Servers for small-medium size company

[JuztBe]

Hello,

How would you guys imagine server infrastructure should look like in small-medium size company?

Curently we are running ~10 old machines(pentium 4, celerons etc) with freebsd.  POP3 for mail, samba for sharing and storing files, gateways, dns, dhcp servers. Backups are being made of most important servers only, most of the servers don't have any RAID config.

 

Don't know much about servers, but from my perspective it looks like it's hanging on a hair. 

[Lurick]

Look at the Dell R620 or R630 series servers, maybe the R720 if you need 3.5" drives over 2.5" drives. You can pickup some solid R620 servers that are used from ebay but if you need support contracts and whatnot then you can order a new R630 from Dell.

[JuztBe]

5 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Look at the Dell R620 or R630 series servers, maybe the R720 if you need 3.5" drives over 2.5" drives. You can pickup some solid R620 servers that are used from ebay but if you need support contracts and whatnot then you can order a new R630 from Dell.

what about whole configuration? Would you try to fit all of those things in to single server? Maybe linux>freebsd?

Or some shenanigains with VMs would be good choice.

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, JuztBe said:

what about whole configuration? Would you try to fit all of those things in to single server? Maybe linux>freebsd?

Or some shenanigains with VMs would be good choice.

I would split it across maybe 2 or 3 servers, depending on the budget.

Install ESXi and run VMs on them would be easier

[NelizMastr]

I'd just get a single server with dual PSUs and a UPS. Put Hyper-V Server, Proxmox VE or ESXi on it and run virtual machines for the various tasks.

 

You could even virtualise the existing machines, but I'd recommend starting fresh. If your Unix and Linux knowledge is up to snuff, it should be easy.

I'm a Windows sysadmin, so I'll kindly step back from BSD and such

 

Hardware wise, the company I work for is HPE partner so my recommendation would be a HPE ML350 G9 (tower) or a DL380 G9 (2U rack). Depending on the amount of employees (I'm assuming 10-15 from your start post?) I'd say 32GB of RAM would be okay, but 48 or 64 would be preferred for the future. 

 

[Jrhumphrey89]

24 minutes ago, JuztBe said:

Don't know much about servers, but from my perspective it looks like it's hanging on a hair.

This is correct.

20 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Look at the Dell R620 or R630 series servers, maybe the R720 if you need 3.5" drives over 2.5" drives. You can pickup some solid R620 servers that are used from ebay but if you need support contracts and whatnot then you can order a new R630 from Dell.

I agree

 

Lets get some more info. How many people do you consider to be small to med size? How many onsite users? How many remote users? 10 computers total in the system? Whats your budget like? 

[JuztBe]

6 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

I'd just get a single server with dual PSUs and a UPS. Put Hyper-V Server, Proxmox VE or ESXi on it and run virtual machines for the various tasks.

 

You could even virtualise the existing machines, but I'd recommend starting fresh. If your Unix and Linux knowledge is up to snuff, it should be easy.

I'm a Windows sysadmin, so I'll kindly step back from BSD and such

 

Hardware wise, the company I work for is HPE partner so my recommendation would be a HPE ML350 G9 (tower) or a DL380 G9 (2U rack). Depending on the amount of employees (I'm assuming 10-15 from your start post?) I'd say 32GB of RAM would be okay, but 48 or 64 would be preferred for the future. 

 

 

2 minutes ago, Jrhumphrey89 said:

This is correct.

I agree

 

Lets get some more info. How many people do you consider to be small to med size? How many onsite users? How many remote users? 10 computers total in the system? Whats your budget like? 

I should have said medium to large. 

There's around 100 people using PCs. From simple accses to web(most people)  to storing CAD/CAM files and working via remote desktop(server for this isn't as bad) 

[NelizMastr]

Well, then you should paint us a more clear picture of your current environment. 

 

We need a full list of your requirements before we can give you a meaningful answer. On a technical and functional level please.

 

All you told us was that you had 10 PCs, some BSD stuff and that you wanted new equipment. That's not even close to what you're saying now.

