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Server Build Critique

T

The Donut

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 28, 2003
Messages
3,122
Hey, i'm looking at two options and would like your opinions for our new Exchange server here.

Option 1
Tyan B2933G14S2M Transport GT14 1U Barebone Server
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA
Kingston 8GB 2x4GB DDR2 ECC Memory
2x AMD Opteron 2352 Barcelona Quad Core Processor

Option 2
ASUS RS100-E5/PI2 1U Barebone Server
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA
Kingston 8GB 2x4GB DDR2 ECC Memory
Intel Xeon X3360 Yorkfield Quad Core

We are trying to keep it relatively low cost. We don't have a great deal of mail accounts, our current machine is on it's way out, however.
 
Ditch the sata, and get sas raid setup. If you stick to a single sata drive, it's still going to feel like you're still on the old system.
 
Personally I'd ditch the home grown clone solution and go with a Tier-1 that includes a 3 year warranty and industry standard parts.

How many users are on this?
Any limits on their mailboxes?
 
You definitely need to take a look at some of the lower end offerings from HP and Dell. A new server with software can be purchased for a small business for really cheap now.

For a small shop you don't need to go SAS, but you do need to setup some sort of RAID array, RAID 5 (3 drives required) or RAID 1 if you can only swing 2 drives.

Also, if you are running SBS 2003 then you only need 4 GB of RAM as that is the maximum amount it can access.

Custom machines in a business setting will end up costing you more in downtime and data loss than spending the extra couple hundred dollars.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Personally I'd ditch the home grown clone solution and go with a Tier-1 that includes a 3 year warranty and industry standard parts.

How many users are on this?
Any limits on their mailboxes?
Click to expand...

What he said. Big question is on how many users/mailboxes. Also you running exchange 03 or 07? Std or Enterprise?
 
Exchange 03 -- 25 mailboxes. No real limits except attachment size <25MB.

The management here do not want to go with Dell or HP. The ASUS 1U servers we built (same barebones as the one above) has been working out well for the Quickbooks Server as well as other tasks and they want to go with something similar.

All our backups are managed externally from the machines. Complete drive images are taken daily using Acronis Enterprise. Unfortunately I can only do so much until management gets involved and pretends they know things and screw it all up.

Cheapest Comparable Dell was after customization (similar specs as above) came to $2,181. The above configurations are all under $1,600; something that is a must due to the budget I was given.
 
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Bummer of the support. I like Asus mobo's 'n stuff..for servers for production.....eek. How's their warranty as far as ease of hardware support and getting overnight replacement parts?

I've mostly had bad performance experiences with SATA....I swore I'd never do another SATA server again. Then about 5 months ago had to get a competitive quote in for a client..their budget dictated SATA...so I went with a smaller Dell T series server. I was actually quite impressed with the SATA on that one.

Dunno how well the SATA performs on these Asus boxes....I don't know what RAID controller they're using.

The load for MS Exchange is substantially higher than the Quickbooks Database service.

What I did for the SATA box I recently did...2x drives RAID 1 for OS, and another pair for RAID 1 for the data (Exchange Infostore). This way the infostore is on a different spindle than the OS and the pagefile...so better performance.

Doing just a single RAID 1 with 2x partitions won't give you that performance edge..they're all on the same spindle.

8 gigs of RAM is going to waste.
 
The Donut said:
Exchange 03 -- 25 mailboxes. No real limits except attachment size <25MB.

The management here do not want to go with Dell or HP. The ASUS 1U servers we built (same barebones as the one above) has been working out well for the Quickbooks Server as well as other tasks and they want to go with something similar.

All our backups are managed externally from the machines. Complete drive images are taken daily using Acronis Enterprise. Unfortunately I can only do so much until management gets involved and pretends they know things and screw it all up.
Click to expand...

Unless you are running server and exchange enterprise you only need 4 gigs of ram. Exchange 03 runs on 32 bit windows and unless you are running enterprise(or datacenter) it will only see 4 gigs.

Anyway generally speaking you want exchange on its own set of drives. For bigger setups you usually give the log files a set of drives and the database another set. Personally I'd look at a SAS raid 1 at least. Idea setup would be a 1U case that supports 4 drives and run dual raid 1s. Run one set for the OS and one set for the data. For 25 users it shouldn't be a big deal to leave the logs and database on the same set of drives.

