Servers for small businesses

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LoStMaTt

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Feb 26, 2003
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What is everyone using for servers these days for your small business clients?

I have several clients with some older SBS 2003 Dell Poweredge servers and they need to be updated.

It seems like most of my clients have downsized since the recession as well and really don't need MS SBS or a domain server.

Many things are moving to the cloud or are being hosted on the web so really these clients just need a file server or just a Server 2008 Standard box, no domain.

So what are you guys rolling out for customers these days?
 
It's really case by case, but you might consider offering a hosted virtual SBS solution for a monthly fee with VPN connectivity. I did this for several smaller clients- Hosting the servers on our vSphere environment and in a datacenter with blended data gave the clients a lot more peace of mind than what they could afford on their own. It also means you can dial up or down the resources and bandwidth on the machine as the client requires. Take it a step further and throw a Citrix/Terminal server in with the SBS server and you have a complete thin-data environment that works well even on cheap DSL connections.
 
Protoform-X said:
It's really case by case, but you might consider offering a hosted virtual SBS solution for a monthly fee with VPN connectivity. I did this for several smaller clients- Hosting the servers on our vSphere environment and in a datacenter with blended data gave the clients a lot more peace of mind than what they could afford on their own. It also means you can dial up or down the resources and bandwidth on the machine as the client requires. Take it a step further and throw a Citrix/Terminal server in with the SBS server and you have a complete thin-data environment that works well even on cheap DSL connections.
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This sounds way too complicated for me and my clients.

These are business with 10 or less employees that use maybe one or two applications that "require" a server. (Ex. Peachtree Quantum).

Peachtree, E-mail, and web browsing is all they do.
 
Honestly, whatever you do get, I'd make sure it's esxi certified. Throw esxi on there, load your guests up, off you go.

Yes, it adds some complexity to the situation...but I gotta tell you, the versatility it offers in the short and long term pays off.
 
My suggestion:

Dell T110 II installing and running Hyper-V Server 2008 (free) and SBS 2011 essentials as your primary child OS, adding the second nic to the price.
$1349.00
If you really need storage....
Use a midrange QNAP unit RAID5 or better operating as a SAN, use the built in synchronization to backup to amazon S3 economy services to cover your backups.
$1200-1500 to buy + Amazon S3 costs $0.93 per month per GB

Use Microsoft "Exchange Online for reliability and cost" $4 per month per user for basic, $8 per month per user for unlimited retention and legal data retention compliance.

Add the premiums SBS add-on later, to get another OS install (and sharepoint and SQL licensing) when you are ready to expand.

Purchase a second server a second server later as the company grows and move the VMs as the resources are needed.

$3000 to kick it off.
$80 a month for 10 users Exchange Online premium
$$ as needed for backup

Once monthly backup start costing more than $200 a month consider buying a storage appliance and placing it in a datacenter synchronizing with that nightly.
 
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Our Dell 2850's are humming along nicely. Although, we will be transitioning to R710's for future purchases.
And we have a couple TS-859U+'s as well. As Mackintire pointed out, they are excellent storage devices.
 
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SuperBudget...Dell PE T410...I really won't touch anything less than a 410 series...those would just be a glorified Dimension desktop trying to act as a server.
Better budget...Dell PD T610 (just had one arrive last week..it's on my desk...for a Hyper-V box)
 
I'd go something like a basic HP ML330, add on a redundant PSU, throw in some decent [Non-OEM] standard Hard drives in RAID1/10 - WD Enterprise if you feel the need, but I've got along fine with WD Blue's so long as there isn't any heavy DB usage.

Single PSU servers make me want to cry. Single HDD servers make me want to break faces. :D

My more important question is - what features are they using that need to drive them away from their SBS 2003 server? I assume it's a good reason, just curious.
 
No reason not to run a domain if you are going to have MS Server software on the network...it makes many things easier. I'd make fun of you if you setup network with a server os and no domain...
 
Database said:
No reason not to run a domain if you are going to have MS Server software on the network...it makes many things easier. I'd make fun of you if you setup network with a server os and no domain...
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I can think of one; setting up the domain right. You don't set up a domain with a single server.

