First time building a server for a small company, would this be a good build? What server OS would be needed?

[Skyyblaze]

I want to preface this by saying, I'm friends with the owners of the company and they are aware I never handled a server before but they trust me in handling this and don't mind if I fumble around a bit until everything works fine. The company is a nursing service with 3 workstations and 4 users. They rely on the patient database and management software called Curasoft and currently their setup looks like this:

 

- Microsoft Office and printing and scanning is all handled locally per Workstation with local logins

- Curasoft runs on a cloud-server and is "streamed" via a Parallels RAS connection to the individual workstations.

 

Ideally we would want to have things going like this:

 

The server sits locally in the office running Curasoft and every Workstation just has a domain login so no matter which workstation someone sits at they always have their files and user-account as they know it ready and can access Curasoft and Microsoft Office. The printer and scanner is directly connected to the server. Then I would want the server to mirror its SSD once daily to two connected external HDDs and a Cloud Storage we will rent from a company called Hetzner for 3€ a month.  The last person leaving the office will take one of the external HDDs home and bring it back the next morning. In the event of a fire or the server somehow self-destructing itself we can then simply restore the data from either of the external HDDs or the cloud storage.

 

This is my proposed server build: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/4cBf9c

 

To me it feels a bit overspecced for office and database tasks but I figured the company might grow in size and number of workstations plus I rather have headroom just in case, it's not like the 600 something € it will cost is any issue for them. We'll of course also add an UPS but for now, would that be a good server all things considered?

 

One thing I feel unsure about is the server OS though. A Windows Server 2019 license costs about 400€ but would that be fine on itself or do we also need to buy four of these so called "CAL" things for Workstation logins? The server license is called this: "Microsoft Windows 2019 Server Essentials x64 1pc DSP 1-2CPU". Microsoft's website really doesn't make it clear. The workstations themselves all run Windows 11 Pro with a Office 2021 license each as we specifically wanted to avoid the subscription payment of Office/Microsoft 365. I would be grateful if someone could help me out on the Server and Domain Login part as far as licenses go.

 

Budget (including currency): None as long as it stays reasonable so 1000-1500€ would be fine.

Country: Germany

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Microsoft Office, Outlook, Curasoft, Web Browsing, printing and scanning for up to 4 concurrent users.

 

Bonus info for anyone who cares:

 

Before anyone says: "The nursing service should hire an actual IT company to handle this instead of a random friend who happens to know how to handle PCs" I've been through this with the owners, I know them because they take care of my parents. I'm physically disabled and legally declared unfit for work but I'm allowed to have a Mini-Job without losing my state benefits so after the terrible experience they had with the current cloud server company and the good job I did with upgrading the workstations they permanently hired me to handle all the IT stuff in the company which isn't all that much in all honesty once everything runs actually smooth None of the staff's livelihoods depends on the nursing service as a company, they all do it out of good-will since the countries medical system is running on its limits so like said they are fine with me having to learn the server part with learning by doing and it saves them quite a bit of money per month for the shitty cloud experience. If anyone is curious about why the current cloud system is so shitty:

 

The whole cloud server part runs absolutely terrible and miserable. I was on the phone with the support team and they weren't really helpful and at some points even downright rude. The problems are, the whole Curasoft --> Parallels RAS streaming is laggy and slow. Then since three weeks ago there are random "The RAS connection has been lost" errors booting users out of Curasoft. When I asked the hosting company about that they first said: "Yeah your workstations are slow and old, that's why." They had a point here, they were old workstations still running on HDDs so I replaced everything with 6-core Intel NUCs with SSDs and these are blazing fast now yet the issue persists, the internet connection at the office and the internal network are also 100% stable. So then hosting company said: "Yeah your users never log off properly." Which never was a problem before these three weeks but alright I advised everyone to always go to "Logout" in Curasoft and even go as far to press "Disconnect" in Parallels when they are done and set every workstation to a static IP even. Guess what the problems persisted so I told everyone to note down the exact day and time whenever they are booted and wanted to hand this info to the hosting company. They response: "Our servers don't have this kind of logging so that doesn't help us narrow down the issue, we still think your users don't handle this properly."

 

That's just one part, the other is directly scanning documents into the Curasoft database, they have a dedicated "Scan" button for that but that doesn't work 9 out of 10 times in the cloud setup. The scanner and printer is a Kyocera Network device and Parallels passes through both the WIA and the TWAIN interface but WIA scanners aren't picked up by Curasoft and the newer Kyocera TWAIN 3.0 driver is picked up my Curasoft but scanning over that always ends up in a "The scanner doesn't support these capabilities error" so you have to install a age old Windows Vista TWAIN 2.0 driver. That works except sometimes after the scanning process the files never appear in the database requiring the whole Cloud VM server to be restarted. After that it might work again for 2-10 times till you have to restart the server yet again.

 

When I confronted the support teams with this the conversation went like this:

Them: "Yeah Curasoft doesn't really support this kind of network scanning over the cloud, only a handful of scanners are fully supported, we advice users to scan locally and add files manually to the database."

 

Me: "Okay I understand, how would we go about properly getting the local files to the server then after we scanned them"

 

Them: "Oh we don't really support that kind of VPN file transfer, just use OneDrive or something."

 

Me: "We're handling sensitive patient data sometimes isn't that kind of terrible for privacy and wouldn't that in some points violate the GDPR?"

 

Them: "That's all we can offer you at the moment we'll look into it"

 

Me after reluctantly setting up OneDrive on the cloud server: "Yeah alright I see the files now but whenever we scan something new the files aren't being picked up by Curasoft despite OneDrive saying they are synced"

 

Them: "We don't use Windows Explorer but our own system to access files so you might need to restart the program for new files to be picked up"

 

Me: "Alright thank you!"

 

Me after hanging up: "Oh my god this is a nightmare"

 

The owners sitting next to me: "Do you understand now why we rather have you handling this?"

 

So yeah that's that

[Failure 101]

2 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

I want to preface this by saying, I'm friends with the owners of the company and they are aware I never handled a server before but they trust me in handling this and don't mind if I fumble around a bit until everything works fine. The company is a nursing service with 3 workstations and 4 users. They rely on the patient database and management software called Curasoft and currently their setup looks like this:

 

- Microsoft Office and printing and scanning is all handled locally per Workstation with local logins

- Curasoft runs on a cloud-server and is "streamed" via a Parallels RAS connection to the individual workstations.

