Would this run well?

[binky]

Ok, I am thinking of rebuilding this server - it has to deal with around 25 simultaneous connections and 35 pcs.

SATA Hard Disks
4GB RAM
Dell SC445
Dual Core Intel Xeon 3060 2.40GHz


Running in a single server environment:

Windows Server 2008
Active Directory
Windows Deployment Services
IIS + mySQL (moodle)
Network Access Protection

[Michael]

That sounds fine, but using Windows Deployment Services probably isn't worth it for 35 workstations. So long as the server operates at 1000Mbps and workstations 100Mbps, this should remove any bottlenecks too.

If you're going to run Windows Server 2008 x86, don't install anymore than 3GB of memory. 4GB will be a waste of money, unless you're going to run x64?

You also need to make sure your hard disks have enough capacity to store all data too. A minimum of two would be recommended. One as the system disk and the other for everything else.

[PiqueABoo]

4GB will be a waste of money

Because? I thought (provided the hardware supported it) Windows Servers supported remapping the I/O reserved memory.

[SYNACK]

Originally Posted by PiqueABoo

Because? I thought (provided the hardware supported it) Windows Servers supported remapping the I/O reserved memory.

The feature that you are thinking of is PAE which remaps memory from a lower accessible range to the extended memory range. It will allow you to access this memory but not directly as it effectively pages between the high and low RAM ranges which is much slower than direct access.

This Microsoft page shows more information about how much memory is supported and how it is divided up (top of page):
Memory Limits for Windows Releases (Windows)

[binky]

Well it would be an x64 server anyway.

[PiqueABoo]

The feature that you are thinking of is PAE

Nope that was yesterday, but alright I'll do it again.. ;b

which is much slower than direct access

If it's so bad why has PAE been recommended for Exchange 2K3 for a few years?

[SYNACK]

Originally Posted by PiqueABoo

Nope that was yesterday, but alright I'll do it again.. ;b



If it's so bad why has PAE been recommended for Exchange 2K3 for a few years?

Its not bad, just slower than directly accessing the memory using a 64bit OS. I was just giving an overview of what it is and the all be it small consequences of its use to the speed of the system.

[srochford]

Originally Posted by Michael

That sounds fine, but using Windows Deployment Services probably isn't worth it for 35 workstations.

What??? Are you suggesting (s)he manually goes round and installs all the machines??

WDS is free, works well and has minimal impact on the server (you can even turn off the services except when you're deploying new machines if you think it is a problem) so I can't see a reason not to use it!

[PiqueABoo]

Its not bad, just slower than directly accessing the memory using a 64bit OS

Directly is not quite the right word. Pretty much everything we care about is a userland app and they use virtual memory i.e. it's indirect.

The best fit for your concept is AWE where some greedy app needs truckloads more virtual memory than can be addressed with 32-bits, so it gets the OS to swap the extra memory it needs in and out of that limited virtual address space. Application code to manage this aside, this is essentially done by moving pointers to physical memory pages i.e. large chunks of data are not being copied from one region of memory to another.

64-bit does save seriously memory hungry apps from having to do that kind of faffing around, although AWE memory may still get used because it never gets swapped out to the pagefile.