Recommended Small Business Server

S

Sayth

Gawd
Joined
Oct 7, 2001
Messages
618
Hey guys,

Looking for a rack-mounted server for a small business to store about 1TB of data on (Plus growth). What are your recommendations?

Contemplating Linux, but might go Windows Server 2008 (simplicity for the owner)
2 core 3.0+ Ghz or Quad core 2.6+ Ghz
3 TB or more (SATA would be fine) RAID 5 or better
4+GB RAM
2x Gb Ethernet

Use: storage location for about 20x Windows PC backups as well as come Quicken data. That's it. Data to be stored form the PCs can amount to 1TB or more.

No active directory
No fancy services really.

I'm hoping to keep < $3000

I've been looking around at IBM, HP, Dell, but I have no experience with any of these aside from an old dell R900 and some Sun servers.

I appreciate any help and will elaborate on areas if needed. One question though... Worth going rack-mounted? or should I convince him to use tower form factor?
 
Does your switch support 802.3ad (LACP, Aggregation, whatever else they call it). ? I assume thats your reasoning for multiple NIC?

Any of the vendors mentioned will have entry level hardware platforms for small business. If you're using Linux, use a viable distribution, that has paid support option available to you. There's nothing that hurts more than telling your boss your free OS is having issues and you have to read forums all day to track the error, when a few bucks upfront can buy you some backend support when you need it, now.

If you go 2K8R2 (and I personally suggest you do, especially if you're in a all Windows environment anyway). Load it with as much memory as reasonably possible. If you think 4GB is good, put 8GB in.

Regardless, no matter what option you choose, load it up with memory, and have a backup solution built into your $.

You can easily get those needs into a 3k machine.

Rack mount looks cool, but if you have the room for a tower setup, its going to generally be cheaper to have configured pound for pound, and it allows for more
expansion generally speaking.
 
I'd second what Mackintire said about Windows Storage Server simply because no CALs are required.

Rack mounted vs. tower = where's it going to live?

HP X1400 or Dell NX300 are worth a look as a "one stop" solution. If you want a traditional server you're going to be looking at the Dell T310/410 or the HP ML1xx.

The CPU and RAM are much of a muchness for your sort of usage. Do look at getting something with a half-decent RAID controller as on a file server that's going to kill you before you're going to notice 2gb of RAM vs. 3gb or twin core vs. quad core.
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Thanks for all your suggestions. I haven't had a chance to respond but am still serious about this venture.

The Windows Storage Server sounds interesting. I'm surprised I've never come across it before. I'll definitely look into it to avoid paying for CALs. For some reason I thought that you only needed CALs if you were going to set up a domain controller.

I think you've all convinced me though to try to convince the boss against the idea of rack mounted. He doesn't even have a rack yet. But you know when you mention servers to non-techies and they immediately think of racks with big mainframes hahaha

I'll take a look at those options hutch. Thanks all!
 
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