / 6.
RAID1 for the OS drive makes sense. Having a server drop offline because a piddly 80GB disk has failed is a total false economy.

Your role as consultant
You need to tell them this costs money, but they HAVE TO DO IT. 40 employees is really not that small.
Any kind of data loss is unacceptable. 90% of businesses that lose data go bust within 2 years. I cannot state how important it is to do this properly.
Downtime is equally unacceptable. They should be able to tell you straight away how much an hour, or a day of downtime would cost them.

They need to start looking at doing things properly, and as a consultant you need to tell them this. Recession or no recession, you need to take a 5-year plan to them and say "This is what needs to happen if you want to grow properly".
Otherwise in 3 years time when the system fails and they lose data, you are going to get the blame.

The £1000 budget

So I'm thinking Raid 1 on the OS, Raid 1 on the Data, Daily full tape backups, Weekly full backups, Image the OS once a week?

Honestly, I would be amazed if you could get even a semi-capable server for under £1000. Windows Server 2k3 'Standard' + 5 Cals is £400+ alone, that's not a lot left over for the hardware.
Dell can do some fantastic discounts for you, but you'll need to get an account manager etc. I would recommend them over HP / IBM on price.

Good luck with it all!

 

[marley1]

Lols.

40GB of data? Comeone so easy to backup. I would never build a server for business such a pain in but. Being dell reseller is a good thing.

Anyway 40gb. Why not use an online offsite backup?

What we do for our clients:
Paragon Drive Backup backing up to a Raid 1 NAS or External USB.
Online Backup - Mozy but looking to change
RD1000 with SBS backup.

For smaller clients just mozy.

SBS server seems great for this client. One beefy server, SAS drives, Raid 1 for os/Raid 5 for data. Get Exchange for em.

 

[swatbat]

Lols.

40GB of data? Comeone so easy to backup. I would never build a server for business such a pain in but. Being dell reseller is a good thing.

Anyway 40gb. Why not use an online offsite backup?

What we do for our clients:
Paragon Drive Backup backing up to a Raid 1 NAS or External USB.
Online Backup - Mozy but looking to change
RD1000 with SBS backup.

For smaller clients just mozy.

SBS server seems great for this client. One beefy server, SAS drives, Raid 1 for os/Raid 5 for data. Get Exchange for em.

Yea really.

Anyway OP a few things. For 40 users I'd go with sas. Also I'd drop the plan and go with dell, hp, etc. If you really want to build a system you can look at server solutions from supermicro or intel. Really with warranty support a big vendor is the way to go.

Also unless you are going to run server x64 or enterprise 32 you will only be able to use 4 gigs of memory per server.

Another thing to remember is when working on dell prices the online prices mean nothing. Get a dell business rep. They can generally bring a fully configured server down a good bit off retail.