What Type of Server do I Need?

[The Jinx]

Hi,

I have an assignment for my E-Business class in which I need to pretty much design and describe what is needed for the backend of an online shop. Basically I need to describe the physical hardware required as well as the software required for an online business. As a absolute noob I have no idea on what is required to build an online business and was hoping you guys here at [H]Forums might help me out.

The only idea of what I think is needed is:

Web Server - ??? (I know I need one but idk what for really)
Email Server – to handle weekly advertisement emails
Storage Server – Something like Backblaze Pod
PBX Software – 3CX, to handle customer support?
Shopping Cart Software
Anti-Spam Firewall – Barracuda maybe?

I was thinking maybe I would get some monster Dell Server and then using a hypervisor like VMware ESXi to virtualize some of these servers for scalability. Can anyone help me in describing what software and hardware is needed for an online business and basically what those software and hardware does. And may anyone teach me some of the best practices to implement and deploy these servers.

Thank you,
Jinx

 

[Xipher]

If they want it to be realistic, you should start looking into PCI compliance. Depending on what kind of transactions you handle and the type of information you will store you might find you have some pretty stiff requirements.

 

[cytech]

depends on the sizr of the business to be honest.

You could quite easily run all of that on one box for a few hundred users.

simplest idea would be:

Web Server - Apache
Email Server – postfix
Storage Server –
PBX Software – Asteriisk
Shopping Cart Software - would just be a web ap on the server (OXID Eshop springs to mind)
Anti-Spam Firewall – again depending on the size you could run this on the same box as well

of course if its for a multimillion user setup then it needs to be a bit different

 

[Erland]

I may be slow and don't mean to be mean but, if your gonna host an online store how is it that you don't know what you need a web server for?

Web Server = To host the website e.g. the Shopping cart software. I would personally go with a Linux distro with Apache and mysql to host the shopping cart software.
Shopping cart software = Only two that comes to mind off hand is CubeCart and Zen-Cart
Email Server = You can use the same Linus box for this

This is more for a start up site and nothing really big with lots of clients. I'm not experienced with high volume sites.

Oh the anti-spam server I don't see a point personally unless your gonna be browsing the internet on your network instead of hosting but, that's me.

I can see a IDS or IPS but not a anti-spam but, whatever..