jase555

been asked a question,

looking for a server to run server 2003

run full company email via exchange and all that stuff, load of network printers etc , some applications, xerox scan to email as well

have an old "windows SBS" server , looking to try and get easily setup as sbs was a bitch

what are people buying on the server front these days, and what price

thanks

jase

ozzy

Our company buy Dell kit. Not had any probs with them so far. Just rolling out some PowerEdge 1750 for domain controllers, PowerVault 725N's for data storage and PowerEdge 2650 for Exchange.

Personally, I wouldn't run everything on the one server. Get a couple of server's and split the load between them (especially with services like scanning to e-mail).

If I had a choice (and no real budgeting issues), I would probably go with HP/Compaq. I used their high-end kit for years in my previous job and loved them.

Only real complaint with Dell is their support (unless you pay big bucks for their Gold 24x7 services). Haven't had the need to use that yet.

Stefan

[Edited by ozzy - 11/28/2003 12:27:57 PM]

jase555

ozzy

our main server is a decalpha, running an erp solution

this one will be for email and some other stuff,

our current email is non exchange , cheap and nasty, was thinking of moving over and getting it done properly but specs are killing me and options,

all i want is say

ml350

raid 1 striped ( 2 drives 80 gig)

no ups

std server stuff and Server 2k3

i think

ozzy

As long as it hasn't plenty of RAM, decent processors (two would be better for Windows) and fast discs with some level of RAID then you can't go far wrong.

It's the price, reliability and support that'll determine which make. HP and Dell have been good for us on the server front.

Stefan

pbee

how many users for exchange ?. Exchange 2003 is a beast the jet database is so badly coded it needs a lot of grunt to run, unless you are buying exchange enterprise you are limited to 16gb message stores for both public and private so no point in going mad on a huge raid.

you do need enough room to do offline recovery and massaging of the message stores so double whatever you think your message store will be.

Im HP proliant biased for servers go for the xeons with a high clock speed but lower cache for optimal power /price.

when you add up the cost of the server, exchange and all the client liscences it is very exspensive for a email system that is not very secure. let alone the neccesary add ons for backup, anti virus, spam, monitoring.

My advice is to look at linux and one of the many email servers available.

pbee

just to mention raid 1 striped has no redundancy, restoring exchange from tape takes a while.

if it was me i would go for a mirrored pair for OS. and then a mirrored and striped 0+1 for the message store. for redunancy and performance.

Raid 5 although resillient and gives you good available storage is not quick enough for databases. hence why oracle allways recommend 0+1.

you will need a dual channel raid controller for this or 2 single channel. to get maximum throughput from both arrays.

pbee

This would keep a few hundred exchange users very happy without imposing heavy mailbox rules.

included a dat drive for backup as well as the mirrored OS and raid 0+1 for the message store. with this config you would be able to do a backup to the the os raid as well as to tape. I managed this practise until the message store got to large and it makes restoring of mailboxes ect so much faster than off tape.

but you need the tapes for a ultra secure offsite backup methodogy

should be around 6k with a discount

ProLiant ML370 G3 Dual Intel® Xeon™ Processors 3.06 GHz/512KB - Hi Performance Rack Array Model,

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processor Two Intel® Xeon™ Processor 3.06GHz/533 FSB - 512KB

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memory 2GB Base Memory (4x512)

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storage controller Integrated Dual Channel Wide-Ultra3 SCSI Adapter
Smart Array 6402 Controller (RAID) in a PCI slot

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drive cage 8 x 1" Hot Pluggable Hard Drive Bays (includes 2 bay hot plug drive cage)

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1st hard drive 36.4GB Pluggable Ultra320 SCSI 10,000 rpm Universal Hard Drive (1")

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2nd hard drive 36.4GB Pluggable Ultra320 SCSI 10,000 rpm Universal Hard Drive (1")

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3rd hard drive 36.4GB Pluggable Ultra320 SCSI 10,000 rpm Universal Hard Drive (1")

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4th hard drive 36.4GB Pluggable Ultra320 SCSI 10,000 rpm Universal Hard Drive (1")

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hot plug tape drive HP StorageWorks DAT 40 Tape Drive for ProLiant, hot plug

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floppy disk drive 1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive

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cd-rom/dvd 48X IDE CD-ROM

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network card Compaq NC7781 PCI-X Gigabit NIC (embedded) 10/100/1000 WOL (Wake on LAN)

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hot plug drive cage ML3xx Two Bay Hot Plug SCSI Drive Cage

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hot plug drive cage bay 1 36.4GB Pluggable Ultra320 SCSI 10,000 rpm Universal Hard Drive (1")

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hot plug drive cage bay 2 36.4GB Pluggable Ultra320 SCSI 10,000 rpm Universal Hard Drive (1")

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redundant fan options Redundant Hot Plug Fans

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server management SmartStart & Insight Manager

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additional server management Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) Management (ASIC on motherboard)

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warranty Warranty - 3 year Next Business Day Onsite

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Miles

Standard recommended Exchange config is:
RAID 1 for OS + executables
RAID 1 for Logs
RAID 5 for Databases

The performance is really needed for the logs, in fact if they can have dedicated spindles, then that is ideal. Overall performance is not as critical for the databases.

In saying that, I had ~500 mailboxes on a Dell 2550 with two RAID 1 sets (one for OS & logs, the other for databases), on seperate channels with a split backplane. It was busy but coped. It also depends how your users are connecting, remote bods will create fewer i/o operations that online bods heavily using their mailboxes and public folders.

Miles

Some questions:
Not very secure? In what way? Your security is only as good as your administrator. Other systems can be just as insecure due to poor administration.
Backup: NTbackup does what it says on the tin and it's free.
Spam: Ex2k3 with Outlook 2k3 does a nice job. Plus Exchange Intelligent Message Filter is on the way.
Monitoring: That's all included for nowt. And with a bit of scripting, it's very powerful.
AV: Most other systems don't have AV builtin.

Andrewza

RAID 1 has no redundancy!? it's mirroring! RAID 0 is striping, which is 1 disk fail, data toasted. Whatever RAID config if you really need it have some hot spare disks, without a HS it's possible any RAID array could hard fail when more than one disk dies at a time.