 

Ideally we would want to have things going like this:

 

The server sits locally in the office running Curasoft and every Workstation just has a domain login so no matter which workstation someone sits at they always have their files and user-account as they know it ready and can access Curasoft and Microsoft Office. The printer and scanner is directly connected to the server. Then I would want the server to mirror its SSD once daily to two connected external HDDs and a Cloud Storage we will rent from a company called Hetzner for 3€ a month.  The last person leaving the office will take one of the external HDDs home and bring it back the next morning. In the event of a fire or the server somehow self-destructing itself we can then simply restore the data from either of the external HDDs or the cloud storage.

 

This is my proposed server build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/4cBf9c

 

To me it feels a bit overspecced for office and database tasks but I figured the company might grow in size and number of workstations plus I rather have headroom just in case, it's not like the 600 something € it will cost is any issue for them. We'll of course also add an UPS but for now, would that be a good server all things considered?

 

One thing I feel unsure about is the server OS though. A Windows Server 2019 license costs about 400€ but would that be fine on itself or do we also need to buy four of these so called "CAL" things for Workstation logins? The server license is called this: "Microsoft Windows 2019 Server Essentials x64 1pc DSP 1-2CPU". Microsoft's website really doesn't make it clear. The workstations themselves all run Windows 11 Pro with a Office 2021 license each as we specifically wanted to avoid the subscription payment of Office/Microsoft 365. I would be grateful if someone could help me out on the Server and Domain Login part as far as licenses go.

 

Budget (including currency): None as long as it stays reasonable so 1000-1500€ would be fine.

Country: Germany

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Microsoft Office, Outlook, Curasoft, Web Browsing, printing and scanning for up to 4 concurrent users.

 

Bonus info for anyone who cares:

 

Before anyone says: "The nursing service should hire an actual IT company to handle this instead of a random friend who happens to know how to handle PCs" I've been through this with the owners, I know them because they take care of my parents. I'm physically disabled and legally declared unfit for work but I'm allowed to have a Mini-Job without losing my state benefits so after the terrible experience they had with the current cloud server company and the good job I did with upgrading the workstations they permanently hired me to handle all the IT stuff in the company which isn't all that much in all honesty once everything runs actually smooth None of the staff's livelihoods depends on the nursing service as a company, they all do it out of good-will since the countries medical system is running on its limits so like said they are fine with me having to learn the server part with learning by doing and it saves them quite a bit of money per month for the shitty cloud experience. If anyone is curious about why the current cloud system is so shitty:

 

The whole cloud server part runs absolutely terrible and miserable. I was on the phone with the support team and they weren't really helpful and at some points even downright rude. The problems are, the whole Curasoft --> Parallels RAS streaming is laggy and slow. Then since three weeks ago there are random "The RAS connection has been lost" errors booting users out of Curasoft. When I asked the hosting company about that they first said: "Yeah your workstations are slow and old, that's why." They had a point here, they were old workstations still running on HDDs so I replaced everything with 6-core Intel NUCs with SSDs and these are blazing fast now yet the issue persists, the internet connection at the office and the internal network are also 100% stable. So then hosting company said: "Yeah your users never log off properly." Which never was a problem before these three weeks but alright I advised everyone to always go to "Logout" in Curasoft and even go as far to press "Disconnect" in Parallels when they are done and set every workstation to a static IP even. Guess what the problems persisted so I told everyone to note down the exact day and time whenever they are booted and wanted to hand this info to the hosting company. They response: "Our servers don't have this kind of logging so that doesn't help us narrow down the issue, we still think your users don't handle this properly."

 

That's just one part, the other is directly scanning documents into the Curasoft database, they have a dedicated "Scan" button for that but that doesn't work 9 out of 10 times in the cloud setup. The scanner and printer is a Kyocera Network device and Parallels passes through both the WIA and the TWAIN interface but WIA scanners aren't picked up by Curasoft and the newer Kyocera TWAIN 3.0 driver is picked up my Curasoft but scanning over that always ends up in a "The scanner doesn't support these capabilities error" so you have to install a age old Windows Vista TWAIN 2.0 driver. That works except sometimes after the scanning process the files never appear in the database requiring the whole Cloud VM server to be restarted. After that it might work again for 2-10 times till you have to restart the server yet again.

 

When I confronted the support teams with this the conversation went like this:

Them: "Yeah Curasoft doesn't really support this kind of network scanning over the cloud, only a handful of scanners are fully supported, we advice users to scan locally and add files manually to the database."

 

Me: "Okay I understand, how would we go about properly getting the local files to the server then after we scanned them"

 

Them: "Oh we don't really support that kind of VPN file transfer, just use OneDrive or something."

 

Me: "We're handling sensitive patient data sometimes isn't that kind of terrible for privacy and wouldn't that in some points violate the GDPR?"

 

Them: "That's all we can offer you at the moment we'll look into it"

 

Me after reluctantly setting up OneDrive on the cloud server: "Yeah alright I see the files now but whenever we scan something new the files aren't being picked up by Curasoft despite OneDrive saying they are synced"

 

Them: "We don't use Windows Explorer but our own system to access files so you might need to restart the program for new files to be picked up"

 

Me: "Alright thank you!"

 

Me after hanging up: "Oh my god this is a nightmare"

 

The owners sitting next to me: "Do you understand now why we rather have you handling this?"

 

So yeah that's that

Use German PC partpicker please https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/

[Skyyblaze]

4 minutes ago, Failure 101 said:

Use German PC partpicker please https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/

Oh I wasn't even aware that we have one now as I tend to use another service normally thanks for the hint. Here's the link and I'll also edit it above: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/4cBf9c

[Failure 101]

26 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

Oh I wasn't even aware that we have one now as I tend to use another service normally thanks for the hint. Here's the link and I'll also edit it above: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/4cBf9c

you said your budget was 1000 right? 
this is what you can get for 1000 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-13600K 3.5 GHz 14-Core Processor  (€309.00 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler  (€49.90 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Motherboard: ASRock Z790 PG LIGHTNING ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (€196.95 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory  (€110.74 @ Computeruniverse) 
Storage: TEAMGROUP MP44L 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (€87.56 @ Galaxus) 
Case: Fractal Design Pop Air ATX Mid Tower Case  (€74.86 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Power Supply: MSI MAG A750GL PCIE5 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€100.90 @ Alza) 
Total: €929.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-09-18 18:49 CEST+0200

[Skyyblaze]

32 minutes ago, Failure 101 said:

you said your budget was 1000 right? 
this is what you can get for 1000 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-13600K 3.5 GHz 14-Core Processor  (€309.00 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler  (€49.90 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Motherboard: ASRock Z790 PG LIGHTNING ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (€196.95 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory  (€110.74 @ Computeruniverse) 
Storage: TEAMGROUP MP44L 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (€87.56 @ Galaxus) 
Case: Fractal Design Pop Air ATX Mid Tower Case  (€74.86 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Power Supply: MSI MAG A750GL PCIE5 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€100.90 @ Alza) 
Total: €929.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-09-18 18:49 CEST+0200

Thanks for this! Does your setup have any tangible advantage for a server? I ask because that wouldn't include the potential 400€ server license so I wouldn't go for even more "beef". Also I should probably mention the entire data-usage of the whole company is currently somewhere in the region of 100gb.