Bad mojo.
 
Database said:
No reason not to run a domain if you are going to have MS Server software on the network...it makes many things easier. I'd make fun of you if you setup network with a server os and no domain...
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Yep...

Less than a year ago I went into a shop that had ~40 workstations, another ~10 or so desktops (POS, MSDS, other apps) running on a workgroup. Their last consultant had purchased a ~$5000 Dell server (Dual X3220's - 8 cores - and 8GB of RAM...) that was acting as a file server.

First, I got them a Dell T210 - running 2003 server as the domain controller and a proper Raid 0 NAS for their share with daily tape backups and weekly offsite backups using RSync.

Second, upgraded their eight core to 32GB RAM (max), tossed XenCenter on it, and it's now doing all sorts of great stuff. Virtualized domain controller, CUPS on CentOS, some document conversions (boss wanted some fancy conversions of custom HTML call accounting reports into PDFs that auto-printed to his office), call accounting software, website development, etc. etc.

Virtualization is awesome. And if you're running MS software, you might as well run a domain - seriously. As long as you have the hardware available to keep it running stable. PLEASE don't load up your DCs with print servers and file shares etc. etc...

Example - a few months ago the boss decided he wanted a more eco-friendly office, so it was as simple as pushing out a GPO and now everybody gets annoyed when their monitors go to sleep after 5 minutes. New printer? GPO.
 
A domain model is always good because it provides security, you'll always have accounting data on the server that has to be kept private. Virtualization is great as long as you have a good backup solution for it and lets not forget that while it may seem inexpensive, you still need an OS license for the virtual servers.SBS is a fantastic affordable solution for companies with as little as 5 to 50 people. You can't buy Windows Server 2008R2 and Exchange 2010 cheaper then with the SBS bundle. Sure people overspec hardware all the time and even the Dell T110 server is nice little box.
 
KatalDT said:
PLEASE don't load up your DCs with print servers and file shares etc. etc...
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File shares I agree with, but in a small environment there is no reason not to utilize the DC as the print server.

However, while I agree that a domain adds very real administrative value, I maintain that running a DC on a single server is asking for problems. Those additional features come at a cost, after all; that server dies and you are SOL.
 
I'd say given that cheap servers are going to have just 2-4 slow sata drives in a raid-10 or raid-5, I'd try to get the client to spend the extra 500 bucks and get a caching raid controller with BBU. Makes a very significant difference. I like the dell t310 & up.
 
dave99 said:
I'd say given that cheap servers are going to have just 2-4 slow sata drives in a raid-10 or raid-5, I'd try to get the client to spend the extra 500 bucks and get a caching raid controller with BBU. Makes a very significant difference. I like the dell t310 & up.
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I work on a ton of dell servers, i like them all, my fav would be the 310's and up, and all rack servers.
 
I would plan for growth. It's easier to do it right now than to change it later.

Get a single Virtual server (ESXi, or other flavor of choice) and run two DCs, and a file and print server. Maybe a separate exchange box.

In the future growing is as easy as added a secondary server and a SAN, and do a live migrate of the existing VMs, add more VMs etc.

If you really don't want to do VMs, then get a couple physical servers with dual PSU and raid, I'd still run two DCs. If one craps out at least you're not dead in the water and you're not recreating all those accounts/groups etc if it crapped out for good... 10 employees today, can turn into 15 employees next year, and 30 contractors/vendors that need their own account. Then you got services accounts for all sorts of business apps etc... It grows fast.
 
jjeff1 said:
proper Raid 0 NAS


What? There is no such thing.
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Raid 0 is awesome for medical offices. You can pull up patient records so much faster! :D Sadly, I actually had to recover a server in a hospital once that had patient records, and it was raid 0. What a pain that was. Was a server we had to manage, yet we did not know it existed. It was in another building sitting on a shelf in a closet.
 
Adding to the post....initially I thought you meant just server hardware...but you're asking about software.

Local active directory...and hybrid in with Office 365. Exchange and Sharepoint storage hosted offsite.
 
