General questions on installing a server system

Helping out a friend who wants to have a server system installed at the office.

What are the questions to ask vendors?

What issues to be on the lookout for?

I got hit with this this morning, so my questions are very general to start with.

Any references I can look at?

Regards - Charles

 

I'd start by asking your friend what they are trying to achieve by installing a server? What roles is the server to play:

• Network control (centralise logon and permission management)
• Central file storage
• File back up
• Centralised print management
• company e-mail service
• intranet server
• internet server (note - different requirements to that of an intranet server)
• Is the server to host a particular database or application?

Answering this will provide a starting point for the server config - and in particular the choice of OS.

How important is access to the service hosted on the server - in other words once in place, if the server goes down how long will it take to make a significant impact on the business? immediately, 1 hour, one day?
The answer to this will determine the level of redundancy and backup required.

Next question is how many users is it to service, how many concurrent connections, and how much data. This can be difficult to judge initially, but ball park figures will allow for a good assessment of the size of memory, hard disk space and number of processors.

Finally and most importantly - what is the budget. A good provider will be able to tweak the server configuration to make best use of available budget. For example if all you want is a file server, budget may be assisted by reducing RAM, and CPU speed, and increasing hard disk capacity.

If your friend has the answers to these we can provide pointers and their potential suppliers will have a better chance of supplying a suitable server.

 

Thank you Reggie, I'll be going back to the office Thursday and will persue the points you layed out.

I'd start by asking your friend what they are trying to achieve by installing a server?
That's the biggee

Regards - Charles

 

Hi Reggie,

Spent the day hashing out the reasons and the specs for a server system.

Following your guide:

Centralized files and backup is the rationale.

Identified the apps that are going to be run on the server and their requirements.

No central email - no central printing.

What we came down to is a minimal server system - tentatively a Dell 430 with two 80 Gig HD's, one a mirror, no raid, and a tape backup.

Once again, thank you for getting me started

Regards - Charles

 

No Raid ?

Why not use it as a RAID that way you get the mirror affect as well as the redundancy

 

Hello Paul,

Sorry for the confusion, meant no hardware Raid.

Meant Software Raid 1 which will mirror.

Regards - Charles

 

Who is supplying the server?

 

Hi Paul,

As I posted before: tentatively a Dell 430

Regards - Charles