server Regarding servers

[Shera]

Hello, good day to everyone. I've been a huge fan of LTT since 2013, but I was just visiting forums to read etc, just decided to create one to ask and I'm in need.

Firstly, I'm not sure if I'm in the correct section.

Secondly, I'd like to ask the veterans/experts regarding about networking/servers.

I'm quite new to this, so I want to ask..

1. Can a single system do 2 or more servers, or do it 1 server per 1 pc?
2. If a single system can handle (e.g. Xeon e5-2699, 256GB RAM), let's say.. at least 500 clients. (1 or need multiple system)?
3. What is the average system sepcs for a standard server?

Servers would be Database, File, Print, Application.
I can provide more details if, only if I'm allowed to. (I might seem to abuse)

This is for educational purposes only!

Thank you so much!

[Samppa221]

You can run multiple virtual machines from a single powerful pc/server.

[beach_boy98]

You could do something like 2 gamers 1 CPU for servers. You would need a powerful Server for that though.

 

 

[Benergy]

3 minutes ago, Shera said:

Hello, good day to everyone. I've been a huge fan of LTT since 2013, but I was just visiting forums to read etc, just decided to create one to ask and I'm in need.

Firstly, I'm not sure if I'm in the correct section.

Secondly, I'd like to ask the veterans/experts regarding about networking/servers.

I'm quite new to this, so I want to ask..

1. Can a single system do 2 or more servers, or do it 1 server per 1 pc?
2. If a single system can handle (e.g. Xeon e5-2699, 256GB RAM), let's say.. at least 500 clients. (1 or need multiple system)?
3. What is the average system sepcs for a standard server?

Servers would be Database, File, Print, Application.
I can provide more details if, only if I'm allowed to. (I might seem to abuse)

This is for educational purposes only!

Thank you so much!

1.) Yes, you can run many virtual machines on one physical machine.

2.) What do you mean by clients? Each client running their own virtual PC on the server? Or just using it as a web proxy/file share etc? The former is MUCH more demanding the latter - a raspberry Pi can handle the latter but even the specs you have listed wouldn't be suitable for 500 virtual machines (you would need many more of the same server).

3.) That's like asking what's the spec of a standard car ;)  What is a 'standard' server - there are lots of different use cases each with their own hardware requirements.

[brwainer]

4 hours ago, Shera said:

Hello, good day to everyone. I've been a huge fan of LTT since 2013, but I was just visiting forums to read etc, just decided to create one to ask and I'm in need.

Firstly, I'm not sure if I'm in the correct section.

Secondly, I'd like to ask the veterans/experts regarding about networking/servers.

I'm quite new to this, so I want to ask..

1. Can a single system do 2 or more servers, or do it 1 server per 1 pc?
2. If a single system can handle (e.g. Xeon e5-2699, 256GB RAM), let's say.. at least 500 clients. (1 or need multiple system)?
3. What is the average system sepcs for a standard server?

Servers would be Database, File, Print, Application.
I can provide more details if, only if I'm allowed to. (I might seem to abuse)

This is for educational purposes only!

Thank you so much!

1. what do you mean by "2 or more servers"  - there's a lot of different things you could mean. by "server" do you mean specific tasks, like "Print server", "File server" "web server"? If so, then yes you can usually combine multiple functions, although some things like a heavily used database are best left to their own hardware. All depends on the usage. If you mean can one physical server run more than one VM, then yes... that's the point of virtualization. If you mean can you run multiple minecraft servers (or any other case of having multiple copies of the same type of server) off one physical server, again that's a yes, but you would need to either assign each application a different port number, or arrange for the host to have multiple IPs and bind each application to an IP, or run each instance in it's own VM.

2. in most cases a server can handle multiple clients... again that's the point of a server... but how many clients is going to depend directly on what type of services you are serving. which you did say.... so we can't tell you if it can handle 500 clients.

3. there is no average and there is no standard when it comes to servers. tell us what you want the server to do and how many users you expect, and we might be able to give a recommendation.

[.:MARK:.]

Yes, to run multiple servers on one piece of hardware you will need to do something called virtualisation. This is the process of having a Virtual Machine running it's own OS in a sandboxed environment and can use whatever hardware resources you wish to give it.