[Jrhumphrey89]

Well if you want to do a setup for that local office on the cheap one approach I would recommend is this. Those computers could die at any time and lose their data, they also perform terribly slow. I would keep your user end hardware and migrate them to a virtual desktop environment. Using Citrix, Hyper-V, and\or VMware is really expensive for licensing allow. I'd go this route.

 

Server: Dell R710 377$

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R710-Virtualization-Server-8-Core-48GB-4x300GB-10K-1-2TB-PERC6i/142063304976?hash=item2113a20110:g:fRkAAOSwtnpXk4TN

 

UPS: 1500va ups 169$

https://www.amazon.com/APC-Back-UPS-Battery-Protector-BR1500G/dp/B003Y24DEU/ref=sr_1_3_sspa?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1511187691&sr=1-3-spons&keywords=ups&psc=1

 

OS: Unraid Basic 59$

https://lime-technology.com/

 

Total: 605$

 

I would back up everybody's computer to the server. I would then setup each users old pc backup as a virtual desktop from the server, and have them access the system by logging in remotely from their old computers. I would then make sure to keep that server safely backed up. This should accelerate day to day performance by a large margin, and allow for easily switching out desktops to cheap thin clients as they fail.  

[NelizMastr]

You'd probably need a heck of a lot more storage for back-ups of all PCs and all of the current files on the current infrastructure, though.

 

With those 300GB disks, in RAID5, you'd end up with just 900GB for 100 users. And the Unraid basic license only allows up to 6 disks, so there's that as well.

 

Back-up solutions for the server itself also need to be taken into account.

[JuztBe]

2 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

Well, then you should paint us a more clear picture of your current environment. 

 

We need a full list of your requirements before we can give you a meaningful answer. On a technical and functional level please.

 

All you told us was that you had 10 PCs, some BSD stuff and that you wanted new equipment. That's not even close to what you're saying now.

What i meant by 10pcs that servers are running on them. People are using propper desktop PCs, so around 100 of them. 

Curently on a phone so can't expand on too much. I'll try to provide more  info later today or tomorrow. 

 

Basically company needs have started growing, information stored and used in servers became more important, but servers are running on 15 year old desktop PCs and old software. 

[Jrhumphrey89]

22 minutes ago, JuztBe said:

What i meant by 10pcs that servers are running on them. People are using propper desktop PCs, so around 100 of them. 

Curently on a phone so can't expand on too much. I'll try to provide more  info later today or tomorrow. 

 

Basically company needs have started growing, information stored and used in servers became more important, but servers are running on 15 year old desktop PCs and old software. 

I understand what your trying to say. I still stand by my suggestion. Do you have any legitimate server hardware now?

[JuztBe]

1 hour ago, Jrhumphrey89 said:

I understand what your trying to say. I still stand by my suggestion. Do you have any legitimate server hardware now?

There's one machine, it's for remote desktop app. It's dedicated to system we are using for financial purposes. 

[Jrhumphrey89]

I understand. An R910 at 650$ would provide more room for expansion down the line, however I feel that adding a second R710 in the future would add another layer of failover.

 

R910 https://www.ebay.com/itm/Premium-Dell-PowerEdge-R910-Server-4x2-10GHz-40-Core-H700-iDRAC-Enterprise/172887191608?hash=item2840e13038:g:HM0AAOSwIdpZynkC

[kirashi]

6 hours ago, JuztBe said:

what about whole configuration? Would you try to fit all of those things in to single server? Maybe linux>freebsd?

Or some shenanigains with VMs would be good choice.

Personally, I'd recommend figuring out either multiple servers, or a larger server running a few VMs with multiple network interfaces. Things like Email and backups should usually be kept isolated for security and reliability reasons, since backups are ... well, super important, of course, and emails can and will contain confidential information at some point.

 

I actually don't recommend running self-hosted email servers at all anymore, unless you've got the means and IT team to support something like a self-hosted exchange server. Even then, it's better in many cases to go with a hosted exchange server as a service directly from Microsoft, or a Gsuite for business account, since they provide backups and MDM tools in both services to help manage employee devices.

