Small Business Server - Build or buy?

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staticz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 19, 2008
Messages
184
Our company is looking to either build or buy a new server. Currently running on a pretty old SBS 2003 box. We are looking to move up to SBS 2008 and bring our email back in house with Exchange. The company currently has less than 25 employees. I'm finishing up my last few semesters of college, and then I will become full time. I've never actually built a server so I'm leaning towards just buying one, however building obviously offers pretty good savings.

I'm confident in setting up and running the software but a little leary on hardware. Just shopping around on newegg I see a ton of difference between building a normal box and a server. Since we are only looking at a standalone box this is why I thought to build rather than buy. Any recommendations?
 
Well it really comes down to risk, and availability of parts. The question to ask yourself is are the savings worth the lack of warranty, having a new part on site the next day, when your server is down, is a beautiful thing.

Have a look at refurbished units, you can get some great price breaks, and the equipment is basically new. delloutlet.com
 
I'd go with buying a unit.

Sure, building a unit is nice and inexpensive. But what happens when a component fails? Sometimes the warranties and the peace of mind is worth the extra money, at least for businesses.
 
For a business, without question....purchase a tier-1. For running SBS on that, I'd go with a Dell PowerEdge 2900 III. (or the rack counterpart).
Pair of drives RAID for the OS, triple drives RAID 5 for Exchange Infostore and storage.
Nice quad core Xeon, Intel gigabit NIC instead of the onboard Broadcoms.
 
Always buy, do not build.

If a part fails who get's you a replacement and how fast?
 
The 2900/2950 III is a very nice unit.

If you don't want to spend a bunch of money on one, you can get a refurbed unit from either Dell or Stallard Technologies - www.stikc.com

I buy tons of odds and ends from Stallard and the only "issue" I've had is them sending me two "left" hand rails when I bought a pair. They sent me an advanced RMA right away. You can also buy a warranty from Dell for these units as well (as long as the unit isnt too old).
 
The 2900 looks nice, just a bit of sticker shock. I'm not sure my boss is willing to drop almost $5,000 for a setup right now. I do understand the ideas behind part failure, if i could get my boss to feel the same way we may be set. One of the things that bothers me is the ridiculous markup on hard drives from dell!

I think I need to do more research on the overall hardware aspects of buying a server. There is a lot of different things that I have not messed with much if at all.
 
staticz said:
The 2900 looks nice, just a bit of sticker shock. I'm not sure my boss is willing to drop almost $5,000 for a setup right now. I do understand the ideas behind part failure, if i could get my boss to feel the same way we may be set. One of the things that bothers me is the ridiculous markup on hard drives from dell!

I think I need to do more research on the overall hardware aspects of buying a server. There is a lot of different things that I have not messed with much if at all.
Click to expand...

Take a look at the Dell Outlet Store. You can find some nice stuff on there for quite cheap, probably cheaper than you can build and it has a warranty. For instance I found this for ~$1200:

PowerEdge T605
(System Identifier: EJ9488VM)

* PowerEdge T605 Server: Quad Core AMD Opteron 2350, 2.0GHz, 1Ghz HyperTransport
* No Operating System

System Price : $1,209.00

Operating System
No Operating SystemMemory
4 GB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz Dual Ranked (2 DIMMs)Floppy Drive
1.44 MB Floppy Disk DriveHard Disk Drive
250 GB SATA Hard Drive 3.5(7200 RPM)
250 GB SATA Hard Drive 3.5(7200 RPM)
250 GB SATA Hard Drive 3.5(7200 RPM)Media Bay
16X DVD ROM DriveCertified Refurbished
Certified RefurbishedBase
PowerEdge T605 Server: Quad Core AMD Opteron 2350, 2.0GHz, 1Ghz HyperTransportHardware Upgrade
PERC6i SAS RAID Controller Internal with Battery
LOM NICs are TOE Ready
Power Cord, NEMA 5-15P to C14, 15 amp, wall plug, 10 feet / 3 meter
Power Cord, NEMA 5-15P to C14, 15 amp, wall plug, 10 feet / 3 meter
Chassis with Hot Plug DrivesNetwork Interface Card
Intel PRO 1000PT Dual Port Copper Gigabit PCI Express NICUPS
Redundant Power Supply with No Cord
 
I just went with an HP Prolient machine, and upgraded it (more Ram, more hot-swappable drives).

In the business world I suggest buying.
For home, it's always more fun to build your own.
 
Buy a dell.

One of our terminal servers was one of the $400 servers. Coupled with $200 at newegg for a larger/faster drive and more ram netted us a speedy little box to keep the people happy.

We've also got a pair of dell sc440's humming away. Other then a stick of ram taking a dump, they run 24/7/365.
 
Dell would be my opinion. Im a reseller hit me up maybe i can save you some money on new.

I generally do the T300 units for smaller networks. I would look at the new T410, 610 or Poweredge.
 