To do efficient virtualisation I would go with VMware ESXi hypervisor. A Hypervisor is an operating system that runs on the bare hardware with the sole purpose of hosting virtual machines.

ESXi has a free license that is enough to do most things for even some small businesses. More advanced features like live migration of virtual machines I believe require a paid license.

[Blake]

10 hours ago, Shera said:

Hello, good day to everyone. I've been a huge fan of LTT since 2013, but I was just visiting forums to read etc, just decided to create one to ask and I'm in need.

Firstly, I'm not sure if I'm in the correct section.

Secondly, I'd like to ask the veterans/experts regarding about networking/servers.

I'm quite new to this, so I want to ask..

1. Can a single system do 2 or more servers, or do it 1 server per 1 pc?
2. If a single system can handle (e.g. Xeon e5-2699, 256GB RAM), let's say.. at least 500 clients. (1 or need multiple system)?
3. What is the average system sepcs for a standard server?

Servers would be Database, File, Print, Application.
I can provide more details if, only if I'm allowed to. (I might seem to abuse)

This is for educational purposes only!

Thank you so much!

Yes, Looks like you are wanting to host a Database, file server, print server and application server on the same box. Others have said Visualization (ESXi is the way to go if you do Virtualize, If for some reason you can't or don't use ESXi go with Hyper-V), But to me it looks like your not even going down that path. While it isn't best practice, there is nothing stopping you from throwing multiple roles into a single OS instance (e.g. SQL server + Windows Server File & Print services + IIS for your application server will work fine).

Keep in mind if your DB will soak up CPU, RAM and Disk I\O, the file server will hammer Disk I\O (and CPU if you have parity and it's not offloaded to the RAID controller), Print server would run on a toaster so this one is fine, and Application Server will also Hammer CPU. That being said if you DB is small enough, and the application is also liteweight enough, It should be fine, few Database connections, few file requests, heaps of print jobs no issues. But if your looking into Thin Clients connecting to a VDI environment, I can say your SOL.

Server's don't have standard specs, they are built to the requirements, and if needed you build a cluster.

[1823alex]

16 minutes ago, Blake said:

Yes, Looks like you are wanting to host a Database, file server, print server and application server on the same box. Others have said Visualization (ESXi is the way to go if you do Virtualize, If for some reason you can't or don't use ESXi go with Hyper-V), But to me it looks like your not even going down that path. While it isn't best practice, there is nothing stopping you from throwing multiple roles into a single OS instance (e.g. SQL server + Windows Server File & Print services + IIS for your application server will work fine).

Keep in mind if your DB will soak up CPU, RAM and Disk I\O, the file server will hammer Disk I\O (and CPU if you have parity and it's not offloaded to the RAID controller), Print server would run on a toaster so this one is fine, and Application Server will also Hammer CPU. That being said if you DB is small enough, and the application is also liteweight enough, It should be fine, few Database connections, few file requests, heaps of print jobs no issues. But if your looking into Thin Clients connecting to a VDI environment, I can say your SOL.

Server's don't have standard specs, they are built to the requirements, and if needed you build a cluster.

I can confirm that OP should go with ESXi it's super powerful and easy to use, I run it on a HP DL360 G5 right now and it runs really well.

[brwainer]

16 hours ago, Shera said:

Servers would be Database, File, Print, Application.

I have to apologize, somehow during my first read of your post I missed this line - and it's right there in the middle of my prior quote as well!

It's not recommended, but you can run all these roles on a single OS install if you like. The problem is that a major bug or security issue on one of the services can affect the others. The better solution is to run each role in it's own virtual machine, which separates the services. Hyper-V and ESXi are your major choices here, both are available for free (Hyper-V Server is a subset of Windows Server that basically does nothing other than being a hypervisor, and is completely free. ESXi is the same in that it is pretty much only a hypervisor, but they have a cut down free version and a fully featured paid version). ESXi is probably a better choice unless you have reasons to go with Hyper-V (there are reasons to do so, like being able to manage the Hyper-V server alongside the rest of the Windows servers in a domain)