Pricing an Intranet server

[u8dmtm]

Before I start I should let you know that we are using RM CC3.

 

I am looking for a new server to move our IIS hosted Intranet to (currently on Forest Root).

 

I went to RM for a quote and they are trying to sell me an additional CC3 DC with "commisioning" etc - total cost £10k 8O (£3.6K for server the rest is licencing and "commisioning". I sugested a member server which is £6.5k all in (same price server).

 

If I went to another supplier I recon I could knock thousands off the price - after all all I want is a 2003 server running IIS6 which will authenticate users using Integrated Authentication from the CC3 domain - and just join it to the existing CC3 domain.

 

Any advice about this?

[webman]

What are/will you be running on the Intranet? You could probably get away with a plain server of your spec and just buy a Windows server license and an RM one to be a part of the domain, although I'm not sure if they "allow" this.

[ChrisH]

Alot of schools could replace half their servers with 10k 8O . The server should not not cost you more than £1500 I would have said and that will probably be overspecced. You just need to work out the licencing gubbins which where RM is concerned I dont know about.

[Dos_Box]

RM, the less said the better.

[u8dmtm]

Surely they can't expect me to pay for any RM licencing if it's just an Intranet server which isn't anything to do with CC3 except that it's in the same domain! I think I can ignore the fact that CC3 is on the network since within the same domain we are also running vanilla domain-member laptops and stations which have nothing to do with CC3 and just have CALs.

 

By the way, I want it to run ASP (and some ASP.NET) for our quite large intranet (which includes booking, timetable, reporting, progress tracking, internal mail (not email), VLE, Support portal and associated (Access but moving to SQL Server 2005) databases.

[ChrisH]

Are you hosting this server locally?

[u8dmtm]

Yes, it will be hosted locally.

[russdev]

Surely they can't expect me to pay for any RM licencing if it's just an Intranet server which isn't anything to do with CC3 except that it's in the same domain! I think I can ignore the fact that CC3 is on the network since within the same domain we are also running vanilla domain-member laptops and stations which have nothing to do with CC3 and just have CALs.

 

yep you are correct

 

no problem get quote of what you wqnt and then get rm to beat it

 

 

Russ

[ChrisH]

You mention you have vanilla workstations and laptops but have you ever tried joining a normal member server? Thats what you need to find out really.

Im sure they will still moan about something regarding CC3 licencing though.

This how stuff like RM makes things that should be fairly easy horribly complicated :?

[TechMonkey]

We have exactly this, odd Dell server we had bashing around we added to the domain as a member server. No contact or extra licensing from RM. Handles all our intranet needs, even authenticating users to use certain web apps, and a shared area we set up outside the RM Learning Resources/Shared areas.

 

Only thing that needed changing was I think the DNS record to send intranet to the other server. Can also route the Easylink Intranet shortcut to point to the other server very easily.

[ChrisH]

Well there you go you dont have to fork out a small fortune for a relatively simple solution as those greedy boys at RM would have you think

[u8dmtm]

Then my next question is what sort of server spec should I be going for? Is a dual Xeon with 2GB unneccesary?

[Geoff]

Depends, what platform and workload are you expecting?

[ChrisH]

Im not sure about a dual processor but then your only talking the difference of a few hundred. It all depends on how busy you expect the server to be. If theres only a few on at a time then....

 

edit pressed reply then got 2 phone calls inbetween 8O

[Alex]

I'd go for:

 

Dell PowerEdge 850

P4 / 2.8

1GB Ram

80GB Disk

3yr NBD on site warranty.

 

Should come out at less than £500

 

Buy a copy of Win2k3 Web Edition - should come out at < £100 from some one like Ramesys,

 

There's not much redundancy in there, but hell - you could buy a hot spare and have change from a grand (probably).

[Geoff]

Im not sure about a dual processor but then your only talking the difference of a few hundred. It all depends on how busy you expect the server to be. If theres only a few on at a time then....

 

edit pressed reply then got 2 phone calls inbetween 8O

 

In my experience Windows/IIS doesn't do anything constructive with Dual Processors. Linux on the other hand...

[ChrisH]

I have one of those Dell PowerEdge 850 for my mail server there not bad. Was the only thing we could afford at the time but it performs fine as web/mail server.

[adamyoung]

We've got an IBM e-series 2.8/1gig/120 gb in raid, less than a grand and performs really well.

 

We use PHP/unix so diff setup to you, if you were talking about php i would recommend a NetManger by Precedence, brilliant support/pricing and it does all our filtering/email/public website aswell

[fooby]

Dell PowerEdge 850

P4 / 2.8

1GB Ram

80GB Disk

3yr NBD on site warranty.

 

So my

Dual Core 3.0ghz

4GB ram

700gb (raid 5 of 4 sata disks)

 

Is a bit overkill?

[Alex]

Dell PowerEdge 850

P4 / 2.8

1GB Ram

80GB Disk

3yr NBD on site warranty.

 

So my

Dual Core 3.0ghz

4GB ram

700gb (raid 5 of 4 sata disks)

 

Is a bit overkill?

 

Depends how efficient your intranet site is :-)

[StewartKnight]

suprised no ones mentioned Linux, with Apache, it's free, and even I can get it to work, so it must be easy!