Call Dell Business directly and get an account rep, nobody pays their listed prices for HD's :)
 
If you ever foresee outgrowing 50 users... Ditch SBS and just get Standard. Migrating away from SBS is a PITA.
 
Or go with Essential business server 2008.

Buy the hardware, don't build in a corp production environment. Unless your Google
 
SBS is goof up to 75 users, and with SBS 08 you should be good because of the 64bit.
 
YeOlde has a client with 60 users and its working good. Thats on 32 bit as well.

I can't imagine 50 users on 64Bit with a bunch of memory would be a slow down.
 
marley1 said:
YeOlde has a client with 60 users and its working good. Thats on 32 bit as well.

I can't imagine 50 users on 64Bit with a bunch of memory would be a slow down.
Click to expand...

What difference would it make??? 32 bit and 64 bit run the same... Both use under less than 50MB of RAM...
 
big difference, 32bit only menas 4gb of memory on SBS 03, 64bit means what 32GB?
 
marley1 said:
big difference, 32bit only menas 4gb of memory on SBS 03, 64bit means what 32GB?
Click to expand...

I still don't get what you're saying...

64 bit brings more RAM... How's that a slowdown? 64 bit in general means FASTER computing not slower.
 
i think you read mine wrong.

"I can't imagine 50 users on 64Bit with a bunch of memory would be a slow down"

Meaning if 50 users is working fine on a system with 32bit memory, moving over to 64bit memory should be an improvement in speed.


"What difference would it make??? 32 bit and 64 bit run the same... Both use under less than 50MB of RAM..."

What uses 50MB of ram? How can 32 bit and 64 bit run the same?
 
marley1 said:
i think you read mine wrong.

"I can't imagine 50 users on 64Bit with a bunch of memory would be a slow down"

Meaning if 50 users is working fine on a system with 32bit memory, moving over to 64bit memory should be an improvement in speed.
Click to expand...
Gotcha. I'd agree.


marley1 said:
"What difference would it make??? 32 bit and 64 bit run the same... Both use under less than 50MB of RAM..."

What uses 50MB of ram? How can 32 bit and 64 bit run the same?
Click to expand...
I had thought we were talking about the client software...
 
Lightworker said:
Call Dell Business directly and get an account rep, nobody pays their listed prices for HD's :)
Click to expand...

Never thought of doing that, good idea though. Also TechieSooner we will not be over 50 users anytime soon. Although I would like to use Server 2008 standard I doubt its a possibility.

Thanks again for all the input guys. If I may ask one more question, what should I be looking for specs wise? We want to be able to run Exchange, store files, etc. Along with AD and other services as well. I know SBS doesn't take a lot of resources, but what about Exchange? My bosses only requirement was that he wants at least 1TB or more of file storage space.

My thoughts were a quad core proc, 8gb of RAM (more?), and then a RAID 1 setup for the OS and then RAID 5 for the file storage, similar to what YeOldeStonecat had mentioned.
 
staticz said:
Never thought of doing that, good idea though. Also TechieSooner we will not be over 50 users anytime soon. Although I would like to use Server 2008 standard I doubt its a possibility.

Thanks again for all the input guys. If I may ask one more question, what should I be looking for specs wise? We want to be able to run Exchange, store files, etc. Along with AD and other services as well. I know SBS doesn't take a lot of resources, but what about Exchange? My bosses only requirement was that he wants at least 1TB or more of file storage space.

My thoughts were a quad core proc, 8gb of RAM (more?), and then a RAID 1 setup for the OS and then RAID 5 for the file storage, similar to what YeOldeStonecat had mentioned.
Click to expand...

That'd work for me. But remember you need x64 to use more than 4GB of RAM. RAM is cheap, the more the better. You're buying now, go high... 16GB at least.

Since your such a small shop, I'd personally be fine with RAID5 the whole way around. Just make sure you've got a hot spare.

Someone else might chip in differently.
 
marley1 said:
YeOlde has a client with 60 users and its working good. Thats on 32 bit as well.

I can't imagine 50 users on 64Bit with a bunch of memory would be a slow down.
Click to expand...

1 of 'em is holding at 70 or 72 users. I have 2 clients over 60. That client that has 70x users...they also run full SQL on the SBS box, another VERY heavy application running on VFox Pro (a PIG of a database and pounds the network and hard drives) and it is at the center of a state wide WAN with 4x satellite offices pulling data and Outlook to Exchange through VPN tunnels. It's on a 4x year old server with dual Xeon HT (pre-dual core) 2.4GHz CPU, 4 gigs of RAM...running very well, doing the job very well.

Any of todays quad core or even a budget dual core Xeons with 4 gigs of RAM will easily, hands down, without even breaking a sweat...handle SBS for 20-30 users. More important than the CPU or RAM IMO is the hard drive setup, don't go with cheap desktop SATA drives in the server.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Any of todays quad core or even a budget dual core Xeons with 4 gigs of RAM will easily, hands down, without even breaking a sweat...handle SBS for 20-30 users. More important than the CPU or RAM IMO is the hard drive setup, don't go with cheap desktop SATA drives in the server.
Click to expand...