[manikyath]

45 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

The whole cloud server part runs absolutely terrible and miserable.

this is the only reason why i see your proposed idea as viable, because i know what the cost is of this kind of stuff.. and it is honestly ridiculous.

 

having that said, the main question here is if the folks behind curasoft will entertain this idea and/or can you perform the server migration / installation yourself?

 

beyond that, this really feels like the kind of place where low power xeons belong. if you know where to look they can be had fairly cheap and often come with some form of on-board raid solution, IPMI, and ECC support. basicly big boy server but more suitable for small business workloads.

 

as for the OS - you're stuck with windows server 2019 / 2022, and the horrid licensing structure that comes with that. if the server software doesnt require VM's server essentials is the way to go, but on essentials you have to get an additional license per VM (which you dont with standard - but that's per-core licensing so that's different issues.)

do take in mind that if this requires microsoft SQL server, you'll need another license for that as well, and those are quite spicy.

[mariushm]

@Failure 101 It will be a server, not a gaming computer. There's no point to get a Z790 that will idle most of the time. And there's no benefit to DDR5 only higher startup times.

 

Go with something like this :

 

https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/QjjYHG

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/QjjYHG

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor  (€172.90 @ Alza)
CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 3 67.62 CFM CPU Cooler  (€59.89 @ Cyberport)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M AORUS ELITE Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (€98.69 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory  (€71.91 @ Galaxus)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case  (€55.55 @ Galaxus)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€78.89 @ notebooksbilliger.de)
Total: €537.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-09-18 19:12 CEST+0200

 

In most server applications you won't notice the difference between 3200 Mhz and 3600 Mhz or CL16 vs CL18 ... ideally I would have suggested ECC DDR4, but they're very few and expensive. The motherboard supports them though, if you ever go with them. They're not required for a server.

 

The cooler is probably overkill but it's what I have.

Motherboard is no frills, has decent passive heatsink on VRM so even if the cpu cooler somehow fails without warning at some point, the mobo won't cook itself. The MSI board is OK, but not worth the extra money.

The only somewhat negative point of motherboard is that is has only 4 SATA ports, but most likely it won't be an issue.  You have 2 M.2 slots on the board, one sata port may be used for optical drives, and you still have 3 ports that can go with NAS HDD storage.

 

I bought the case on purpose to have 2 5.25" bays. It's a server, not gaming pc, again... those bays may be useful.

For example, they may want to burn a CD or DVD from time to time with some stuff (maybe they add some surveillance cameras or something and they're asked to make a copy for the CD after an incident).

Or, maybe you'd want to add one of those external drive bays, to plug a 2.5" or 3.5" SATA drive there and connect it to the system without restarting.

Here's some examples of that :

Amazon.com: StarTech.com 5.25" to 3.5" Trayless Hard Drive Hot Swap Bay - Removable Hard Drive Bay for 3.5" SATA/SAS Drives - Aluminum (HSB1SATSASBA) : Electronics

 

There's NO video card. No need to buy new video cards. Go on Ebay and buy some 15-20$ video card, search for something like AMD R5 2xx , R7 2xx, 3xx ... here's example R5 230 HD for 17 eur https://www.ebay.de/itm/185955163100 . If not, there's nvidia quadro workstation video cards, there's GT710 and old stuff like that. Here's a GT710 example for 20 eur + shipping : https://www.ebay.de/itm/325803518415

 

Even a GT 210 that's old shit will run just fine, for example here's a passively cooled model for  10 euro + shipping:  https://www.ebay.de/itm/325803504307

 

Add storage. A good 500 GB for the operating system would be enough, something with TLC flash memory, to last you some time.

 

Add a mechanical hard drive even if it's just for nightly backups of everything... do a scheduled task and zip everything critical and dump it in a folder on the drive.

 

For mechanical drives I'd suggest some NAS grade ones, my latest purchases were WD Red Plus because they're CMR (standard) and don't have slow writes like the SMR models.

 

No need for extra fans, the fans on the case will  be enough airflow for the cpu cooler and everything. You won't have a hot video card and the cpu will idle a lot of time so not much to worry about.

 

Maybe check if the case I recommended comes with decent dust filters and if it doesn't maybe consider adding some. This machine will be unattended and will collect dust...

 

ps.  Consider also an external hard drive or even a second machine with the external hard drive connected to it. If the server has a power failure nuking the hardware, you'll have the backup on the other machine. You can get some lightweight tiny PCs for like 50 euros, and connect an external hard drive to them through USB. 

Something like those lenovo thinkcentre 1-2L computers, here's an example link : https://www.ebay.de/itm/145232441240

 

 

[Agall]

20 minutes ago, mariushm said:

@Failure 101 It will be a server, not a gaming computer. There's no point to get a Z790 that will idle most of the time. And there's no benefit to DDR5 only higher startup times.

 

Go with something like this :

 

https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/QjjYHG

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/QjjYHG

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor  (€172.90 @ Alza)
CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 3 67.62 CFM CPU Cooler  (€59.89 @ Cyberport)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M AORUS ELITE Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (€98.69 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory  (€71.91 @ Galaxus)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case  (€55.55 @ Galaxus)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€78.89 @ notebooksbilliger.de)
Total: €537.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-09-18 19:12 CEST+0200

 

In most server applications you won't notice the difference between 3200 Mhz and 3600 Mhz or CL16 vs CL18 ... ideally I would have suggested ECC DDR4, but they're very few and expensive. The motherboard supports them though, if you ever go with them. They're not required for a server.

 

The cooler is probably overkill but it's what I have.

Motherboard is no frills, has decent passive heatsink on VRM so even if the cpu cooler somehow fails without warning at some point, the mobo won't cook itself. The MSI board is OK, but not worth the extra money.

The only somewhat negative point of motherboard is that is has only 4 SATA ports, but most likely it won't be an issue.  You have 2 M.2 slots on the board, one sata port may be used for optical drives, and you still have 3 ports that can go with NAS HDD storage.

