FitnessOgre

Fiber cables aren't crimped... They are cut, polished and terminated. People go to school to work with Fiber Optic Cabling. Its not like ethernet where if you mess up the end you just cut it off and try again, its a bit more involving. If you can just buy pre-made patch cords, I would go with Multimode - LC standard. Easy to work with, SFP's are readily available. Plus for the distances we are talking about you don't need the long distance offered by Single mode. I use Single mode between buildings that are further than 500m from one another. I can push Multi-Mode further but the quality of the connection degrades the farther you go. Switching is going to be somewhat expensive as you will need switches for each floor that have multi-purpose ports to install the SFP into, or get a line converter that allows you to convert to a copper ethernet cable. Not a fan of these as they are typically unmanaged, require additional power, and if they fail they don't always show as failed. I have tons of these things across multiple locations and I have been replacing them with Cisco fiber switches in my core and using SFPs. As cool as this idea may be there really isn't a benefit unless you are really pushing data between the floors of your house. Most people get away with GbE, or even 10GbE over copper. If you are going to go this way my suggestion is to pay someone to do the fiber work...

There is software that can be used to rapidly provision VMs based on what the customer wants. I use templates in VMware to deploy servers when needed. I can even script it to create multiple server with all the settings and everything all done via PowerCLI. I don't generally need to do that as I seldom have to spin up more than one or two VMs at any given time for a project. VM's don't take long to create.

I have this case, and it wasn't horrible to work with however, Antec used to make an amazing 4u rack case... Wish they still did.

Yeah sounds like a bad cable or a damaged end.

As someone who has several R710's still in production, you can put a card in there, but as stated above there are no free power connectors.

If you are set on a fiber connection - MM will get the job done, but SM will give you more speed options over a longer range. The problem I have noticed with SM though is that the SFP Modules tend to be more expensive at least in Cisco and HP Switches. If you go with a Copper to Fiber converter, SM ones from black box aren't horribly priced though they introduce another point of failure into your network. A managed switch with Muli-use network ports would be ideal on each end, and corresponding SFP SM modules. More expensive but you get more options. If you plan on pushing the cable through the ground in a conduit or whatever, pre-terminated cables will require a bit more care so as to not damage the end. Wrapping the end before feeding it into the conduit would be necessary. Other wise you could hire someone to terminate for you if you aren't sure how... A skill I wish I had. Frankly for what you are describing a P2P Wireless Bridge (assuming you have relative line of sight) would give you the best bang for your buck. You can get decent speeds from UBNT Wireless Bridges over greater distances for about $125 US per side. Easy to mount, easy to configure, and generally pain free. Sounds like a fun project. Enjoy!

While this would be the fastest option... It would also be the most expensive. Unless the OP knows how to properly cut and terminate fiber optic cable, a pre-made 500ft outdoor rated cable will run you about $500 USD then the Fiber to Copper converters would be another couple hundred bucks. Cheaper to buy a high-speed wireless bridge. And quicker to setup. Ubiquiti Nano-Bridges are easy to setup and fast. Or you could go with the Nanobeams which are a bigger, but have more capacity. You can get two Nanobridges for about $200 US. Not difficult to configure, and only need a Cat 5e or Cat 6e cable and either a POE enabled switch or plug in the included power injector. At 500ft the hardest thing will be aligning the antenna's which is not difficult at all.

You may need to set the HP Smart Array as the Boot Device in the BIOS.

If you had tried \\server_ip it would have worked. You were using a NetBIOS name of the server/NAS. Good fix!

Based on what you described; I think your speed is either being limited by the write speed of disk you are writing to. 50MB per second is about 400Mbps so your network doesn't appear to be the bottleneck. Unless the switch/router you have between the two computers just isn't able to handle the bandwidth. You could try connecting the two computers together using a cross over cable and perform the same test. Eliminate the network layer.

You don't have to join a server to the domain, however it makes using that server easier in a domain environment. Security and access rights and all the benefits of AD. Is there a reason why you don't want to join the server to the domain?

You should see the logs on my firewall... The internet is a filthy cesspool of this crap. Strong Passwords, and possibly consider putting a firewall/router in front of that server, block all the ports you aren't using, and decrease the number of attack vectors to your server. Telnet... Gross.

DIY Solutions for the workplace are not ideal unless you are willing to support this box. QNAP or Synology offer business class NAS devices that will meet your needs. While neither are intended for the enterprise level, the QNAP's I find are pretty solid. We have some in our fleet that are over 6 years old and still running no problem.

We use http://www.qnapworks.com/TS-453BU-RP.asp for field offices for backup and sometime VM Storage. I like them but Synology is pretty comparable.

As a long time server admin, my advice to you is especially with HP is to talk to your sales guy. Don't be afraid to ask these guys questions, they know what their kit can do. However the server you are looking for is probably going to cost more than $10K for those spec's. A few recommendations; 1) If your company is on HP the DL380 Gen 9 2U server will give you the most options in terms of disk and space. Lots of room for extra NICs and or FC or whatever if you ever need to connect it to a SAN. 2) 128GB of RAM would be a minimum. Always get more RAM when you can. 3) To get the 5TB RAID 10 you will need either 10 x 1TB SAS disks for the RAID 10. Or 6 1.8TB SAS disks. I would also suggest that you get a separate pair of disks for your OS running a RAID1. 300GB seems to be standard small size for basic disks. Good luck!