XOR != OR said:
I can think of one; setting up the domain right. You don't set up a domain with a single server.

Bad mojo.
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Learn to set them up properly and on good hardware...and there's little risk. Can't think of how many years and how many clients I've had on single server...that's part of the small side of small business. Only had one server go belly up...guy that bought an "el cheapo" Proliant ML110 or ML150...one of those glorified desktops trying to act as a server. Pair of SATA drives in RAID 1. Desktop hardware that has no business pretending to be a server....this is the kind of setup people have a bad experience with..and...well...yeah, that's what happens. Oh yeah..back had failed several months ago..lol.

But bottom line...the scenario I'm talking about, to cover your subject of risk or "bad mojo"...this server went tango uniform...%system% partition, DNS, sysvol all went wonky cuz one of the sata drives had gone..and that laughable imitation onboard fake-RAID controller ..surprise surprise...couldn't deal with it and the other drive got some corruption.

Bottom line though...smaller side of small busines...no biggie, I copied the data partition off, put in a pair of WD RE3 drives (best enterprise SATA's...better than nothing)...fresh clean install of the server, DCPROMO, only had like 9 workstations so easy enough to join the new AD and copy profiles over....was done by end of the day.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Learn to set them up properly and on good hardware...and there's little risk. Can't think of how many years and how many clients I've had on single server...that's part of the small side of small business. Only had one server go belly up...guy that bought an "el cheapo" Proliant ML110 or ML150...one of those glorified desktops trying to act as a server. Pair of SATA drives in RAID 1. Desktop hardware that has no business pretending to be a server....this is the kind of setup people have a bad experience with..and...well...yeah, that's what happens. Oh yeah..back had failed several months ago..lol.

But bottom line...the scenario I'm talking about, to cover your subject of risk or "bad mojo"...this server went tango uniform...%system% partition, DNS, sysvol all went wonky cuz one of the sata drives had gone..and that laughable imitation onboard fake-RAID controller ..surprise surprise...couldn't deal with it and the other drive got some corruption.

Bottom line though...smaller side of small busines...no biggie, I copied the data partition off, put in a pair of WD RE3 drives (best enterprise SATA's...better than nothing)...fresh clean install of the server, DCPROMO, only had like 9 workstations so easy enough to join the new AD and copy profiles over....was done by end of the day.
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TBH for a small business, I'd rather build two servers myself for redundancy rather than having a single point of failure, at a price cheaper than a single server with dual power supplies. In the more likely event that ONE of the cheaper boxes goes down, you have time to replace - and convince them to buy some real hardware - the chances of both going down at the same time are ridiculously small.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Learn to set them up properly and on good hardware...and there's little risk. Can't think of how many years and how many clients I've had on single server...that's part of the small side of small business. Only had one server go belly up...guy that bought an "el cheapo" Proliant ML110 or ML150...one of those glorified desktops trying to act as a server. Pair of SATA drives in RAID 1. Desktop hardware that has no business pretending to be a server....this is the kind of setup people have a bad experience with..and...well...yeah, that's what happens. Oh yeah..back had failed several months ago..lol.

But bottom line...the scenario I'm talking about, to cover your subject of risk or "bad mojo"...this server went tango uniform...%system% partition, DNS, sysvol all went wonky cuz one of the sata drives had gone..and that laughable imitation onboard fake-RAID controller ..surprise surprise...couldn't deal with it and the other drive got some corruption.

Bottom line though...smaller side of small busines...no biggie, I copied the data partition off, put in a pair of WD RE3 drives (best enterprise SATA's...better than nothing)...fresh clean install of the server, DCPROMO, only had like 9 workstations so easy enough to join the new AD and copy profiles over....was done by end of the day.
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It depends on the business model, and how they tolerate downtime, of course. I tend to work up how much their downtime would cost them and factor that in to my presentation. Most of the time they are disinclined to take that risk.

Servers are complex beasts, even the best of them. It's inevitable that SOMETHING critical, at some point, fails and takes things down, I don't care what server it is ( although ya, the cheapos will throw far more weird errors than your HPs or Dells ).