 

I bought the case on purpose to have 2 5.25" bays. It's a server, not gaming pc, again... those bays may be useful.

For example, they may want to burn a CD or DVD from time to time with some stuff (maybe they add some surveillance cameras or something and they're asked to make a copy for the CD after an incident).

Or, maybe you'd want to add one of those external drive bays, to plug a 2.5" or 3.5" SATA drive there and connect it to the system without restarting.

Here's some examples of that :

Amazon.com: StarTech.com 5.25" to 3.5" Trayless Hard Drive Hot Swap Bay - Removable Hard Drive Bay for 3.5" SATA/SAS Drives - Aluminum (HSB1SATSASBA) : Electronics

 

There's NO video card. No need to buy new video cards. Go on Ebay and buy some 15-20$ video card, search for something like AMD R5, R7, even RX 460 or 550 should be cheap these days. If not, there's nvidia quadro workstation video cards, there's GT710 and old stuff like that.

Even a GT 210 that's old shit will run just fine, for example here's a passively cooled model for  10 euro + shipping:  https://www.ebay.de/itm/325803504307

 

Add storage. A good 500 GB for the operating system would be enough, something with TLC flash memory, to last you some time.

 

Add a mechanical hard drive even if it's just for nightly backups of everything... do a scheduled task and zip everything critical and dump it in a folder on the drive.

 

For mechanical drives I'd suggest some NAS grade ones, my latest purchases were WD Red Plus because they're CMR (standard) and don't have slow writes like the SMR models.

 

No need for extra fans, the fans on the case will  be enough airflow for the cpu cooler and everything. You won't have a hot video card and the cpu will idle a lot of time so not much to worry about.

 

Maybe check if the case I recommended comes with decent dust filters and if it doesn't maybe consider adding some. This machine will be unattended and will collect dust...

 

 

Intel Arc A380 go brrrrrr.

 

22 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

Thanks for this! Does your setup have any tangible advantage for a server? I ask because that wouldn't include the potential 400€ server license so I wouldn't go for even more "beef". Also I should probably mention the entire data-usage of the whole company is currently somewhere in the region of 100gb.

Unless you have to run Server for the applications at hand, a manually chopped down version of Windows 10/11 Pro will fulfill the same purpose without worrying about the absolute minefield that is Windows Server licensing.

 

TLDR: Windows Server licensing is per core, which a minimum count per license. Example being if you build a Server with a 12900/13900, you'd technically need two licenses since those processors exceed 16 physical cores. Its also in the metric of hundreds of dollar in comparison to standard Windows Pro.

 

The major advantages being the absolute clean installation of Server and the ability to have 2 active RDP sessions. There's obviously more, but unless you need those features to run that, then it might not be worth the cost. An organization unwilling to buy a factory solution from someone like Dell would probably be best off staying away from Windows Server as well for the same reasons.

 

There's also two different types of CALs, machine and user CALs. So if the organization is small, you're best off simply having enough user CALs for the quantity of employees, rather than any machine. The nuance between them is something I might not even fully understand, but the simplest explanation I can give involves using logic between when 'machine' and 'user' access licenses would be the cheapest (I had a Dell rep explain it to me at some point, so clearly I'm an expert).

 

If the quantity of employees never changes but you might add more workstations, get user CALs to match the employees. If your quantity of machines is lower than employee count and you have variable employee count, buy machine licenses. There's caveats as well when discussing machine licenses, but in the case of workstations that access the machine for a specific application, each machine would need either a machine CAL, or the human user would need a user CAL.

 

Worst case scenario, Microsoft deems their organization worthy of an audit (which they probably won't) and just tell you to buy more CALs. I haven't been through an audit yet *knocks on wood* but my network did a couple years prior. I'm unsure if there were penalties involved but it did involve us buying a TON of Server licenses/CALs that were being liberally used.

[Needfuldoer]

11 minutes ago, Agall said:

Unless you have to run Server for the applications at hand, a manually chopped down version of Windows 10/11 Pro will fulfill the same purpose without worrying about the absolute minefield that is Windows Server licensing.

Not if you want to run Active Directory.

[Skyyblaze]

28 minutes ago, manikyath said:

this is the only reason why i see your proposed idea as viable, because i know what the cost is of this kind of stuff.. and it is honestly ridiculous.

 

having that said, the main question here is if the folks behind curasoft will entertain this idea and/or can you perform the server migration / installation yourself?

 

beyond that, this really feels like the kind of place where low power xeons belong. if you know where to look they can be had fairly cheap and often come with some form of on-board raid solution, IPMI, and ECC support. basicly big boy server but more suitable for small business workloads.

 

as for the OS - you're stuck with windows server 2019 / 2022, and the horrid licensing structure that comes with that. if the server software doesnt require VM's server essentials is the way to go, but on essentials you have to get an additional license per VM (which you dont with standard - but that's per-core licensing so that's different issues.)

do take in mind that if this requires microsoft SQL server, you'll need another license for that as well, and those are quite spicy.

 

It's honestly bizarre that they pay over 100€ monthly for crap that barely works. But yes as far as they told me they had it all running locally before and Curasoft installed the database via remote-desktop but Curasoft has a partner deal with that cloud hosting company and they sold the company on that under the guise of security and reliability in case of something goes wrong since companies like that usually have no IT department. I mean they aren't wrong about the security part but god dang then all this should work properly.

 

I have a question now though, do I even need Windows Server for what I want to do? All I want is being able to have 4 user-accounts including User Files that can be accessed from any of the three workstations. So if I log-in as user Sky 1 on Workstation 1 and then later as user Sky 1 on Workstation 2 I want to have the same Desktop and everything with my Home Directory. If I can somehow get that running with Windows 11 Pro on the server then I'm happy.

 

In the worst case we could even forgo the User part aslong as Curasoft's main database is on the server and can be accessed from any of the workstations.

 

27 minutes ago, mariushm said:

@Failure 101 It will be a server, not a gaming computer. There's no point to get a Z790 that will idle most of the time. And there's no benefit to DDR5 only higher startup times.

 

Go with something like this :

 

https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/QjjYHG

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/QjjYHG

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor  (€172.90 @ Alza)
CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 3 67.62 CFM CPU Cooler  (€59.89 @ Cyberport)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M AORUS ELITE Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (€98.69 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory  (€71.91 @ Galaxus)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case  (€55.55 @ Galaxus)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€78.89 @ notebooksbilliger.de)
Total: €537.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-09-18 19:12 CEST+0200

 

In most server applications you won't notice the difference between 3200 Mhz and 3600 Mhz or CL16 vs CL18 ... ideally I would have suggested ECC DDR4, but they're very few and expensive. The motherboard supports them though, if you ever go with them. They're not required for a server.

