Xeon vs Core ix

[Ashraf A. Kafina]

I work in a small school approximately 600 students and a 60 employee 

Our work varies from documents edit to management work to HR 

We have a local host HR program and a local question Bank and a exams bank we save and manage our students information and progress on our local server 

We are using a normal computer with i7 7th generation and a 8 gb of ram as a server for now we want to upgrade our network and our server setup 

For this type of work which is better a server with a Xeon or core processor 

Is the Xeon processor worth the extra money ? 

[jaslion]

Is the i7 currently fast enough?

[manikyath]

the question you ask is wrong.

 

the thing with xeon (and server platforms in general) is that they provide higher reliability ratings, have error correcting memory, etc. to ensure that your school system doesnt go down.

 

you shouldnt be asking what processor is best, you should be looking for a platform that strives for an absolute minimum chance of hardware failure causing downtime.

[leadeater]

Performance isn't a factor, within the same generation they are the same actual core archecture give or take some minor differences depending on what you are actually looking at.

 

Just get a standard HPE/Dell/Lenovo server with 5 year support, a QNAP/Synology NAS to backup to and configure the NAS to back itself up to something like Backblaze.

 

Utilize something like Office 365 or Google Suite for everything possible, don't use your server as a file server unless you really have to and only use it for the things that actually need to.

 

The biggest factor is what impact to the school would it be if the server were 1) Offline or 2) Failed and data unrecoverable off the server itself.

 

Any better advice isn't possible without knowing a lot more about the schools requirements and current network/server configuration.

 

I use to do a lot of support for schools, many around that size, and deploying a single server was not what was best fit and safest. A shared dual controller storage array backing two ESXi servers using VMware Essential Plus with education discount is a real good solution that provides very good resiliency and protects from server down time. However these two servers would be running two Domain Controllers, Print Server, WDS Server, File Server, Student Management Application Server etc (I forget all the various VMs but was quite a few as standard with more depending on each schools requirements).

 

The above is on the more expensive investment side and became more and more less necessary as Office 365/Google Suite utilization increased and the need for local servers reduced. The biggest thing is if the server is required for teaching and learning or exams then you need to plan for if it goes offline during an important time.