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!
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!