 

The cooler is probably overkill but it's what I have.

Motherboard is no frills, has decent passive heatsink on VRM so even if the cpu cooler somehow fails without warning at some point, the mobo won't cook itself. The MSI board is OK, but not worth the extra money.

The only somewhat negative point of motherboard is that is has only 4 SATA ports, but most likely it won't be an issue.  You have 2 M.2 slots on the board, one sata port may be used for optical drives, and you still have 3 ports that can go with NAS HDD storage.

 

I bought the case on purpose to have 2 5.25" bays. It's a server, not gaming pc, again... those bays may be useful.

For example, they may want to burn a CD or DVD from time to time with some stuff (maybe they add some surveillance cameras or something and they're asked to make a copy for the CD after an incident).

Or, maybe you'd want to add one of those external drive bays, to plug a 2.5" or 3.5" SATA drive there and connect it to the system without restarting.

Here's some examples of that :

Amazon.com: StarTech.com 5.25" to 3.5" Trayless Hard Drive Hot Swap Bay - Removable Hard Drive Bay for 3.5" SATA/SAS Drives - Aluminum (HSB1SATSASBA) : Electronics

 

There's NO video card. No need to buy new video cards. Go on Ebay and buy some 15-20$ video card, search for something like AMD R5 2xx , R7 2xx, 3xx ... here's example R5 230 HD for 17 eur https://www.ebay.de/itm/185955163100 . If not, there's nvidia quadro workstation video cards, there's GT710 and old stuff like that. Here's a GT710 example for 20 eur + shipping : https://www.ebay.de/itm/325803518415

 

Even a GT 210 that's old shit will run just fine, for example here's a passively cooled model for  10 euro + shipping:  https://www.ebay.de/itm/325803504307

 

Add storage. A good 500 GB for the operating system would be enough, something with TLC flash memory, to last you some time.

 

Add a mechanical hard drive even if it's just for nightly backups of everything... do a scheduled task and zip everything critical and dump it in a folder on the drive.

 

For mechanical drives I'd suggest some NAS grade ones, my latest purchases were WD Red Plus because they're CMR (standard) and don't have slow writes like the SMR models.

 

No need for extra fans, the fans on the case will  be enough airflow for the cpu cooler and everything. You won't have a hot video card and the cpu will idle a lot of time so not much to worry about.

 

Maybe check if the case I recommended comes with decent dust filters and if it doesn't maybe consider adding some. This machine will be unattended and will collect dust...

 

ps.  Consider also an external hard drive or even a second machine with the external hard drive connected to it. If the server has a power failure nuking the hardware, you'll have the backup on the other machine. You can get some lightweight tiny PCs for like 50 euros, and connect an external hard drive to them through USB. 

Something like those lenovo thinkcentre 1-2L computers, here's an example link : https://www.ebay.de/itm/145232441240

 

 

 

Thanks for all that I'll keep this all in mind! One immediate question though, any reason to go for a 5800x + cheap GPU over the 5700G with an on-board GPU? Both can be had for the same price.

 

16 minutes ago, Agall said:

Intel Arc A380 go brrrrrr.

 

Unless you have to run Server for the applications at hand, a manually chopped down version of Windows 10/11 Pro will fulfill the same purpose without worrying about the absolute minefield that is Windows Server licensing.

 

TLDR: Windows Server licensing is per core, which a minimum count per license. Example being if you build a Server with a 12900/13900, you'd technically need two licenses since those processors exceed 16 physical cores. Its also in the metric of hundreds of dollar in comparison to standard Windows Pro.

 

The major advantages being the absolute clean installation of Server and the ability to have 2 active RDP sessions. There's obviously more, but unless you need those features to run that, then it might not be worth the cost. An organization unwilling to buy a factory solution from someone like Dell would probably be best off staying away from Windows Server as well for the same reasons.

 

There's also two different types of CALs, machine and user CALs. So if the organization is small, you're best off simply having enough user CALs for the quantity of employees, rather than any machine. The nuance between them is something I might not even fully understand, but the simplest explanation I can give involves using logic between when 'machine' and 'user' access licenses would be the cheapest (I had a Dell rep explain it to me at some point, so clearly I'm an expert).

 

If the quantity of employees never changes but you might add more workstations, get user CALs to match the employees. If your quantity of machines is lower than employee count and you have variable employee count, buy machine licenses. There's caveats as well when discussing machine licenses, but in the case of workstations that access the machine for a specific application, each machine would need either a machine CAL, or the human user would need a user CAL.

 

Worst case scenario, Microsoft deems their organization worthy of an audit (which they probably won't) and just tell you to buy more CALs. I haven't been through an audit yet *knocks on wood* but my network did a couple years prior. I'm unsure if there were penalties involved but it did involve us buying a TON of Server licenses/CALs that were being liberally used.

 

Holy hell no wonder it was so hard to find concrete information about Windows Server, that all sounds like a convoluted nightmare, thanks for clearing that up. I'll copy one part from above:

 

I have a question now though, do I even need Windows Server for what I want to do? All I want is being able to have 4 user-accounts including User Files that can be accessed from any of the three workstations. So if I log-in as user Sky 1 on Workstation 1 and then later as user Sky 1 on Workstation 2 I want to have the same Desktop and everything with my Home Directory. If I can somehow get that running with Windows 11 Pro on the server then I'm happy.

 

In the worst case we could even forgo the User part aslong as Curasoft's main database is on the server and can be accessed from any of the workstations.

[Agall]

16 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

 

It's honestly bizarre that they pay over 100€ monthly for crap that barely works. But yes as far as they told me they had it all running locally before and Curasoft installed the database via remote-desktop but Curasoft has a partner deal with that cloud hosting company and they sold the company on that under the guise of security and reliability in case of something goes wrong since companies like that usually have no IT department. I mean they aren't wrong about the security part but god dang then all this should work properly.

 

I have a question now though, do I even need Windows Server for what I want to do? All I want is being able to have 4 user-accounts including User Files that can be accessed from any of the three workstations. So if I log-in as user Sky 1 on Workstation 1 and then later as user Sky 1 on Workstation 2 I want to have the same Desktop and everything with my Home Directory. If I can somehow get that running with Windows 11 Pro on the server then I'm happy.

 

In the worst case we could even forgo the User part aslong as Curasoft's main database is on the server and can be accessed from any of the workstations.

 

 

Thanks for all that I'll keep this all in mind! One immediate question though, any reason to go for a 5800x + cheap GPU over the 5700G with an on-board GPU? Both can be had for the same price.

