Server Advice

"Bob" wrote in news:10re385pdeo7i86
@corp.supernews.com:

I would just go to Ebay and find a NEW IN BOX server.

Sorted

Looks like some company overspent on hardware a tad
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...tem=5736542937

Lordy

Lordy wrote:

office
hours onsite support with say 4 hour response ??? is a must

But be careful. This is just the time to come on-site. In one case (many
years ago) the support people came quickly on-site, then went away for a
full week waiting for a part -- but they had kept their contract. The
machines I buy have several options; as far as I remember:

- next business day on-site response. Free for 3 years (warranty).
- 8-hour response, during business days. Cheapest paid option
- 4-hour response, any time. Higher cost
- 8-hour guaranteed time to repair, highest cost.

Best wishes,
--
Michael Salem

Jim Howes wrote:
Michael Salem wrote:
It would help if you had access to one or more BSI's

British Standard Idiots

These machines have support from the manufacturer (HP or Dell). HP has very
good support. I would not consider going with a private third party for
support. The manufacturer will have parts for all the machines, a third
party will not.

Remedy wrote:
I have been approached to build a server, to be used for file storage
and
backups. What is a server by definition and what specs and O/S should
I be
looking to provide the above? Is XP Pro sufficient?

By simplest definition, a server is any computer that services other
computers.

These days, the definition has become a bit more specialized. Most
servers should have at least two or more processors. Plus they often
have large multiple hard disks both to store lots of data and also to
act as each other's redundant backups, when used with a RAID disk
organization scheme. The processors often are higher performance
versions of common desktop chips, thus also more expensive chips; for
example, instead of using an Athlon 64 you'd be using the Opteron
chips. However, having said that, I've been seeing some big name
vendors trying to pass off a desktop machine as a server; e.g. I've
seen Dell recently repackage a desktop Pentium 4 system as a server, so
it's certainly possible to make a server out of entirely desktop parts.


Is XP Pro sufficient? For your purposes (six machines), I'd say yes. A
single-processor desktop machine converted to act as a server would
probably serve you well until about 10 users. After that then you
should really look at something more specially designed for serving
purposes. Also the more proper server operating systems are Windows
2000 Advanced Server and Windows Server 2003, rather than XP.

When you say that your server will be used for backup purposes, do you
mean that you'll be using the hard disks on the server to completely
duplicate the data on other computers? That's a pretty intensive
operation. It would require both an extremely high speed network (at
least switched 100 Mbps Ethernet, not wireless WiFi), as well as some
industrial strength hard disks based on the SCSI standards not on
regular IDE hard disks. And beyond that, you'd have to backup the data
to tape still, even with a RAID based disk scheme in place.

FTP Required also

Well, Windows XP Pro comes with what is the world's worst FTP and HTTP
serving software, called IIS (or Internet Information Server). It's
free, but that's its only redeeming value. IIS happens to be one of the
network hacker's favourite pieces of software to attack, because it's
full of security holes. And on top of that, IIS is not particularly
easy to setup compared to any other FTP or webserver software for
Windows. You can download any number of free FTP server packages
without any worries about being subjected to the same security risks
that IIS puts you through; and they're usually easier to setup than
IIS.

If you do decide to use IIS, make it only for use by your internal
staff and don't put it on the Internet, even with a firewall protecting
it!

Please do not advise linux has I am not converse with it.

Actually, you shouldn't cut yourself off from this avenue, because
you'll find your easiest paths to server-dom are here. There are
various Linux server projects out there geared towards magical one-step
server installation. You won't ever have to ever see the Linux
low-level command-line, and the entire thing is administered from a
webpage from any other machine. These Linux projects make Windows
servers look horribly overcomplicated. And they will come with all of
the software needed to do ftp, webpage serving, and file serving right
out of the box and already pre-configured.

Somebody else might be able to provide you a link to one of these
projects, as I am not familiar with modern projects.

Yousuf Khan

Lordy wrote:

Sorted

Looks like some company overspent on hardware a tad
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...tem=5736542937

I recall saying earlier today that most servers are overspecced.

On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 11:04:09 -0000, "Remedy" wrote:

I have been approached to build a server, to be used for file storage and
backups. What is a server by definition and what specs and O/S should I be
looking to provide the above? Is XP Pro sufficient?

Current IT infrastructure comprises of 4 laptops + 2 desktops

FTP Required also

Please do not advise linux has I am not converse with it.



Well some of the other posters have covered this already but
it bears repeating- You don't really have the experience to
be maintaining a server the company relies on. You haven't
been clear though about whether it was just some "idea" or
more like a directive... If it's implied that you ARE the
person who's going to handle the server or it's in your
best interests to do it (whatever) then you'd be best off
chosing whatever you personally feel most comfortable
maintaining.

A filesever is not at all difficult or demanding beyond
security strategies, indeed it could run from a Pentium 200,
64MB of memory and a linux boot floppy to simply serve
files. You'll want someone more than that of course but to
service 4 laptops and 2 desks, you really need to consider
the budget. If you can't put a few thousand $$$$ into it
(which you dont' really "need" to at all) then it's a
different situation, more limiting in choosing software,
support, hardware, etc, etc. Determining the budget is the
first step.

"Lordy" wrote in message .. .
"Bob" wrote in news:10re385pdeo7i86
@corp.supernews.com:

I would just go to Ebay and find a NEW IN BOX server.

Sorted

Looks like some company overspent on hardware a tad
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...tem=5736542937



Looks like a nice little machine, didn't think much of the graphics card spec though

"Lordy" wrote in message
...
"Kevin R" wrote in
:

the only difference between a server and a PC is the OS all the rest
of the hardware can be in both a pc and a server XP pro is not a
server OS as such

A file server can be exactly the same as a home PC of course, but will
often have an emphasis on higher spec hard drives, better / redundant
cooling, hardware monitoring etc. Builtin backup for convenience. CPU
power
is not so important.

Lordy

We've only just made an NT4 server redundant after shifting its work to a
2000 server.

The NT4 server was a P3 400 with a drive array amounting to 40GB (heh how
quant!)

It was perfectly capeable of doing the job of domain server / dhcp / dns /
file serving and 4 SQL databases. We just got rid because of the imminent
lack of support from MS for NT4.

"Jim Howes" wrote in message
...
Lordy wrote:

Sorted

Looks like some company overspent on hardware a tad
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...tem=5736542937

I recall saying earlier today that most servers are overspecced.

Well they probably are but then thats usually a requirement.

You wouldn't want to have to upgrade your servers after a couple of years.
In fact I don't want to have to do *anything* to my servers for 5 years at
least.