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[LEANE30]

Hey guys,

At my work our server is on its last leg, we're looking for a replacement, wondering if you guys had any tips. it's not a high demand server, I just finished swapping up to an online host for Exchange & Outlook yesterday, so that's off the old beast. We're looking for the least expensive alternative to a basic networked shared drive, preferable something that is maybe 1T, and we can just have it either partitioned or multiple drives that just mirror eachother for backup.

I'm all ears, this is my first go at setting one of these up and having to copy the old data over.

let me hear some perspectives!

much thanks,
-Pete

[hot karl marx]

go on ebay and find a decent 1U unit. shouldnt be that hard, its like shopping for socks.

[shiboujin]

Sizing a server is a huge task. even just exhange isn't a simple thing. How many users access the server? what throughput are you looking at? What else is this server doing?

Cheap isn't the way you really want to go if you want it to last long. I'd go with a multi core x64 bit processor. at least 4 gigs of ram and whatever HD space you need. But then again, youd have to go all 64 bit and blah blah blah.

[LEANE30]

Sizing a server is a huge task. even just exhange isn't a simple thing. How many users access the server? what throughput are you looking at? What else is this server doing?

Cheap isn't the way you really want to go if you want it to last long. I'd go with a multi core x64 bit processor. at least 4 gigs of ram and whatever HD space you need. But then again, youd have to go all 64 bit and blah blah blah.

we're staying 32bit for a while so... unless W7 comes out sooner than later.

around 3-5 people accessing it at peak, off-peak 2. file hosting of CAD designs, sh!tton of PDFs, pics, QB, etc.

I'm almost thinking just a shared drive piggybacking on one of the stations

I've set up the wireless WPA, i could just open up access between units as well, share an additioinal drive, but backup solutions are really the vital key, maybe just put it into the cloud (web)

looking at Iomega's 1T as well as a Beyond Micro BM1TBNC2

anyone with any experience with these?

[jrhaile]

Cheap servers = Dell

[shiboujin]

might be cheaper to just get external exchange hosting and hook up a huge raid array to a random PC

[LEANE30]

might be cheaper to just get external exchange hosting and hook up a huge raid array to a random PC

that's what i did yesterday, got exchange hosted online externally.

,,,but what type of raid array would be a good choice is the question, and do i even need that?

probably, if i have 4 people on an excel file simultaneously i don't want the pipes to clog

[shiboujin]

the raid array is more for redundancy than anything else. I'd go with a simple RAID 1 array. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID) And do weekly backups onto a tape drive, external HD or something like that. You really just want redundancy in case a HD dies or you have a power surge.

[LEANE30]

what's your take on this system?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16822186024R

[LEANE30]

For what?

for multi-user F i l e S t o r a g e

[wildstoats]

We just picked up a bunch of $200 Poweredge 1850 1U servers for our datacenter. I can send you the info for our supplying if you would like.

[LEANE30]

^sry, shoulda clarified. all programs are local, just file sharing/storage usage now

..just picked up an iomega 33610 StorCenter Pro NAS 150d Server 2TB for $300. ..missing the setup CD though... damn open boxes!