 

Since you've got 100's of clients, I'd be inclined to setup something like AD authentication with a DOMAIN server for the data storage / "hot" backups (file versioning) and have the client machines (preferably Intel i5 PC's with 8GB RAM and 250GB SSD's for basic office work) use the DOMAIN server for user logins. The server could host a software / application store where users could install any additional authorized software that hasn't already been pushed out to their client PC's by Group Policy.

 

Backups always should be made to a hardware separated server that pulls from devices, rather than accepts pushed files. This helps mitigate malware that may potentially try to infect the backup server if it were writable by the client PC's, and allows you to maintain total control over what happens to the files directly from the backup server. You'll also want another server off-site, or at least a backup of the on-site backup to the cloud.

[JCMPTech]

I am running old Dell Optiplex 380s, various configurations, Some running windows 10 Pro, a few others are using ClearOS ( I love that OS).  My NAS runs windows 10 pro and manages my Unifi APs (used the open PCIe slot for a Sata 3 controller).  But no matter what tyoe of server you want ClearOS can do it though.

I ran clearOS as my office router for a while, right now my office and my home uses Ubuquiti routers. My larger clients with multiple locations run sonic walls and Cisco routers, and for those on a budge the TP-Link SafeStream routers a good too.

 

 

Edit: I just went and read all the responses, based on the first post I assumed  you had a a 10 PC network, now I see you need real sever hardware, and important back ups with Raid1/Raid10.  I have clients with smaller networks and much more powerful hardware.

[Guest]

Why not modernize the environment and move to Microsoft 365 for Business?

[JuztBe]

57 minutes ago, Windspeed36 said:

Why not modernize the environment and move to Microsoft 365 for Business?

I'll look into it.
modernize - exactly what we are trying to do

[NelizMastr]

I second moving to Office 365. The Business Premium package is quite compelling. Sharepoint for sharing documents, e-mail, an always up-to-date Office suite etc.

 

You'll still need Active Directory, though. But then again, why run over 100 PCs without a central means of managing and securing them? This is common practice since the late 90's  

[JuztBe]

2 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

I second moving to Office 365. The Business Premium package is quite compelling. Sharepoint for sharing documents, e-mail, an always up-to-date Office suite etc.

 

You'll still need Active Directory, though. But then again, why run over 100 PCs without a central means of managing and securing them? This is common practice since the late 90's  

If I understand right AD is for authentication and managing rights, accses etc. Data is being stored localy or sent to server?

 

[Jrhumphrey89]

3 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

I second moving to Office 365. The Business Premium package is quite compelling. Sharepoint for sharing documents, e-mail, an always up-to-date Office suite etc.

 

You'll still need Active Directory, though. But then again, why run over 100 PCs without a central means of managing and securing them? This is common practice since the late 90's  

3rd for 365. 

[Jrhumphrey89]

12 minutes ago, JuztBe said:

If I understand right AD is for authentication and managing rights, accses etc. Data is being stored localy or sent to server?

 

Your onsite AD server will store user permissions. When they login to to the office 365 portal it will check back with your AD server to see what resource permissions the user has, and to check that their password is correct.

[Jrhumphrey89]

An alternative to all of this is just migrate it to amazon webservices\office 365 and just pay a monthly rate with a peace of mind. No onsite servers, no battery back ups, no power cost, no incremental backups, no network outages, etc. Not an IT guys approach, but you know...

[JuztBe]

@Jrhumphrey89 @NelizMastr @kirashi

Wondering how well person would do without windows server knowledge setting up AD. Wouldn't that lead to more problems than solutions?

[NelizMastr]

8 minutes ago, JuztBe said:

@Jrhumphrey89 @NelizMastr @kirashi

Wondering how well person would do without windows server knowledge setting up AD. Wouldn't that lead to more problems than solutions?

I'm unsure how your company has worked at all without any IT knowledge in the first place. Your current environment seems way more complex than it needs to be. 

You could, in spirit of Office365 and Cloud, look into Azure AD instead. From what I've heard, it's pretty neat.