Small Office Server Build (12-17 users)

[Michael H]

Hi everyone,

 

I'm trying to build a server that can run 3 VMs (terminal, file, database) for a small business (12-17 users).

I think I have a ballpark idea for specs, but I'm looking for recommendations to be sure.

Does anyone have experience with office set-ups?

[SirSquid]

What's your budget?  Is power power efficiency a concern? How much hard drive space do you think you'll need?  How many Us does it need to be?

[Electronics Wizardy]

I suggest you buy a premade server form dell or hp due to the support you get if something goes wrong. I suggest a dell t330 or r330 depending of if you have a rack. Id go for 32gb of ram and a xeon e3 1245 v5.

 

 

[Michael H]

Budget isn't too much of a concern, but of course I don't want to pay for more than I need.
Should be conscious of power since it's going to be a 24/7 server.
Should only need 2TB of HD as there isn't a ton of file sharing.

The main purpose of the server is to run a pre-purchased database system.

Here are minimum requirements from the DB company:

 

Up to 25 Users:

Database:
RAM=4 GB or greater
Processor=Any new Intel only, x64 capable (EM64T), server class processor (except Itanium) with a clock speed greater than or equal to 2.3 GHz. Due to Oracle Standard One Licensing restrictions, the total number of processor sockets on the motherboard of the database server must not exceed 2 even if the additional processor sockets remain unoccupied.

 

Hard Drive System=Hardware RAID 5 array with a quantity of 4 10k RPM SAS (SATA drives are not reliable enough for a database).  All 4 drives will be in the RAID 5 array. If hot spares are desired, increase the number of drives accordingly. The number of drives is for performance not capacity. The drives should be at least 146 GB each.

Backup System=Integrated removable cartridge/network backup system/other with 72 GB free capacity for the nightly backup.

Software=Windows 2008 R2 Standard Edition x64
Licensing=Windows 2008 R2 Standard Edition Server License (qty=1)
Media Kit=Windows 2008 R2 Standard Edition x64

 

 

Terminal Server:
RAM=6 GB

Processor=Any new Intel only, x64 capable (EM64T), server class processor (except Itanium) with a clock speed greater than or equal to 2.3 GHz. The limit of 2 processor sockets listed in the database server section does not apply to the terminal server.  The total number of sockets is limited only by the operating system.
Hard Drive System=Single 160 GB SAS/SATA or mirrored pair
Software=Windows 2008 R2 Standard Edition x64
Licensing=Windows 2008 R2 Standard Edition Server License (qty=1)

Windows 2008 Server Client Access License per user (qty=25) **

Windows 2008 Terminal Server Client Access License per user (qty=25)
Media Kit=Windows 2008 R2 Standard Edition x64

[leadeater]

I know the vendor specifications say RAID 5 but it is generally best practice to run database servers using RAID 1/10 disk configuration profiles for I/O latency reasons. To be more specific database logs/redo (depending on database engine) should be on RAID 1/10 and data files can be on RAID 5, give this a read but also look at any updated documentation directly from Oracle.

 

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/partners/oracle/Oracle_Databases_on_VMware_-_Best_Practices_Guide.pdf

 

Either way the disk specifications given by the software vendor are rather old, it would be cheaper to use a 2 SSD mirror than 4 10k SAS disks and performance will be much better.

 

Hardware specifications I would recommend an HP DL360 Gen9:

2x E5-2630 v3 or v4 (which ever you can get cheaper)

32GB RAM

2x 480GB SSD (789145-B21) RAID 1

3x 1TB Midline SAS (655710-B21) RAID 5 (Don't bother with a hot/cold spare as these only have 1yr warrenty and service response is very fast)

ESXi 6 SD Card

 

This is of course assuming you have a server rack, if not go with a tower variant. Also dell equivalent is just as good. 

[Michael H]

On 5/10/2016 at 9:58 PM, leadeater said:

I know the vendor specifications say RAID 5 but it is generally best practice to run database servers using RAID 1/10 disk configuration profiles for I/O latency reasons. To be more specific database logs/redo (depending on database engine) should be on RAID 1/10 and data files can be on RAID 5, give this a read but also look at any updated documentation directly from Oracle.

 

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/partners/oracle/Oracle_Databases_on_VMware_-_Best_Practices_Guide.pdf

 

Either way the disk specifications given by the software vendor are rather old, it would be cheaper to use a 2 SSD mirror than 4 10k SAS disks and performance will be much better.

 

Hardware specifications I would recommend an HP DL360 Gen9:

2x E5-2630 v3 or v4 (which ever you can get cheaper)

32GB RAM

2x 480GB SSD (789145-B21) RAID 1

3x 1TB Midline SAS (655710-B21) RAID 5 (Don't bother with a hot/cold spare as these only have 1yr warrenty and service response is very fast)

ESXi 6 SD Card

 

This is of course assuming you have a server rack, if not go with a tower variant. Also dell equivalent is just as good. 

Thanks for the reply leadeater,

 

We do need the tower variation.

I'm looking at the HP ProLiant line so you would recommend the ML350?

 

Do you think dual processors is necessary? We only have about 15 users in the office and I think the reason the required spec sheet is so dated might be due to the DB being kind of old itself.

 

I've been told it would be best to get high write endurance drives, but those are even more expensive than the 10k SAS drives. The high read endurance drives are ok?

 

 

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Michael H said:

Thanks for the reply leadeater,

 

We do need the tower variation.

I'm looking at the HP ProLiant line so you would recommend the ML350?

 

Do you think dual processors is necessary? We only have about 15 users in the office and I think the reason the required spec sheet is so dated might be due to the DB being kind of old itself.

 

I've been told it would be best to get high write endurance drives, but those are even more expensive than the 10k SAS drives. The high read endurance drives are ok?

 

 

Yea sure a ML350 is an excellent server but if you are looking at a single CPU server the Dell T330 might be better. The reasoning for this is the unlikeliness that a second CPU will be added at a later time so you are paying for extra engineering you won't use or need. The downside to the Dell T330 is the low CPU core count on the E3-1200v5. You don't really want to be sharing cores for the database server with other VMs for performance reasons, but this also depends on how busy the database server actually is. If you don't know it is safer to spec higher and use single CPU ML350 system.

 

Budget option:

Dell T330

Intel E3-1230v5 (No benefit going higher, no extra cores or features an minor frequency gain)

32GB RAM

 

Performance option:

HP ML350 Gen9

Intel E5-2630v4

32GB RAM

 

For the SSD question that really depends on the actual amount of write activity that will be happening. The different names or tiers HP give to SSDs directly translates to Diskful Writes Per Day (DWPD) that they can sustain for the designed life of the product. For the SSD I listed it has a DWPD of 0.4 which means you can easily write 192GB of changes every day for it's designed life and it should not fail, I don't think you will have that much write activity for the database server. A lot of databases are more read intensive than write anyway, depends on a lot of things.

 

Don't let people scare you in to paying for higher tier SSDs you don't need. They come with 3 year warranty which is the same as the 10k SAS disks so even if one did fail you can warranty replace it at no cost.