Does acronis clear the exchange log files after backup? If not are you going to enable Circular Logging?
 
What is your budget? I have several Dell 1950's dual dual core xeons for a pretty dang good price and that are still under warranty.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
The load for MS Exchange is substantially higher than the Quickbooks Database service.
Click to expand...

This depends. If it is quickbooks enterprise it can give exchange a run for its money. We had a client that went to enterprise because he needed the extra setup to run his business. Guy runs a vending machine company. Enterprise tanked the server it was on. They ended up moving away from it to a program designed for their line of business. Quickbooks gets angry when you have the amount of data in it his small business did. Want to say that it was pulling over 3 gigs between its services at pretty much any given time on the 32bit server it was on. Never went below 2.5 gigs and really attacked things like disk I/O
 
The ASUS Barebones machines are actually a pretty nice kit. We have 3 of them running currently.

Our main issue and reason for doing this, is that the original IT guy here installed the BES Server onto our Exchange server and now it's starting to become an issue. Drive space is low, people are having syncronization problems between Exchange/BES and the whole machine has generally become a huge hog. It's an old HP Server.

They want me to setup a cheap (See sub-$1,600 (Canadian)) server to take over the Exchange duties and reconfigure the old server to be our BES. (BES Currently has 20 users, not exorbitant.)
 
swatbat said:
This depends. If it is quickbooks enterprise it can give exchange a run for its money. We had a client that went to enterprise because he needed the extra setup to run his business. Guy runs a vending machine company. Enterprise tanked the server it was on. They ended up moving away from it to a program designed for their line of business. Quickbooks gets angry when you have the amount of data in it his small business did. Want to say that it was pulling over 3 gigs between its services at pretty much any given time on the 32bit server it was on. Never went below 2.5 gigs and really attacked things like disk I/O
Click to expand...

Our Quickbooks server is pretty intense. We have 5 users in there constantly and most of our database files are huge. We had an older machine running as the QB Server for a while and in the end it started to simply freeze when files were being opened making it completely unusable for those already in the file.
 
The Donut said:
The ASUS Barebones machines are actually a pretty nice kit. We have 3 of them running currently.

Our main issue and reason for doing this, is that the original IT guy here installed the BES Server onto our Exchange server and now it's starting to become an issue. Drive space is low, people are having syncronization problems between Exchange/BES and the whole machine has generally become a huge hog. It's an old HP Server.

They want me to setup a cheap (See sub-$1,600 (Canadian)) server to take over the Exchange duties and reconfigure the old server to be our BES. (BES Currently has 20 users, not exorbitant.)
Click to expand...

BES with 20 users should be off the exchange server. I know they claim it can handle 30 on the same box but RIM is pretty against that.

I think YeOlde was going more at how the support is on those ASUS boxes. IE when something goes wrong how quick do they get you a replacement part? With Dell I generally get a part the next day with most of are clients. Few of them have 4 hour response time support. For them we get a part in an hour or 2 the few times we have used it.
 
swatbat said:
This depends. If it is quickbooks enterprise it can give exchange a run for its money. We had a client that went to enterprise because he needed the extra setup to run his business. Guy runs a vending machine company. Enterprise tanked the server it was on. They ended up moving away from it to a program designed for their line of business. Quickbooks gets angry when you have the amount of data in it his small business did. Want to say that it was pulling over 3 gigs between its services at pretty much any given time on the 32bit server it was on. Never went below 2.5 gigs and really attacked things like disk I/O
Click to expand...

I did notice that with disk....I have 2 clients doing QB Ent. Often though, amount of QB users is usually quite less than the amount of Outlook/OWA/Outlook over HTTP users.

Also depends what the company does for typical e-mail....in/out mails with larger attachments or no.
 
swatbat said:
I think YeOlde was going more at how the support is on those ASUS boxes. IE when something goes wrong how quick do they get you a replacement part? With Dell I generally get a part the next day with most of are clients. Few of them have 4 hour response time support. For them we get a part in an hour or 2 the few times we have used it.
Click to expand...

Support...yup. Companies rely on their e-mail. Exchange servers down = management hovering over the propeller head screaming to have it back up.

IMO the spec'ed Asus boxes are over stuffed....don't need/can't use 8 gigs of RAM, IMO for 25 users a TB drive is way overkill also, as well as a quad core Xeon.

