We're looking at a new server at work, I end up doing the IT stuff, so need to come up with a few specs. After it's last crash our server is currently running under vmware on another machine, and is struggling.

Duties include:
Mail
Print
File sharing
Internet sharing
Domain controller

Currently its running 2000 server SBS, with exchange, ISA etc. Users are at 35, however this could easily become 40 for next year. Most people have shared folders, up to 8gb in size. Total space for files is currently sitting around 60gb. Email is the biggest killer with some accounts around 2gb.

Not ever really having much to do with server stuff, my current thoughts would be:

2 x quad core xeon's, around 2.0ghz
8gb ram
Around the 300gb mark in storage
2003 server SBS r2
Tape back up?

Few main questions are:
1) SCSI vs SATA. From what I can gather a good standalone SATA controller can come close to matching a SCSI one with obviously cheaper drives. The old machine was running on raid 5 until a drive went down - would it be better to do raid 10 instead?

2) Is there anything other tapes for viably backing up exchange data? Would a couple of external hdd's be a better idea?

3) For spam and antivirus, whats recommended for exchange? Currently have expired symantec mail security, and it seems horrible.

Would really appreciate some comments, advice etc from some sys admins that actually do this for a living. Ideally we'd like this to last another 3 - 4 years, and may have to cope with up to 60 people.

Your specs you have listed there look fine for the number of users and services you want to offer, have you thought about getting 2 servers of lower specs to offer a little more redundancy?

1)
As for your HDD capacity and connection, I have approximately 60 users working off our NAS (12TB capacity). Its a SATA NAS with 16x750Gb HDD installed. It runs a treat and my guys work with large CAD files all day long. I would be looking at SATA from a cost saving point of view and once they are in a large RAID the performance is fine. Main thing for running your NAS/File Server is having a good network, make sure you've got multiple aggregated gigabit links to support it.

If you're going to do this on one box then the setup needs to be OS installed on RAID 1+0 on 4 HDD (get smaller HDD for these). Then load up as many 750Gb or 1Tb SATA drives as you can into a RAID 5. I wouldn't recommend one box for this, you really should be running 2 servers, 1 SBS and 1 Storage Server. Your storage server is also your backup.

Not sure what your budget is like but Fibre SAN is a great option if you only want one server and are using VMWARE.

2)
I just migrated off using tapes for backup this year, I now use HDD (cheaper and faster). I bought a Lacie 2Tb Ethernet HDD for around $1800 and backup to that then pull any data I want offsite onto external Sata HDD. Has worked out to be a faster, cheaper option.

3)
I replaced my Symantec Mail with Sophos Pure Message, not the cheapest available but very good. Best thing I can recommend for spam is a good firewall. I am running a Netbox Blue and it rocks. We get around 30000 emails a week, firewall lets around 4000 through, rest are spam. This cuts a huge load from exchange and also network traffic.

Good luck.

yeh our company has the same problem started with 20 users now we are up too 40 users....

I am lucky enough our sbs server is still running... however i am waiting for Windows 2008. They are bring out version for Medium Size business looks good!!!

Just a reminder when purchasing SBS 2003R2 buy Premium and not standard... Premium has ISA!!!

Also we use to use Tape Drives... but its cheaper to buy 2 external hard drives and use them for backup... therefore you take the backup out of office just incase of fires etc... also Migrating from sbs 2000 to sbs 2003r2 is pretty easy you shouldnt have much problems...

last edited by TiT at 11:59:47 12/Oct/07

Fair point about the two servers, I actually have a "cad server" which is just a core 2 duo with some drives etc in. We only have maximum of 3 people at anyone time doing cad work, more often that not its just one. Also stored on that is all the logged data from the cars, but again that will copied off on to a couple of peoples computers and used locally. All the backups currently go to this machine.

The files everyone else uses are just excel spread sheets and word documents - so nothing thats really going to tie up masses of bandwidth. I figured if we're doing a new machine now may as well put in a whole lot of hdd's even if we only using half or less. Certainly for the moment all the cad and motec data will stay on the other computer.

Thanks for the comments though. The drives you are using are just the 7200rpm sata ones?

My Initial quick thoughts would be you will be pushing the boundaries of SBS once you hit close to 60 users. (its been a while since I've touched it though).


I would definitely go Tape Backup's over a portable hdd, with that much data being saved on 1 box, redundancy/recovery is a must.

I'd look at Acronis for tape backup's (I'm pretty sure that would be enough although we use backup exec with the exchange addition so it can backup mailboxes in use), SCSI over SATA as a lot of concurrent users on one box would mean you would want decent I/O.

Anti Virus we use CA - Etrust. Local product with easy server/client-side software.

Sorry this is a quick and nasty reply but I'm sure others can answer better. But because you are using an all in 1 solution to serve so many users, I would be inclined to just make sure you don't skimp on hardware/software.