It's not a risk I recommend my clients take, and as I mentioned, they tend to agree with me.

EDIT: I'll add something here; the difference between the two stances are more business than technological. I, like many here, trade on my reputation. I get my business mainly from word of mouth; clients that love me have other business friends that need IT work. Like it or not, business clients are..fickle. They won't remember that they said they wanted a single DC to save on cost, they WILL remember the 8 hours of downtime they suffered. Likewise, they may think I'm more expensive than the competition, but I do have the reputation of making things to last. As any competent business owner will tell you, the stability is often worth the cost.

So it's a trade off. However, I will always push for stability over cost savings.
 
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XOR != OR said:
It depends on the business model, and how they tolerate downtime, of course. I tend to work up how much their downtime would cost them and factor that in to my presentation. Most of the time they are disinclined to take that risk.

Servers are complex beasts, even the best of them. It's inevitable that SOMETHING critical, at some point, fails and takes things down, I don't care what server it is ( although ya, the cheapos will throw far more weird errors than your HPs or Dells ).

It's not a risk I recommend my clients take, and as I mentioned, they tend to agree with me.

EDIT: I'll add something here; the difference between the two stances are more business than technological. I, like many here, trade on my reputation. I get my business mainly from word of mouth; clients that love me have other business friends that need IT work. Like it or not, business clients are..fickle. They won't remember that they said they wanted a single DC to save on cost, they WILL remember the 8 hours of downtime they suffered. Likewise, they may think I'm more expensive than the competition, but I do have the reputation of making things to last. As any competent business owner will tell you, the stability is often worth the cost.

So it's a trade off. However, I will always push for stability over cost savings.
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That's all fine and good and I agree with you for the most part. However, often times these real small places, 5-10 users won't buy a second server for anything. I make sure they have good imaged based backups and call it a day. Worst case scenario, I'll restore their server to a spare desktop running ESXi if waiting on parts or something.

I've been an IT consultant for both small and large businesses for 13 years and MANY times I haven't had a choice/say in the matter of the client running one server.

Even still, good backups, regular maintenance, little issues.

edit: actually, I took a network engineer position at a large company for a few years before going back to consulting... so not that long :)
 
Database said:
That's all fine and good and I agree with you for the most part. However, often times these real small places, 5-10 users won't buy a second server for anything. I make sure they have good imaged based backups and call it a day. Worst case scenario, I'll restore their server to a spare desktop running ESXi if waiting on parts or something.

I've been an IT consultant for both small and large businesses for 13 years and MANY times I haven't had a choice/say in the matter of the client running one server.

Even still, good backups, regular maintenance, little issues.

edit: actually, I took a network engineer position at a large company for a few years before going back to consulting... so not that long :)
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Good backup like acronis ?

One of the local it companies im friends with usually buy the enterprise WD external 2.5" HDD's and use 5 of them. one for monday, Wednesday, friday. the first of the month is a dedicated drive, and it's a full backup, that gets swapped with the other drive..
 
Database said:
That's all fine and good and I agree with you for the most part. However, often times these real small places, 5-10 users won't buy a second server for anything. I make sure they have good imaged based backups and call it a day. Worst case scenario, I'll restore their server to a spare desktop running ESXi if waiting on parts or something.

I've been an IT consultant for both small and large businesses for 13 years and MANY times I haven't had a choice/say in the matter of the client running one server.

Even still, good backups, regular maintenance, little issues.

edit: actually, I took a network engineer position at a large company for a few years before going back to consulting... so not that long :)
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Oh, I've been forced to do single server solutions for clients. I do understand. At present I have 2 that I'm maintaining, and I make it a point to remind them about once a quarter of the risk they are taking and that I don't recommend it. Hopefully, they will either get tired of me badgering them and find another IT vendor to support them, OR they will cave and get a second server. Either I would put in the "WIN" category.

My point is that, as a general rule, setting up a domain with a single DC is wrong.
 