I spec'd a rack PE 2950 III with 2x pairs of RAID 1 (4 drives total), 4 gigs, Dual Core Xeon..1700 bucks.
 
Seems like a raid setup, 8 gigs or ram and a TB should be sufficient for what you need.
signature_distory.jpg


I was expecting to see a use linux comment?
 
Slow day today

HP Proliant Server with 4 drive RAID array (RAID 5 or 2 RAID 1)
1 Year Next day warranty

ml150.jpg
 
Distro said:
I was expecting to see a use linux comment?
Click to expand...

Okay... "Since when is Linux hardware?."

Seriously though, If you need to shave off a few things, going with less ram (4GB is plenty) I am also of the personal belief that you shouldn't be using custom built boxes, but if your company is willing you can get a used Dell/HP that'll work just as well and is more widely supported.
You can also lok into http://www.siliconmechanics.com/ as they essentially sell Supermicro boxes. Also someone here posted http://www.stikc.com They literally sell racks of used Dells.

Oh and try to get setup with a Dell Account Manager, they are always cheaper than the website and also can offer configurations not available on the website.
 
Distro said:
Seems like a raid setup, 8 gigs or ram and a TB should be sufficient for what you need.
signature_distory.jpg


I was expecting to see a use linux comment?
Click to expand...

The OP has yet to say if he is running exchange standard or enterprise but as both YeOlde and myself have mentioned 03 standard(server and exchange) can't handle more then 4 gigs of memory. If we are talking about exchange standard it has a 75 gig limit on the mail database.

I'm guessing you don't have much experience with exchange?
 
swatbat said:
The OP has yet to say if he is running exchange standard or enterprise but as both YeOlde and myself have mentioned 03 standard(server and exchange) can't handle more then 4 gigs of memory. If we are talking about exchange standard it has a 75 gig limit on the mail database.

I'm guessing you don't have much experience with exchange?
Click to expand...

I was unaware of the SBS 03 limit on the memory, or rather, the lack of a 64-bit version. So lowering the memory is definitely an option.

We are also running Exchange 03, Standard.
 
Something I forgot to mention, this machine also serves as our AD Controller and we have the My Documents redirection rule enabled.
 
Hows this, has a different warranty (3 Year instead of 1, but no onsite support)
dl160.jpg
 
The Donut said:
I was unaware of the SBS 03 limit on the memory, or rather, the lack of a 64-bit version. So lowering the memory is definitely an option.
Click to expand...

Ahhh...SBS. Should have stated that in the first place.

Now we're definitely talking 4 gigs of RAM minimum and max. Don't go below 4. Can't go above 4.

And without question...go for 4 or 5 drives minimum. 80 gig C drive on a pair of smaller drives in RAID 1. For the OS and client setup files.
Make another pair or three drives RAID 1 or RAID 5..and have your infostore there for Exchange, as well as the general Shared directory, My Docs redirection in the /users folder, etc.

Now, I take it you have an existing SBS box running on the older hardware? How do you plan to move it? Or just do an entire network rebuild?
 
He will have to do a network rebuild if he has SBS as you can't have 2 SBS servers on the same domain and you can't demote the current SBS server.

Imaging the server would be a pain / not recomended due to dissimilar hardware and a host of other possible issues.
 
gimp0 said:
He will have to do a network rebuild if he has SBS as you can't have 2 SBS servers on the same domain and you can't demote the current SBS server.
Click to expand...

Or swing it!
Or VM it.
But yeah that's why I made the statement above about SBS.

I'm actually taking the ESXi approach on one client of mine..old old SBS setup, they have a wide area network and a lot of remote users...so a rebuild would take weeks to touch everything. Old server, some glorified desktop of a Dell PowerEdge 600sc (Basically a Dimension)..IDE drives, Pentium 4 non HT. Yeah..serves up SBS to a wide area network of 40 users or so.

Got new Proliant, installed HP version of ESXi on it...just did a dry run on the P2V last weekend. I normally wouldn't do SBS on ESXi because SBS is a pig and I wouldn't want to share it with others on a VM...but..since it's the only thing on there..pretty much no resource problems.
 
Heh how about Sysprepping the existing server then cloning the image to the new one?
 
Pretty much SOL if you want to keep it at $1600, you already know what your options are.
 
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