 

 

Holy hell no wonder it was so hard to find concrete information about Windows Server, that all sounds like a convoluted nightmare, thanks for clearing that up. I'll copy one part from above:

 

I have a question now though, do I even need Windows Server for what I want to do? All I want is being able to have 4 user-accounts including User Files that can be accessed from any of the three workstations. So if I log-in as user Sky 1 on Workstation 1 and then later as user Sky 1 on Workstation 2 I want to have the same Desktop and everything with my Home Directory. If I can somehow get that running with Windows 11 Pro on the server then I'm happy.

 

In the worst case we could even forgo the User part aslong as Curasoft's main database is on the server and can be accessed from any of the workstations.

30 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Not if you want to run Active Directory.

There's a few ways to do it, it really depends on what currently functions and how much effort you're willing to put into building the infrastructure. You might've discussed this already and I just haven't seen it, but is there already a Windows Server machine running Active Directory with a local domain forest? Even Azure AD seems to require an on-premise forest, which my organization does use for O365 integration.

 

Otherwise setting that up and maintaining it isn't simple. What is simple though is having those few amount of users with their own Microsoft Accounts and Onedrive through a standard Office license. TOS/UELA asside, that's the simplest solution that would allow each user to seemlessly transition between workstations, otherwise having a set of domain workstations doesn't guarantee that any local data is sychronized. This would involve having separate local user accounts (probably through Microsoft Accounts) that would allow for that feature, although that may be limited to only two accounts on the same computer.

 

Having domain accounts and workstations doesn't guarantee it'll synchronize between them without a lot more configuration. At least in the infrastructure I've seen and currently manage, that's accomplished through Onedrive (for local files) and Microsoft Edge (for browser data).

[manikyath]

8 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

they pay over 100€ monthly

that's cute. i've seen monthly bills in the 4 digits per seat for crap like this.

9 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

I have a question now though, do I even need Windows Server for what I want to do? All I want is being able to have 4 user-accounts including User Files that can be accessed from any of the three workstations. So if I log-in as user Sky 1 on Workstation 1 and then later as user Sky 1 on Workstation 2 I want to have the same Desktop and everything with my Home Directory. If I can somehow get that running with Windows 11 Pro on the server then I'm happy.

your solution for that is active directory, which requires a domain controller, so windows server.

 

past that.. the windows server license cost -while steep- is honestly the least of your problem. i'll put it differently: if the current cost is €100 per month, the difference between windows pro and windows server is less than 4 months of ROI, and given load doesnt increase too much over time this setup will easily last 6 years before it needs replacing.

[Skyyblaze]

5 minutes ago, Agall said:

There's a few ways to do it, it really depends on what currently functions and how much effort you're willing to put into building the infrastructure. You might've discussed this already and I just haven't seen it, but is there already a Windows Server machine running Active Directory with a local domain forest? Even Azure AD seems to require an on-premise forest, which my organization does use for O365 integration.

 

Otherwise setting that up and maintaining it isn't simple. What is simple though is having those few amount of users with their own Microsoft Accounts and Onedrive through a standard Office license. TOS/UELA asside, that's the simplest solution that would allow each user to seemlessly transition between workstations, otherwise having a set of domain workstations doesn't guarantee that any local data is sychronized. This would involve having separate local user accounts (probably through Microsoft Accounts) that would allow for that feature, although that may be limited to only two accounts on the same computer.

 

Having domain accounts and workstations doesn't guarantee it'll synchronize between them without a lot more configuration. At least in the infrastructure I've seen and currently manage, that's accomplished through Onedrive (for local files) and Microsoft Edge (for browser data).

 

Alright that helps somewhat, so if I understand the later part correctly, setting up everyone with their own Microsoft Account login for Windows 11 and OneDrive would potentially fulfill the same setup that I seek insofar that everyone could login at any of the Workstations and have their files and setup ready to go? And then we have just some weak "server" that handles the Curasoft main database and that's it?

 

I have to ask what the company thinks about this, I personally wouldn't mind such a setup at all if it falls within the GDPR and is secure as, like said, sensitive patient data is being handled here.

 

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

that's cute. i've seen monthly bills in the 4 digits per seat for crap like this.

your solution for that is active directory, which requires a domain controller, so windows server.

 

past that.. the windows server license cost -while steep- is honestly the least of your problem. i'll put it differently: if the current cost is €100 per month, the difference between windows pro and windows server is less than 4 months of ROI, and given load doesnt increase too much over time this setup will easily last 6 years before it needs replacing.

 

Well I suppose they are atleast not overpaying then but yeah it doesn't run well at all. They wouldn't mind paying for Windows Server but I'm still clueless about what license to buy, would this be correct and legal for a 5700G with 8c/16t and 4 Active Domain users? https://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/Microsoft-Windows-2019-Server-Essentials-x64-1pk-DSP-1-2CPU-dt-_1285010.html 

 

Or do we still need to buy 4 CALs additionally?

 

Also would any of these solutions help us?

 

https://www.synology.com/en-sg/dsm/feature/active_directory

 

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Setting_up_Samba_as_an_Active_Directory_Domain_Controller

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Skyyblaze said:

 

Or do we still need to buy 4 CALs additionally?

windows server essentials doesnt require buying CALs

 

2 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

 

Also would any of these solutions help us?

maybe, but synology's AD isnt all that great, configuration is exceptionally dense once you want to go past the most basic config, and the interface is really not catered towards documenting your work.

as for using SAMBA.. it's really a "can but shouldnt".

[voyager_]

Something to keep in mind for the cloud backup and external drives for back up is that the data will need to be encrypted. I would also never want someone taking a physical drive with them. Since this will hold patient records you may need to look into the laws in your area.

[Agall]

9 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

 

Alright that helps somewhat, so if I understand the later part correctly, setting up everyone with their own Microsoft Account login for Windows 11 and OneDrive would potentially fulfill the same setup that I seek insofar that everyone could login at any of the Workstations and have their files and setup ready to go? And then we have just some weak "server" that handles the Curasoft main database and that's it?

 

Yes, but it appears that feature would be limited to two accounts per workstation, so that would involve having multiple users with the same accounts (therefore same data) or only having two people accessing those accounts. The latter could be done by having role based accounts and not person based accounts, if possible. Then the database would be handled by this machine, which wouldn't be a potential liability being the domain controller, database, software host, file storage, etc. Those are usually segregated between separate installations of Windows either physically or virtually so one feature crashing/breaking doesn't brick the whole network.

