i have 2 400gb sata drives i will mirror for on-site storage... what is the best controller card for that? i plan on putting the OS also mirrored with 36gb raptors.

we will have a small exchange server, file storage, minimal processing.

what type/howmuch ram is needed? processor power?

looking for best bang for the buck. 5-10 concurrent users on exchange max.

10/18/2006 8:50:27 PM

buy something from dell
if you really want to put together your own system, 3ware makes great products

10/18/2006 8:59:50 PM

so just get a base system from dell, then buy my own sata raid card?

they have some pretty good deals going on.

[Edited on October 18, 2006 at 9:41 PM. Reason : ]

10/18/2006 9:41:25 PM

no i meant buy a complete system from dell using their raid card - check the dell server configuration thing

in the end, it may be much cheaper to buy from dell than build your own (beyond initial cost, TCO)

you need at least 1gb or greater RAM to run small business server with exchange, despite what anyone else tells you
be sure to keep in mind hard drive speeds, as they can easily be a bottleneck if you are doing a lot of file storage, and i am assuming you are if you are dedicating 400gb for 5-10 users

[Edited on October 19, 2006 at 12:17 AM. Reason : or better yet, pay me to help you make these decisions, ive done it before]

10/19/2006 12:17:27 AM

three 400 gb drives, do raid 5

10/19/2006 7:53:14 AM

with dell ... on their low end servers that we can afford, they don't come with the ability to have >2 hard drives, which is completely lame.

plus you have to buy the hard drives through them if you get their raid cards

10/19/2006 9:16:20 AM

do i need to go with REAL hardware raid (like a 3ware product with memory on-board)? or will a low-entry raid card work fine?

10/19/2006 9:31:11 AM

How much i/o traffic are you expecting?

10/19/2006 11:23:11 AM

in my opinion if you cannot afford to get a dell server...

-is exchange and small business server necessary?
-who is managing the whole system? the cost of managing the small network will outweight the price of the system in the end anyways

10/19/2006 12:48:38 PM

I mean we can afford a dell server, but if you start going with all of their options you pay 200-400% more than internet prices on shit.

We want a server to handle 5-10 people's files. Everyone's documents stored on the fileserver and e-mail stored there also.

Sharepoint is another thing we'll want to use.



not tons of I/O traffic, but 5-10 people on e-mail and using files (nothing huge)

[Edited on October 19, 2006 at 12:51 PM. Reason : ]

10/19/2006 12:51:06 PM

ok then build your own like you have been leaning towards

1GB or greater of RAM, I would seriously go with 2GB - SBS is definately a hog with exchange running, be sure to schedule a reboot every now and then

You can do RAID 5, but remember the write performance of RAID 5 is not as good as RAID 1 but you get better read performance.

Hardware RAID: Considered more fault tolerant because it is seperated from software and is not as complex.

Software RAID: Low price, parity algorithms will run faster = faster RAID 5 write performance.

Good white paper from adaptec on software vs hardware and which level to use:
http://www.adaptec.com/NR/rdonlyres/874D145E-F64F-4804-9E27-037BC5A9DCE0/0/3994_RAID_WhichOne_v112.pdf

be sure to take into account the price of backup, anti-virus, etc

10/19/2006 1:13:19 PM

bous there's lots of reasons to go with Dell business servers but the main ones are hardware compatibility, ease of obtaining replacement parts and the simple fact they'll come to you and do the fixing for you if you buy the plan.

I care more about the fact they always have the parts (at least in my experience) for any server they've sold in the last 5 years. They support everything 100%.

Plus everything is preconfigured how you want it so it's open and go (to a certain degree).

I've installed about 15 dell servers and I've never had a single issue. Two of them to a small business that sounds about what you're doing.

10/19/2006 2:59:01 PM

which server did you go with for them? if it was recent

10/19/2006 3:15:10 PM