Which is best - HP Microserver Gen 8 or Dell T20

[Geek_of_HeathMount]

I've recently been given the choice between the above two servers, to be used as a development server. However, I'm unsure which would best suit my needs.

My development environment will essentially be VMWare host running 2 or 3 VM's. On the vm's will be running MS Small Business Server, Terminal Services and maybe a web server.

 

Your thoughts please and thanks in advance

[SYNACK]

Can you post the specs of each and is it just dev, no users?

[Geek_of_HeathMount]

For the Dell PowerEdge T20 Mini Tower Server Details | Dell UK

For the HP HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8

 

As it's a dev box, 5 users max

[edutech4schools]

When a server went down at a mid sized primary school I dumped an older HP micro-server in while I fixed the main server. Nobody even notices a difference in speed and that was with it running DC SQl all roles and files + Sims and FMS.

 

Did make me wonder why we spend thousands on a main server when this worked but hay ho.

[SYNACK]

What versions of sbs and windows, the older ones with exchange are a lot heavier and will need a stack of ram and are less happy in a vm, 2k3 is rubbish but the layer versions are much better so that is also a consideration but sans exchange with a stack of ram either should work, just slowly.

 

Have you considered just using virtualization on your dev machine, that's what I do, a nice speedy i5 or i7 with a stack of ram and a couple of decent hard drives would probably be way faster. You can run Hyper-v for free with the free Visual Studio under Windows 8 enterprise, probably pro and 7 to. This way you have a full desktop PC with a bunch of power that can be shared between dev and test.

 

Hyperv happily supports Ubuntu in the latest version to so you can still target apache and hyperv makes VMS easy.

 

You could also go Linux for dev as I think xen runs nicely in the background too.

 

All depends on what you are targeting and your budgets though.

[SYNACK]

The dell site link fails and chokes when looking for it from search which gives me no confidence in their gear of they can't work a basic web site. If you were going hp make sure it has a stack of ram, the better CPU and a fast enough drive.

[Geek_of_HeathMount]

All the latest versions of SBS(Windows 2012 Essentials ) and windows(Windows 2012) will be used, no point in going backwards!!

 

Looking to use VMware as I am already proficient with Hyper V, currently running 2012 3 node cluster, and I'm looking to get my VMware skills up by replicating what I have already done.

 

As for the budget I'm aiming at about the 450 - 500 mark, in theory this should give me a minimum of a 1TB HD(Hybrid) with 16GB RAM running on an Intel chipset

[newpersn]

Could self build for that.

 

I had vmware running on a 1st gen i3 8gb of ram. Ran alright.