Database said:
That's all fine and good and I agree with you for the most part. However, often times these real small places, 5-10 users won't buy a second server for anything. I make sure they have good imaged based backups and call it a day. Worst case scenario, I'll restore their server to a spare desktop running ESXi if waiting on parts or something.

Even still, good backups, regular maintenance, little issues.)
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Exactly

ESPECIALLY with todays no brainer backup setups.

There are services out there...(we partnered with DattoBackup)...continuous backups of your server(s) are stored on a local appliance in vmware file format. If the clients actual server blows up, I can remote into the backup appliance..."boot up" the backup of their server..and have it available on their network within 15 minutes. Client orders a new server...it arrives a week later, I do a "push to bare metal" restore in a few hours. It also synchs to east coast and west coast data centers for offsite backup. If their office building happens to blow up...taking out their servers and local backup appliance...I can have their offsite "hosted in the cloud" backup images booted up "in the cloud" to allow connectivity to their servers.

Oh yeah..cost of these appliances...MUCH less than duplicate servers. And you get a wicked fancy backup system including offsite too!

Small businesses (smaller size that would run from just one server) often struggle enough to afford a minimum 5 thousand dollar server...most of them would laugh me out the door if I tried to force them into spending 10 grand on two servers. Servers less than 5 grand? Sure..there are 999 dollar servers...SATA crap with fake RAID, I will not sacrifice my good word of mouth reliable reputation installing those, spent way to many years building up what I do.
 
All depends on what the client needs. Most of our small users above 5 users tend to want Exchange and it makes sense to do it in house and host files. We do a SBS 2011 now. Backup handled with built in backup or if larger site we use a BDR. The built in backup is great if the office staff is capable of swapping drives every night/on schedule.

For hardware we use Dell. Smaller offices get a T310/T410 (whatever is on sale/cheaper) with single Raid5 SAS Array. 12GB memory minimum. This has worked great. For larger offices we do the Raid1/Raid5 with SAS and a hotspare. For other sites that need a second server we are starting to do a T610/R510 with Raid1, Raid 10 with hotspare and use HyperV
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Exactly

ESPECIALLY with todays no brainer backup setups.

There are services out there...(we partnered with DattoBackup)...continuous backups of your server(s) are stored on a local appliance in vmware file format. If the clients actual server blows up, I can remote into the backup appliance..."boot up" the backup of their server..and have it available on their network within 15 minutes. Client orders a new server...it arrives a week later, I do a "push to bare metal" restore in a few hours. It also synchs to east coast and west coast data centers for offsite backup. If their office building happens to blow up...taking out their servers and local backup appliance...I can have their offsite "hosted in the cloud" backup images booted up "in the cloud" to allow connectivity to their servers.

Oh yeah..cost of these appliances...MUCH less than duplicate servers. And you get a wicked fancy backup system including offsite too!

Small businesses (smaller size that would run from just one server) often struggle enough to afford a minimum 5 thousand dollar server...most of them would laugh me out the door if I tried to force them into spending 10 grand on two servers. Servers less than 5 grand? Sure..there are 999 dollar servers...SATA crap with fake RAID, I will not sacrifice my good word of mouth reliable reputation installing those, spent way to many years building up what I do.
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Ok that is sweet.

I feel your pain with the small business's though. I often get laughed out the door with the $5000 server and get forced into the $999 model but any more I have been forcing the to cough up for at least near line sas instead just just sata.
 
DeChache said:
I feel your pain with the small business's though. I often get laughed out the door with the $5000 server and get forced into the $999 model but any more I have been forcing the to cough up for at least near line sas instead just just sata.
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Absolutely, but some headaches are just not worth it. Never be afraid of walking away. As YeOldeStoneCat said, our reputations are worth more than a cluster-fsck of a compromise.

I've got a client right now, that has an OLD HP DL360G4 with 4GB RAM, a pair of mirrored 300GB SCSI sets, running 2003SP2 with SBS2003 in Virtual Server 2005 that a previous consultant set up long ago :eek:. This is serving up info to 25 clients (Very slowly). The decision maker can't wrap his head around the fact that his investment in 2006 has depreciated. and that it's time to upgrade again. I've got piles or emails warning them of the danger. I hope they listen this time around.
 