 

9 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

 

Well I suppose they are atleast not overpaying then but yeah it doesn't run well at all. They wouldn't mind paying for Windows Server but I'm still clueless about what license to buy, would this be correct and legal for a 5700G with 8c/16t and 4 Active Domain users? https://www.mindfactory.de/product_info.php/Microsoft-Windows-2019-Server-Essentials-x64-1pk-DSP-1-2CPU-dt-_1285010.html 

 

Or do we still need to buy 4 CALs additionally?

 

Also would any of these solutions help us?

 

https://www.synology.com/en-sg/dsm/feature/active_directory

 

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Setting_up_Samba_as_an_Active_Directory_Domain_Controller

I believe there's a minimum CAL purchase requirement for Windows Server of 2, but if you have 4 users and its unlikely to change at any point, then buying 4 user CALs is best, which are like $50 a piece. Although I bought my licenses of Windows Server 2019/2022 through either volume licensing or MPSA. That's also a Standard/datacenter license since I don't use Essential.

 

[Skyyblaze]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

windows server essentials doesnt require buying CALs

 

maybe, but synology's AD isnt all that great, configuration is exceptionally dense once you want to go past the most basic config, and the interface is really not catered towards documenting your work.

as for using SAMBA.. it's really a "can but shouldnt".

 

Alright thanks so far, so would this Server Essentials license be okay for us to use with an Active Directory with 4 users? That's all we really want, a 4 user Active Directory, the server handling the Curasoft Database and doing its daily backups. Plus maybe the odd Remote Desktop connection from home when someone needs to do something from home but I've been told that happens less than once a month and it shouldn't be too hard to setup from my knowledge.

 

1 minute ago, voyager_ said:

Something to keep in mind for the cloud backup and external drives for back up is that the data will need to be encrypted. I would also never want someone taking a physical drive with them. Since this will hold patient records you may need to look into the laws in your area.

Well of course we would encrypt all the backups but I never thought that one of the bosses taking a backup drive home might be a problem, I'll look into that!

[Skyyblaze]

2 minutes ago, Agall said:

Yes, but it appears that feature would be limited to two accounts per workstation, so that would involve having multiple users with the same accounts (therefore same data) or only having two people accessing those accounts. The latter could be done by having role based accounts and not person based accounts, if possible. Then the database would be handled by this machine, which wouldn't be a potential liability being the domain controller, database, software host, file storage, etc. Those are usually segregated between separate installations of Windows either physically or virtually so one feature crashing/breaking doesn't brick the whole network.

 

I believe there's a minimum CAL purchase requirement for Windows Server of 2, but if you have 4 users and its unlikely to change at any point, then buying 4 user CALs is best, which are like $50 a piece. Although I bought my licenses of Windows Server 2019/2022 through either volume licensing or MPSA. That's also a Standard/datacenter license since I don't use Essential.

 

Wait now I'm getting confused, let me explain the company structure: There are basically two bosses plus two office workers that use the PCs, the rest of the team is all care-taking personnel that don't generally need to do anything at all with the computers. So if I equip the two bosses and the two office workers with their own Microsoft Accounts we could still only use two per workstation?

 

Also regarding Windows Server Essentials and CALs, I'll ask the same question to you as I asked above:

 

So would this Server Essentials license be okay for us to use with an Active Directory with 4 users? That's all we really want, a 4 user Active Directory, the server handling the Curasoft Database and doing its daily backups. Plus maybe the odd Remote Desktop connection from home when someone needs to do something from home but I've been told that happens less than once a month and it shouldn't be too hard to setup from my knowledge.  

[mariushm]

52 minutes ago, Skyyblaze said:

Thanks for all that I'll keep this all in mind! One immediate question though, any reason to go for a 5800x + cheap GPU over the 5700G with an on-board GPU? Both can be had for the same price.

5700G has 16 MB L3 cache, while 5800x has 32 MB L3 cache, this can help a bit in some server software.  It also boosts 100 Mhz higher, but this is irrelevant for your needs. 

Besides that, 5700G is also limited to pci-e 3.0 lanes, while 5800x support pci-e 4.0 at least for the pci-e x16 slot.

 

I personally say it's worth the hassle of spending 10-15 eur for a video card with vga but that's up to you.

 

[Agall]

1 hour ago, Skyyblaze said:

Wait now I'm getting confused, let me explain the company structure: There are basically two bosses plus two office workers that use the PCs, the rest of the team is all care-taking personnel that don't generally need to do anything at all with the computers. So if I equip the two bosses and the two office workers with their own Microsoft Accounts we could still only use two per workstation?

 

Also regarding Windows Server Essentials and CALs, I'll ask the same question to you as I asked above:

 

So would this Server Essentials license be okay for us to use with an Active Directory with 4 users? That's all we really want, a 4 user Active Directory, the server handling the Curasoft Database and doing its daily backups. Plus maybe the odd Remote Desktop connection from home when someone needs to do something from home but I've been told that happens less than once a month and it shouldn't be too hard to setup from my knowledge.  

Well I had a long response all typed out and hit ctrl+R by accident, so RIP. Slightly different response below...

 

Given by your responses, I'm going to guess that none of this infrastructure is setup already so you'd be building it all from scratch, which isn't a simple task.

 

I can't find any specific system requirements for that software and any others I find via Google appear to be different products. If it hosts its own local database, I'd look at what hosts it. If its MS SQL based, then you need Standard for the software to function, otherwise the software package would have its own mechanism to hosting a database.

 

Really what we need is the official system requirements for the software. Otherwise, you might require a certain version of Windows Server just to run the software, like Standard.

 

Otherwise, if it can be installed on just regular Windows, then my suggestion regarding having two accounts per machine that are role based and not individual would be the simplest and cheapest solution. Hardware aside, just on the software side it would be cheaper having only 2 Office365 Business/personal accounts than 4, having Windows 10/11 pro instead of Server, and only having to manage two accounts versus four. 

 

There's some trust required between the users when sharing accounts, and assuming there's no legalities against such in Germany (in the US under HIPAA law, you can't share accounts in this manner when dealing with personal health information for accountability reasons, which I imagine your organization might). That's a whole rabbit hole on its own for any system/network administrator in the US, so given its related with health care in another country, it might not be an applicable concern.

 

[Agall]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

5700G has 16 MB L3 cache, while 5800x has 32 MB L3 cache, this can help a bit in some server software.  It also boosts 100 Mhz higher, but this is irrelevant for your needs. 

Besides that, 5700G is also limited to pci-e 3.0 lanes, while 5800x support pci-e 4.0 at least for the pci-e x16 slot.

 

I personally say it's worth the hassle of spending 10-15 eur for a video card with vga but that's up to you.

