New Server- What would you do

[Simcfc73]

I am purchasing another T710 to go with the one I got last year for my school which will run as a file server and a failover HYPER-V server in case one fails.

The one I got last year has 6 SAS disks and a couple of CPUS and 16Gb ram... this one will be lower spec as I am looking at buying a QNAP NAS drive to go with it.

We have 2 sites linked by fibre... pretty much all the school is in 2 halves.. would you purchase 2 smaller NAS drives and put one at each end of the fibre or is that stupid? I was thinking of getting the TS-439 Pro II Turbo NAS.

I have a small budget so SANs are out BTW

Thanks the help

[nicholab]

You could have a virtual openfiler HA cluster of storage that you reprovision back to the VM's.

[RobFuller]

The TS-439 wouldn’t be man enough IMO I have a TS-859 Pro+ for my disk based backups and that it can struggle sometimes with only one server attached. I would at a minimum go with the TS-809U-RP if you’re going to use as a main SAN for your network.
Putting them at each end of the site isn’t a bad idea, you would need a couple of redundant links and switches. You also want to keep your SAN traffic separate from your main network, vlan will be ok but I would also recommend separate switches for optimum reliability and performance.

[Simcfc73]

We are a small school (400 users and 70 staff) which is why I went for the smaller model. I have a grand to spend on the NAS/SAN drive.

My Server will run Hyper-v which is why I am going for a attached storage option.