Small Biz Home Server Replacement

[Scooter_Walsh]

Looking to replace my Dell sever with a new build. (Specs Attached)

We have been operating our home business with our apx. 10yr old Dell Server very reliably & essentially trouble free. The server does seem to slow down with multiple connections therefore we don't connect more than 4 Desktops at a time. We have built, in-house all of our desktops as if they were gaming PC's for performance and multitasking. All of these PC's work great so we are considering doing away with the Windows Server licencing and building a Windows 10 based server. Additionally we use remote desktop with a virtual PC to connect one of our older database DOS based programs to the server.

 

Here is a list of things we are dissatisfied with our current server

1. Slow Data transfer (Our in house network is fiber to CAT5 with a new adapter)
2. Slow multi-user operation
3. Server closet produces a lot of heat (1 server W/ 1 processor only)

I would like to build a new AMD Ryzen based PC as is seems to support the features of  we need in a server. It is also my understanding that Ryzen supports ECC memory which is necessary for a server. I would like a few opinions and recommendations on a this build.

Here are a few questions that could also use recommendations.

1.  Do I need Virtual Box?
2. Can we use all SSD's 
3. Is AMD more power efficient than Intel/Xenon?
4. What MOBO supports RAID for the OS and RAID for the Storage drives?
5. Is there a MOBO that supports an M.2 RAID?
6. Would a separate RAID controller card be better for the storage drives?
7. Will this setup be as reliable as a server?

Thanks & all answers and recommendations are welcome.

 

DxDiag.txt

[LtStaffel]

1) You do not need Virtual Box for a server like that. If you are going to run VMs, use a hypervisor, like Xen.

2) You can use all SSDs, but they will be expensive for large amounts of space. What most places do is have a fair amount of SSD space but then have a much larger pool of HDD for actual storage.

3) Power efficiency would be hard to calculate for a CPU as far as I know. You'd have to look at the TDP of the CPUs in question and compare them to the expected performance, like benchmarks. From there you could decide what is giving you the best performance per watt.

4) I don't know how RAID works exactly, though I'd assume most modern motherboards support it. Probably an easy thing to google how raid works and figure out if it's a feature on a motherboard, or if it's just something you do.

5) I don't know much about M.2, but I'm pretty sure they are just a different connection method for storage. If it's identified as a storage device, it will probably be RAID compatible. Go ahead and look up details on M.2 and the differences between it and SATA.

6) Again, I'm not sure about RAID. From what I've heard though, it's best to have a controller. Isn't there a As Fast As Possible video from TechQuickie on RAID?

7) I don't see why it wouldn't be reliable... but it depends on what you mean by reliable. Do you mean hardware failures? Power outages? Storage stability? What do you accept as a standard for 'reliable'?