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File server small office

JoseT
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Hi!
My name is Jose and i am from Argentina, this is my first post. I watch LTT media every day and i learn A LOT from it, thank you for doing it!

I have a small office (20 persons max) and we want to upgrade the file server.

I never build a PC as a server (the actual server is an old PC with windows server 2008).
We dont need nothing fancy, a file server for CAD, word, excel, etc files. The server only needs to store this files and support the acces of the employees.


I was thinking in buying a PC stardard
AMD Ryzer 3400
8GB of RAM
2 discs 1TB HHD (perhaps in RAID, i never used RAID)
1 SSD 250GB (optional)


I have no idea if this is a good specs for a server today, can you please give me some feedback.
The SSD will work as a OS drive, we will store the work files in the HDD drives.
Also i want to try using a linux distro, if it is possible to work whit the active directory.


Thank you for your comments!
And sorry for the bad english.

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Don't go diy, your just asking for problems.

 

Id get something like the low end tower form dell/hp/lenovo, that way you get the warranty with it.

 

Really stick with windows for ad, using linux with ad is possible, but not fun and gonna be a lot more work to switch over.

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2 minutes ago, JoseT said:

1 SSD 250GB (optional)

you will need this for the os

gives you 2tb for storage

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1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Don't go diy, your just asking for problems.

 

Id get something like the low end tower form dell/hp/lenovo, that way you get the warranty with it.

 

Really stick with windows for ad, using linux with ad is possible, but not fun and gonna be a lot more work to switch over.

Thanks for the advice!
I was looking for PCs like that but it cost more than twice the price as the regular one, i think that has functions extra that we dont use. Correctme if i am wrong.

Also what means the "ad" in "Really stick with windows for ad, using linux with ad is possible"

Thanks

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well keep ssd and use 16gb of ram rest is enough

1 minute ago, JoseT said:

Yes i want to do that but i am afraid that the OS uses the SSD as cache and burn it fast.
This happens?

Thanks

not if you have enough ram :) 

if it was useful give it a like :) btw if your into linux pay a visit here

 

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1 minute ago, JoseT said:

Thanks for the advice!
I was looking for PCs like that but it cost more than twice the price as the regular one, i think that has functions extra that we dont use. Correctme if i am wrong.

Also what means the "ad" in "Really stick with windows for ad, using linux with ad is possible"

Thanks

Your paying for uptime and warrnty. 

 

If your diy box fails whata what will happen when its out of server. Those premade servers have much better warrantys, and better support plans. DIy boxes also normally need much more troubleshooting as there is no warranty on the whole box.

Just now, JoseT said:

Yes i want to do that but i am afraid that the OS uses the SSD as cache and burn it fast.
This happens?

Thanks

You have manually configure caching, the ssd, won't be worn out super fast.

 

How much storage re you using now? Id probably go raid 1 on the disks and no cache

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1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Your paying for uptime and warrnty. 

 

If your diy box fails whata what will happen when its out of server. Those premade servers have much better warrantys, and better support plans. DIy boxes also normally need much more troubleshooting as there is no warranty on the whole box.

You have manually configure caching, the ssd, won't be worn out super fast.

 

How much storage re you using now? Id probably go raid 1 on the disks and no cache

i think raid 10 is good for him bu a bit costly 

if it was useful give it a like :) btw if your into linux pay a visit here

 

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Just now, mahyar said:

i think raid 10 is good for him bu a bit costly 

I think  raid 1 is probably better here, esp as OP doesn't seem to need much storage space. The extra speed really don't matter for a office file server, and your probably network limited anyways

 

7 minutes ago, JoseT said:

Also what means the "ad" in "Really stick with windows for ad, using linux with ad is possible"

Yea, Id use server 2019 here. Also add that into the cost, its about 500 us dollas, idk your pricing.

