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Small Office server build?

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  • Business Computing
Last response: in Business Computing
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June 2, 2014 8:09:53 PM

I have a small office client, about 10 computers, 3 on quickbooks, and the other ones sharing documents all the time, its a contracting company, i was thinking hp proliant gen8 v2 ml310, any comments on those, i have use a proliant ml350p, and it's a very good server, just wanted a few other opinions

More about : small office server build

June 3, 2014 4:25:18 PM

An HP ProLiant ML310e G8 server may be enough for the needs, but if you are running several simultaneous Quickbooks sessions, this may not be enough. Now I'm not an expert with Quickbooks, but I know there are many ways to set it up. My question here is, are you planning to just run it in multiuser mode where each workstation has a local install but the company file is saved on the server, or do you plan on having a remote desktop session host where the users just remote desktop to the server for the software? This can make a difference on the necessary resources, configuration, and licensing.

First, while this office is small enough to go without a domain, you're right on the edge. I'd recommend looking into going with a domain for more powerful management and to support future growth as needed. If you get a single license of Server 2012 R2 Standard, you can create two virtual machines. So this would give you the ability to set up one as a domain controller/DNS/file server, and another as an application server to host Quickbooks or the company database application as needed, plus other network applications or tools if needed. I've had people put their antivirus management system or wireless management software on this VM as well as an all purpose "application" server.

Of course there is always the option of implementing redundancy through multiple servers and replication. That may be a little more complex or powerful than you need for this specific environment though. But, think of it this way: Option one would be buying a single server that needs to be a ML350p or similar with six-core processor, high-performance RAID controller, and SAS drives to run all of your network services simultaneously (which might be necessary but would be on the higher end of my recommendations.) Run everything on one host and in the event it goes down, you have to scrounge up some other spare hardware or wait for replacement hardware. Option two would be buying two identical ML310e G8 servers with quad-core Xeons and running half of your network load on each, enabling replication between the two. In the event that one host server goes down, you can start up the necessary virtual machines on the other still running host and continue operation. It may be slower than normal, but at least you are still running while you get the host that is down repaired or replaced. The cost of two ML310e G8 servers would be similar to the cost of one decent ML350p G8 server, but you will also have to purchase an additional license of Windows Server as well in that case. You also have duplicate storage needs. So if you have a total of 1 TB of data that you will be sharing, you have to have at least 2 TB of hard drive storage in BOTH servers so that the data can be replicated on both.
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June 3, 2014 7:03:23 PM

choucove said:
An HP ProLiant ML310e G8 server may be enough for the needs, but if you are running several simultaneous Quickbooks sessions, this may not be enough. Now I'm not an expert with Quickbooks, but I know there are many ways to set it up. My question here is, are you planning to just run it in multiuser mode where each workstation has a local install but the company file is saved on the server, or do you plan on having a remote desktop session host where the users just remote desktop to the server for the software? This can make a difference on the necessary resources, configuration, and licensing.

First, while this office is small enough to go without a domain, you're right on the edge. I'd recommend looking into going with a domain for more powerful management and to support future growth as needed. If you get a single license of Server 2012 R2 Standard, you can create two virtual machines. So this would give you the ability to set up one as a domain controller/DNS/file server, and another as an application server to host Quickbooks or the company database application as needed, plus other network applications or tools if needed. I've had people put their antivirus management system or wireless management software on this VM as well as an all purpose "application" server.

Of course there is always the option of implementing redundancy through multiple servers and replication. That may be a little more complex or powerful than you need for this specific environment though. But, think of it this way: Option one would be buying a single server that needs to be a ML350p or similar with six-core processor, high-performance RAID controller, and SAS drives to run all of your network services simultaneously (which might be necessary but would be on the higher end of my recommendations.) Run everything on one host and in the event it goes down, you have to scrounge up some other spare hardware or wait for replacement hardware. Option two would be buying two identical ML310e G8 servers with quad-core Xeons and running half of your network load on each, enabling replication between the two. In the event that one host server goes down, you can start up the necessary virtual machines on the other still running host and continue operation. It may be slower than normal, but at least you are still running while you get the host that is down repaired or replaced. The cost of two ML310e G8 servers would be similar to the cost of one decent ML350p G8 server, but you will also have to purchase an additional license of Windows Server as well in that case. You also have duplicate storage needs. So if you have a total of 1 TB of data that you will be sharing, you have to have at least 2 TB of hard drive storage in BOTH servers so that the data can be replicated on both.



The v2 of the server isn't good enough, i thought about multi-user mode, the most that is ever on it at once is 3, plus the 4 others, but i'm running into an issue here with windows 7 and windows 8, 3 windows 8 pro's and 4 windows 7, kinda stuck on which way to go about it, i thought those v2's would be enough,
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