 

I'd trust Intel Arc more than Radeon iGPU drivers personally. The 7950x Win Server 2019 Standard machine I have doesn't have anything but the basic display adapter driver and can't install the chipset driver for X670. It also has to run at 5.5GHz all the time because the software doesn't trigger a proper P-state. The software in question runs exclusively off a single core per user, so IPC/frequency are king. The Xeon server it replaced processed jobs in about 40% the speed, as an example, and wasn't that old of a server either.

[brob]

If this is the correct package, https://www.curasoft.de/software/#softwarepreis, a database (PostgreSQL or MariaDB) will be required in addition to Windows Server 2016 or newer.

 

I believe Windows 10/11 Pro is required to use active directory.

 

How much data is involved?

 

What is the cost of downtime?

 

Rather than HDD for external backup, consider removable NVMe. Solid state devices are less prone to damage when being transported.

 

While slightly less robust than physically offsite backup, given that cloud backup is also being done, an office safe might be a good repository for the backups. It removes the risks involved in transporting and storing drives in a home.

[Agall]

17 minutes ago, brob said:

If this is the correct package, https://www.curasoft.de/software/#softwarepreis, a database (PostgreSQL or MariaDB) will be required in addition to Windows Server 2016 or newer.

 

I believe Windows 10/11 Pro is required to use active directory.

 

How much data is involved?

 

What is the cost of downtime?

 

Rather than HDD for external backup, consider removable NVMe. Solid state devices are less prone to damage when being transported.

 

While slightly less robust than physically offsite backup, given that cloud backup is also being done, an office safe might be a good repository for the backups. It removes the risks involved in transporting and storing drives in a home.

If you're referring to the clients to the network, yes, Pro is required to join a domain.

[Blue4130]

9 hours ago, voyager_ said:

Something to keep in mind for the cloud backup and external drives for back up is that the data will need to be encrypted. I would also never want someone taking a physical drive with them. Since this will hold patient records you may need to look into the laws in your area.

I was thinking the exact same thing. In Canada, that would never be allowed. The thought of (even an encrypted) drive being taken home by an employee would be a big no no.

[Skyyblaze]

19 hours ago, mariushm said:

5700G has 16 MB L3 cache, while 5800x has 32 MB L3 cache, this can help a bit in some server software.  It also boosts 100 Mhz higher, but this is irrelevant for your needs. 

Besides that, 5700G is also limited to pci-e 3.0 lanes, while 5800x support pci-e 4.0 at least for the pci-e x16 slot.

 

I personally say it's worth the hassle of spending 10-15 eur for a video card with vga but that's up to you.

 

 

Thanks for that! Honestly I don't mind either way, I just thought that running off an iGPU is "cleaner" for a system I likely won't ever access directly anymore after the initial setup, all maintenance I would do via RDP anyhow The cache is of course an upgrade but purely out of curiosities sake, would you even notice the difference in everyday office tasks?

 

19 hours ago, Agall said:

Well I had a long response all typed out and hit ctrl+R by accident, so RIP. Slightly different response below...

 

Given by your responses, I'm going to guess that none of this infrastructure is setup already so you'd be building it all from scratch, which isn't a simple task.

 

I can't find any specific system requirements for that software and any others I find via Google appear to be different products. If it hosts its own local database, I'd look at what hosts it. If its MS SQL based, then you need Standard for the software to function, otherwise the software package would have its own mechanism to hosting a database.

 

Really what we need is the official system requirements for the software. Otherwise, you might require a certain version of Windows Server just to run the software, like Standard.

 

Otherwise, if it can be installed on just regular Windows, then my suggestion regarding having two accounts per machine that are role based and not individual would be the simplest and cheapest solution. Hardware aside, just on the software side it would be cheaper having only 2 Office365 Business/personal accounts than 4, having Windows 10/11 pro instead of Server, and only having to manage two accounts versus four. 

 

There's some trust required between the users when sharing accounts, and assuming there's no legalities against such in Germany (in the US under HIPAA law, you can't share accounts in this manner when dealing with personal health information for accountability reasons, which I imagine your organization might). That's a whole rabbit hole on its own for any system/network administrator in the US, so given its related with health care in another country, it might not be an applicable concern.

 

 

I'll actually call with one of the bosses this evening and within the coming days I'll phone up the Curasoft support so instead of guessing around they should just tell me what we would need on the server for Curasoft to be working and then I'll be done with it. As for the legalities, before we do anything the whole thing will be signed off by a lawyer anyhow and that's not my task-area so I'll just give them my proposal and adjust things as needed.

 

18 hours ago, brob said:

If this is the correct package, https://www.curasoft.de/software/#softwarepreis, a database (PostgreSQL or MariaDB) will be required in addition to Windows Server 2016 or newer.

 

I believe Windows 10/11 Pro is required to use active directory.

 

How much data is involved?

 

What is the cost of downtime?

 

Rather than HDD for external backup, consider removable NVMe. Solid state devices are less prone to damage when being transported.

 

While slightly less robust than physically offsite backup, given that cloud backup is also being done, an office safe might be a good repository for the backups. It removes the risks involved in transporting and storing drives in a home.

 

I'll actually call with one of the bosses this evening and within the coming days I'll phone up the Curasoft support so instead of guessing around they should just tell me what we would need on the server for Curasoft to be working and then I'll be done with it. As for the legalities, before we do anything the whole thing will be signed off by a lawyer anyhow and that's not my task-area so I'll just give them my proposal and adjust things as needed.

 

All workstations were recently updated and run Windows 11 Pro, we couldn't have used Home for legal reasons anyhow. As for the rest both bosses told me they would ideally not want any external HDD/SSD to care about and just dump everything once a day into a secure cloud-storage. I'm not a fan of Cloud only for backups but ultimately that won't be my decision, I'll just give my recommendations and concerns and the final decision will be made by the bosses and the lawyer.

 

As for downtime, my idea is to build a parallel network for testing purposes with the old workstations and if that runs smoothly I'll just mirror that setup to the new workstations over a weekend as no office work is being done on weekends.

 

17 hours ago, Agall said:

If you're referring to the clients to the network, yes, Pro is required to join a domain.

 

All workstations run 11 Pro, we couldn't have used Home for legal reasons anyway.

 

10 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

I was thinking the exact same thing. In Canada, that would never be allowed. The thought of (even an encrypted) drive being taken home by an employee would be a big no no.

 

Everything will be signed off by a lawyer before anything is being done, all I'll be doing is voicing recommendations and concerns and adjust things as legally necessary so I don't worry about that part.