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Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

I think  raid 1 is probably better here, esp as OP doesn't seem to need much storage space. The extra speed really don't matter for a office file server, and your probably network limited anyways

 

Yea, Id use server 2019 here. Also add that into the cost, its about 500 us dollas, idk your pricing.

well raid 10 are two sets of raid 1 drives in raid zero its fast and reliable

if it was useful give it a like :) btw if your into linux pay a visit here

 

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1 minute ago, mahyar said:

well raid 10 are two sets of raid 1 drives in raid zero its fast and reliable

I know what raid 10 is, its just not needed here, you won't need the extra capacity or speed here, so no reason to spend extra.

 

1 minute ago, JoseT said:

Great! One question less!
Thank you very much! 😃

Is this just a file server and a domain controller?

Still go 16gb of ram, 8gb is getting a bit low these days. Also id look into virtualization, makes things nicer to manage.

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7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How much storage re you using now? Id probably go raid 1 on the disks and no cache

Today we have a 500GB disk and backup manually. SUPER anoying, the backup is in DVDs.
 

No we dont have RAID, we had a very bad experience whit some IT guy that we hired to config it. It never work and when a disk failed we lost the data of that disk. We are giving a new chance but we want to do it ourselfs to understand and solve the problems this time.

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1 minute ago, JoseT said:

Today we have a 500GB disk and backup manually. SUPER anoying, the backup is in DVDs.
 

No we dont have RAID, we had a very bad experience whit some IT guy that we hired to config it. It never work and when a disk failed we lost the data of that disk. We are giving a new chance but we want to do it ourselfs to understand and solve the problems this time.

Can you do cloud backup ? thats probably the best solution if you can do it.

 

Otherwise Id switch to external hdds instead of dvd, just easier to work with.

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2 minutes ago, JoseT said:

Today we have a 500GB disk and backup manually. SUPER anoying, the backup is in DVDs.
 

No we dont have RAID, we had a very bad experience whit some IT guy that we hired to config it. It never work and when a disk failed we lost the data of that disk. We are giving a new chance but we want to do it ourselfs to understand and solve the problems this time.

how much storage do you need? raid is easy to setup

 

if it was useful give it a like :) btw if your into linux pay a visit here

 

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5 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Is this just a file server and a domain controller?

Still go 16gb of ram, 8gb is getting a bit low these days. Also id look into virtualization, makes things nicer to manage.

Only file server, the domain server is working well and no need to upgrade it.

Ok 16GB of RAM sounds good.

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Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Can you do cloud backup ? thats probably the best solution if you can do it.

 

Otherwise Id switch to external hdds instead of dvd, just easier to work with.

well cloud backup is painful to upload and download from

if it was useful give it a like :) btw if your into linux pay a visit here

 

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1 minute ago, JoseT said:

Only file server, the domain server is working well and no need to upgrade it.

Ok 16GB of RAM sounds good.

Is your domain controller running on server 2008? Update that big security risk, Id probably put the file server + domain controller in one box.

 

If its just a nas though, id probably just get a synology or similar. 

 

1 minute ago, mahyar said:

well cloud backup is painful to upload and download from

FOr the amount of storage OP is using, you woudln't need that fast of a internet connection to pull all the data


The big issue with swapping disks is people forget, and thats not really a issue with cloud storage

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2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Is your domain controller running on server 2008? Update that big security risk, Id probably put the file server + domain controller in one box.

 

If its just a nas though, id probably just get a synology or similar. 

 

FOr the amount of storage OP is using, you woudln't need that fast of a internet connection to pull all the data


The big issue with swapping disks is people forget, and thats not really a issue with cloud storage

they are good but overpriced and they have propraitry os

if it was useful give it a like :) btw if your into linux pay a visit here

 

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Just now, mahyar said:

they are good but overpriced and they have propraitry os

There cheaper than the building your own pc, thats probably the best option here. You really don't need much cpu power for a file server.

 

There also just running a custom linux distro. Its open source aswell.

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1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There cheaper than the building your own pc, thats probably the best option here. You really don't need much cpu power for a file server.

 

There also just running a custom linux distro. Its open source aswell.

for the amount of storage that op wants it doesn't worth it  

if it was useful give it a like :) btw if your into linux pay a visit here

 

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