Server advice

[JordanT91]

I'm after a bit of advice regarding servers, hopefully this section of the forum is okay for that.

 

Currently we have:

 

Dell T420 - E5-2430 x 2, 64GB RAM,

This is currently only running as a domain controller until I find the time to properly decommission it and make it a Hyper-V host. It was previously the only server but all other roles have been taken off it and virtualised.

 

Dell T320 - E5-2430 x 1, 64GB RAM, 4 x 600GB 15K SAS HDDs, 4 x 600GB SATA HDDs

This is currently used as a HyperV host for DHCP, print, SCCM, AV, Spiceworks, Veeam, DC2 and file servers (exclusive use of the SATA HDDs).

 

Dell PowerEdge something - Xeon X3470, 16GB RAM, 1 x 2TB SATA HDD (Purchased in 2011 not by me, it's been a source of nervousness for two years!)

Currently used for SharePoint 2010 Foundation. Stores our most critical pupil and staff data.

 

The idea is to have both the T320 and T420 as Hyper-V hosts with the VMs shared across the two, leaving enough capacity for one to handle everything if one breaks. This will happen in the Summer. The PowerEdge is well out of warranty and the disk could break any day now. Something needs to happen with SharePoint but I don't know what. I have been given a decent sum (£6-7k) of money to take care of SharePoint. I could buy a new server and use it just for SharePoint (upgraded to 2013), or I could virtualise it and run it alongside all the other VMs on one of the hosts. My understanding is that this is possible but it would be better to have it on a physical server with dedicated processors and disks.

 

I can buy another Dell tower with 8 400GB SSDs in RAID 10, 2 x E5-2640 and 64GB RAM and 5 year warranty for well under £7000 and that's the way I'm leaning at the moment. This will handle anything we can throw at SharePoint very well for the next 5 years.

 

I've read that SharePoint Foundation's future is currently up in the air and the MS may not bring out a new version. Foundation does pretty much everything we need and it's free but it took a long time to get SharePoint heavily ingrained in school so there'd be a lot of reluctance to move away from it even though I can't stand it.

 

Has anyone got any advice or comment?