EDIT: Woah so many replies after I hit reply.
As for the fibre san, that's what we use, but would seem to me that if you could afford that, you wouldn't be running SBS in the first place?

last edited by Lunch at 12:04:17 12/Oct/07

Yep 7200rpm. I figure on replacing the drives every 2 years, warranty is for 5 but they aren't designed to be thrashed continuously for 5years.

my advice is don't use SBS
spend more money on hardware and use a free o/s + software

Raid5 v Raid10.
There is a lot of difference here. The main one is price. You lose half your raw disk space with Raid10 where as you only lose one drives worth of space with Raid5. The second is speed. Raid5 has a considerable overhead when compared to raid10 and unless you have a raid controller with a bit of writecache you will notice the slowdowns on large write operations. On reads there isn't that much between the two.

Backups.
For 300G you could probally get away with a removable hdd, but i would still go with a tape drive, so you can setup a GFS backup schedule and keep your backups offsite.

I would suggest you go with a brand name server. That way you can get a decent warranty and if required, get same day hardware support.

I guess it really all comes down to, if the machine was toasted, how quickly could you replace it fully restored? and what is the impact to the business in the meantime?

last edited by ara at 12:30:14 12/Oct/07

We currently use Sun Fire X2200 M2s for pretty much everything - price vs performance they're hard to beat. IBM have one which comes close, and if you're like me and prefer to avoid Dell, then the choice is obvious.

There's also other higher models which support RAID etc, but for around $3k, including the operating system, you're getting a Dual dual-core processor system with 2GB RAM and 4 Gbit ethernet controllers.

On the processing side it sounds like you're perhaps aiming a little higher than these spec boxes, but why not get two (or three?)
For storage we're using Dell/EMC Ax150i systems, which can take up to 12 SATA HDDs. Each controller (up to two controllers) has two iSCSI ports which is super handy when paired with the X2200s with their 4GigEth controllers. Unfortunately NAS isn't cheap - the AX150i comes in around $11k for a 1.5TB box with a single storage controller.


On Small Business Server, I found out the hard way some of its limitations when trying to run it in a non-domain controlled environment.

- SBS doesn't support > 4Gb RAM, so don't bother wasting the dollars on 8Gb.
- 2 x Quad-core Xeons is an overkill .. BIG overkill. We use these on our standard VMWare servers that run up to 10 virtual machines.
- Disk storage owns tape storage, combination of both is best if you can afford it.
- SCSI is old, use SAS.

Personally I would buy that box and install CentOS + VMWare and setup a few VMs. A DC, Exchange, File & Print server and web proxy server (ISA or Squid - your call). For backups I'd take a nightly snapshot of each and copy it to disk and then a weekly bakup to tape.

Everything seems fine however a couple of observations:

- You will definitely push SBS mailbox size limit (and a number of seats licenses SBS allows) with that many users AND their mailbox size. The best thing to do is to get 2 x Servers, 1 for all your domain and file share stuff and another for Exchange server.

- Get bigger HDD, they're cheap. We got 1TB for RAID 5 just for our file server. Go with either RAID 5 or RAID 1 for both machines. Make sure they're _real_ hardware raid with proper card with hot swap.

- Use Tape backup if you wish, however make sure you get large ones like LTO2 or other technologies. for the exchange server. With file server you could get external USB drive and do differential/incremental to it - this will depends on your backup policies i.e. whether need to be taken off site of safe keeping etc (we use both Tapes and USB drives)

- Virus/Spam scanners, we use Symantec anti-virus corporate but only on the client side not on the server.

Get a HP Ml370
Single Quad Xeon (you can always purchase a second later)
SBS 2003 R2 Standard This will be fine so long as you have no intentions of running multiple office's with trusted domains
4GB Ram (as previously stated, over 4gb requires a different operating system)
2x SAS Drives for System
3+ SAS Drives for Raid5 (Raid 10 if you wanna splash out)
Definatly a LTO based Tape solution using Backup Exec
Trend Micro CSMS for SMB Anti-Virus

If you out-grow this server you can always keep it as your DC / File server and purchase a 2nd server to run your exchange.
SBS does have an upgrade path to Windows 2003 with Exchange 2003

However, if you have intentions on running database applications on the server (such as anything SQL/MSDE based) I would suggest running this on a seperate server as it will increase your ram requirements drastically.

Oh and one more thing.. Please if you are not an experienced system administrator, pay someone who is to do the job.

Also just to make a few things clear for you

SBS 2003 R2's user limit is 75 users, so if your going to keep under this you'll be fine

Exchange 2003 Standard SP2's Database size limit is 75GB, this is regardless of SBS or not. If you require more then this you would need to have a second mailbox store.

for some reason microsoft like the number 75 lol

Thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated.

No I'm not experienced, just do the day to day stuff adding users, making sure nothing bad is happening etc. I'll be getting someone to do the initial setup definitely.

Currently on exchange 5.5 with the 16gb limit so should be fine there. Chances of getting to 75 users is very slim.