Yes, but is that SBS2003 or SBS2008?? SBS2008 is an absolute RAM hog. You cannot even finish installation of the OS without 4GB of RAM minimum installed. I've got it at a client with 5 users with a quad-core xeon and 4GB RAM right now. It stays pegged around 75% RAM utilization most of the time. I would highly recommend no one run SBS2008 without at least 8GB of RAM.
 
For 25 users.

Quad Core
8GB RAM

I'd go with either SAS or SCSI Drives. Now, if you want 1TB of storage you are going to be paying a pretty penny if you use SAS or SCSI drives. Probably around 1800-2200 for 6 300GB drives.

If you get a newer Dell (like a T610) with a SAS backplane you can get 4 146GB SAS and 4 500 GB Sata Drives both with RAID 5 and a hot spare for each array for less money. I'd just make sure to put the rarely accessed data (shared files) on the sata array.
 
Six of one half a dozen of the other... Just buy from someone well-established.

And FWIW, the only hardware failures I've had have been in HP units. I'm using Dell now because they offer me better pricing.
 
This thread became much more popular than I had imagined it would. I've definitely learned a great deal from you guys. I'm leaning towards the 2900 iii. Our budget is around 3-3,500 before software so we should be able to get some nice hardware in that price range.
 
3500 max budget is going to be tough. remember sbs 08 is 1000 to start with.

i would try for a raid1/raid5 setup.
 
marley1 said:
3500 max budget is going to be tough. remember sbs 08 is 1000 to start with.
Click to expand...

I'd assume licensing is part of "software"

staticz said:
This thread became much more popular than I had imagined it would. I've definitely learned a great deal from you guys. I'm leaning towards the 2900 iii. Our budget is around 3-3,500 before software so we should be able to get some nice hardware in that price range.
Click to expand...
 
o sorry skipped over that.

T410 T610 or 2900 III

Id try the T series just as they are newer generation. T610 gives you option for sas and sata
 
staticz said:
This thread became much more popular than I had imagined it would. I've definitely learned a great deal from you guys. I'm leaning towards the 2900 iii. Our budget is around 3-3,500 before software so we should be able to get some nice hardware in that price range.
Click to expand...

def check it over with dell outlet.

if you are looking for any 1950 III's, let me know, I have a high end pair that are still under NBD replacement warranty that I'm willing to part with for cheap.
 
^ post the specs and price

maybe one of the consultants here can find a user.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
For a business, without question....purchase a tier-1. For running SBS on that, I'd go with a Dell PowerEdge 2900 III. (or the rack counterpart).
Pair of drives RAID for the OS, triple drives RAID 5 for Exchange Infostore and storage.
Nice quad core Xeon, Intel gigabit NIC instead of the onboard Broadcoms.
Click to expand...

I agree with him on this other than the 3 drive raid 5 part. I'd go with 4 drives in a raid 5 for some extra speed.

staticz said:
The 2900 looks nice, just a bit of sticker shock. I'm not sure my boss is willing to drop almost $5,000 for a setup right now. I do understand the ideas behind part failure, if i could get my boss to feel the same way we may be set. One of the things that bothers me is the ridiculous markup on hard drives from dell!

I think I need to do more research on the overall hardware aspects of buying a server. There is a lot of different things that I have not messed with much if at all.
Click to expand...

Without software you should be able to hit your 3500 dollar goal if you are not including a backup drive setup.

Captain Colonoscopy said:
Yes, but is that SBS2003 or SBS2008?? SBS2008 is an absolute RAM hog. You cannot even finish installation of the OS without 4GB of RAM minimum installed. I've got it at a client with 5 users with a quad-core xeon and 4GB RAM right now. It stays pegged around 75% RAM utilization most of the time. I would highly recommend no one run SBS2008 without at least 8GB of RAM.
Click to expand...

To be fair I'd say sbs03 is a memory hog as well. For SBS08 I'd start with 8 gigs as well.

We have a firm running a single sbs08 server for like 20 to 25 users. Dual quad cores, 8 gigs of ram, etc in a 2900. They are running sata drives because of their storage needs(dell doesn't support a mix of sata and sas on the 2900 for internal drives). Anyway I have it configured with a raid 1 for the os, raid 1 for exchange, and 4 sata drives in a raid 5 for data. Thing handles their load without issue.
 
marley1 said:
^ post the specs and price

maybe one of the consultants here can find a user.
Click to expand...


Dual Intel Xeon 3.2Ghz Dual Core Processors 5060's (Four Cores)
4GB System Memory
2 x 146GB 15K RPM SAS Drives
Perc 5/I Raid Controller
DRAC 5
2 x Power Supplies
Bezel
Rapid Rails
Windows 2003 R2 Standard with COA

Looking for $1,200 each shipped.
 
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