DeChache said:
Ok that is sweet.

I feel your pain with the small business's though. I often get laughed out the door with the $5000 server and get forced into the $999 model but any more I have been forcing the to cough up for at least near line sas instead just just sata.
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Yup....a few years ago I had a client talk me down on a server proposal and I said "Fine..we'll do SATA to keep your budget happy". I was so sorry I did...what a mightmare, NEVER AGAIN. I also have worked on SATA servers others installed....what mightmares. Come to think of it..99% of server disasters I've worked with...el cheapo SATA. Allll the other clients over the years...SCSI/SAS boxes...no problems with issues that this thread pertains to.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Yup....a few years ago I had a client talk me down on a server proposal and I said "Fine..we'll do SATA to keep your budget happy". I was so sorry I did...what a mightmare, NEVER AGAIN. I also have worked on SATA servers others installed....what mightmares. Come to think of it..99% of server disasters I've worked with...el cheapo SATA. Allll the other clients over the years...SCSI/SAS boxes...no problems with issues that this thread pertains to.
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My usual server is the T110 or similar box with 2 500 gig near line sas and 2 1tb near line sas both in raid 1 on a real controller. No fake raid no software raid.


So far it seems to be going good but the only thing these boxes are doing for the most part is acting as a file server and a quickbooks server. (Though quickbooks can really thrash a set of drives)

They run daily backups to external drives using windows server backup. Knock on wood nothing has failed yet.

I don't run domains or anything like that. I have never been able to justify it though my main customers are just small Mom and Pop shops with 3 employees. Small server and gmail for businesses and buy them a domain and I'm done.
 
There's a method to my madness....

A single T110 II server with Server 2008 Hyper-V (free) installed with the actual used OS hosted on it.

If you schedule and use VSS backups correctly. You should be able to recover the server and its contents to ANY hyper-V aware server in short order.

10 users with no budget = Dell T110 or HP ML150
20 users+ add a second REAL server box and make sure its capable of running the VM you had on the first box if needed.

File Servers should always be equipped with real hardware RAID.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Exactly

ESPECIALLY with todays no brainer backup setups.

There are services out there...(we partnered with DattoBackup)...continuous backups of your server(s) are stored on a local appliance in vmware file format. If the clients actual server blows up, I can remote into the backup appliance..."boot up" the backup of their server..and have it available on their network within 15 minutes. Client orders a new server...it arrives a week later, I do a "push to bare metal" restore in a few hours. It also synchs to east coast and west coast data centers for offsite backup. If their office building happens to blow up...taking out their servers and local backup appliance...I can have their offsite "hosted in the cloud" backup images booted up "in the cloud" to allow connectivity to their servers.

Oh yeah..cost of these appliances...MUCH less than duplicate servers. And you get a wicked fancy backup system including offsite too!

Small businesses (smaller size that would run from just one server) often struggle enough to afford a minimum 5 thousand dollar server...most of them would laugh me out the door if I tried to force them into spending 10 grand on two servers. Servers less than 5 grand? Sure..there are 999 dollar servers...SATA crap with fake RAID, I will not sacrifice my good word of mouth reliable reputation installing those, spent way to many years building up what I do.
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I've definitely got to look into this....

Good info!
 
This was a useful thread..... anyone other idea's opinions out there that someone would like to share?
 
LoStMaTt said:
This sounds way too complicated for me and my clients.

These are business with 10 or less employees that use maybe one or two applications that "require" a server. (Ex. Peachtree Quantum).

Peachtree, E-mail, and web browsing is all they do.
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Then this solution is perfect for you. The complication is on your network, not theirs. Deployment is a breeze- basically plug and play. The little companies like that don't want to drop $5000+ on a server, but $400 a month sounds pretty dang good in comparison. You'll make 5 times your $5000 in the 5 years you host them, and as you gain more customers it's costing you less money per company. The caveat is the initial investment, but if you're really a consulting company, you should have some network infrastructure anyway. SaaS is where everything is going in SMB. Get with it, or get left behind, right?
 
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