Advice on Spec of New Server

[maxrebo]

Hi, spec`ing up a new server and would like peoples opinion on suitability, this will be a virtual Host and have VM`s for DirSync (for Office 365), another VM as a file server and another to replace a DHCP server

 

PowerEdge R730,

Intel® Xeon® E5-2650 v3 2.3GHz,25M Cache,9.60GT/s QPI,Turbo,HT,10C/20T

2 CPU Standard

2 x 16GB RDIMM, 2133MT/s, Dual Rank, x4 Data Width

RAID 10 for H330/H730/H730P

PERC H730 RAID Controller, 1GB NV Cache

4 x 1TB 7.2K RPM Near-Line SAS 6Gbps 2.5in Hot-plug Hard Drive

Dual, Hot-plug, Redundant Power Supply (1+1), 750W

 

Does this look ok?

Would RAID 5 or 10 be best for this?, Im thinking of maybe RAID 5 with Hot spare

 

Any advice would be great.

 

Regards

[Steve21]

Is this as part of another network, or to replace whole thing? e.g. Primary

 

Personally I'd up the RAM for future proofing etc and depending on budget get faster disks at least for the part hosting the VMs/HOST OS wise.

 

Don't really see the advantage of using the HotSpare as if you only had 4 in the array in the first place you could lose the same amount e.g. 1, and have more space/read to begin with.

 

Steve

[maxrebo]

ok, thanks for the advice.

This is part of an existing network, currently have 5 other VM ware hosts.

Purchasing this to move over current VM`s to Win 2012 R2 replacing Physical servers that are running out of disk space \ slower servers

 

Pretty much a newbie when spec`ing up Servers so want to get it right.

[Steve21]

Then would consider how many NICs you're planning on then for management/live migration etc.

 

If you're running a large amount of VMWare HOSTs I'm assuming you're paying a fair whack on licensing for them, so would seem an unpowered server as such personally :s

 

Ideally you'd also want to try to balance the specs with the other machines, no use having a HOST with 200GB of RAM fail and try to migrate across to one with 16GB etc.

 

Steve

[maxrebo]

thanks for the advice,

How many disks would you suggest and what RAID do you think is best?, as mentioned theres going to be a file server VM with currently 500gb of data (allowing this to rise to 1tb over time)

 

Cheers