New Servers

[AceDaz]

Hi All

 

I am hoping to get some new server following a new appointment of a head teacher.

 

I am ok with specs for the DC's and member servers, I have looked at running a partially Virtual network but have decided to stick with physical servers.

 

What I am unsure about is the specs for 4 specialist servers:

 

1. Exchange Server for around 700 users

2. SIMS Server with Schools Cash Office

3. Terminal Server for 100 staff at the moment, with the possibility of rolling it out to students by purchasing more licenses.

4. Microsoft's replacement for ISA

 

Was thinking for point 4 a single dual core xeon processor with 16gb ram and a 250gb mirrored raid. This goes along the lines of the other member servers, but I am unsure as to the other 3.

 

I am planning 2 or 3 data servers linked to a 5tb SAN, but should I have a connection from the Exchange and SIMs servers to the SAN?

 

Any comments would be appreciated. I need the prices soo. As the new head is going to governors middle of September with a view to start the upgrade live running up to October half term and doing the major parts over half term

 

Thanks

 

Daz

[FN-GM]

Just out of curiosity why are you not going down the virtual route?

[sukh]

1. Do you want HA for Exch? I assume you plan on using 2010?

2. Do you want to split the roles up?

3. Really depends on your requirements and usage per mailbox.

3. Use the calc to help you - Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator - Exchange Team Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs & v17.2 of the Exchange 2010 Mailbox Server Role Requirements Calculator

 

Sukh

[Blue_Cookeh]

I'd say fair enough not wanting to virtualise a terminal server, but why not points 1, 2 and 4?

 

Realistically, are 100 staff members going to be using Terminal services at any one point in time?

[glennda]

By point 4 do you mean 16gb ram for Forefront TMG? if so thats way overkill ms say min is 2gb and i would go with 4/6 just to be sure.

 

My Advise for that would be get 2 beefy hosts and then run exchange/sims on them onto the san (make sure you get a decent one otherwise performance for sims/exchange will be awful).

I have 3 HP DL380 G5's with Dual Quad Xeon and 64gb ram in each - they are connected to an MSA2012 fiber channel san which hosts 3 exchange servers and the sims server and doesn't struggle with performance - but i've got enough ram in the sims server so that it can keep all (or nearly all) in the Ram so the queries are better. Its actually quicker then it was on a physical host.

 

Again I have TS on the San aswell but its mainly used in evening for remote access not during the day so can't comment on that.

 

These hosts never get about 50% cpu usage or ram usage.

[glennda]

I'd say fair enough not wanting to virtualise a terminal server, but why not points 1, 2 and 4?

 

Realistically, are 100 staff members going to be using Terminal services at any one point in time?

 

Personally for point 4 i would get a physical box - nothing powerful but i have ISA between the clients and the internet so the only physical way of getting out the network is through the ISA server

[Blue_Cookeh]

Personally for point 4 i would get a physical box - nothing powerful but i have ISA between the clients and the internet so the only physical way of getting out the network is through the ISA server

 

You can still have a physical path through ISA, you just need the appropriate amount of NICs on the virtual host and and for the hypervisor's networking to be setup correctly, this way it'd still act and be as secure as the physical box it was once on.

[glennda]

You can still have a physical path through ISA, you just need the appropriate amount of NICs on the virtual host and and for the hypervisor's networking to be setup correctly, this way it'd still act and be as secure as the physical box it was once on.

 

yeah thats true hadn't thought of it that way!

 

The other thing you could also look at an appliance firewall - something like a smoothwall or draytek I'm personally hoping to get the funding to get a smoothie in april

[AceDaz]

Just out of curiosity why are you not going down the virtual route?

 

Never been a fan of it, was going to do most of the member servers as virtual, but would rather stick with physical. Can get a much better spec with physical for a few thousand pounds more

[AceDaz]

I'd say fair enough not wanting to virtualise a terminal server, but why not points 1, 2 and 4?

 

Realistically, are 100 staff members going to be using Terminal services at any one point in time?

 

Never been a fan of virtualisation and no 100 staff members won't be using it at the same time. But could do with knowing what percentage to work at

[FN-GM]

Never been a fan of it, was going to do most of the member servers as virtual, but would rather stick with physical. Can get a much better spec with physical for a few thousand pounds more

 

We only have 5 physical servers now 3 of those are host machines. Gives us redundancy when hardware fails. When a host fails the other 2 take over automatically. We can spec the virtual machines machines up we run our terminal server farm on there.

[AceDaz]

Thanks. Was thinking of 16gb as standard. But what about disk space and location?

 

By point 4 do you mean 16gb ram for Forefront TMG? if so thats way overkill ms say min is 2gb and i would go with 4/6 just to be sure.

 

My Advise for that would be get 2 beefy hosts and then run exchange/sims on them onto the san (make sure you get a decent one otherwise performance for sims/exchange will be awful).

I have 3 HP DL380 G5's with Dual Quad Xeon and 64gb ram in each - they are connected to an MSA2012 fiber channel san which hosts 3 exchange servers and the sims server and doesn't struggle with performance - but i've got enough ram in the sims server so that it can keep all (or nearly all) in the Ram so the queries are better. Its actually quicker then it was on a physical host.

 

Again I have TS on the San aswell but its mainly used in evening for remote access not during the day so can't comment on that.

 

These hosts never get about 50% cpu usage or ram usage.

[AceDaz]

1. Yeah 2010 and what is HA?

 

2. In what way?

 

1. Do you want HA for Exch? I assume you plan on using 2010?

2. Do you want to split the roles

 

Sukh

[strawberry]

for terminal services it would probably be better to use a session broker and more than one session host , 100 concurrent users is a lot and you'll have much more reliability with more than one box.

[glennda]

1. Yeah 2010 and what is HA?

 

2. In what way?

 

High Availablity - you can cluster exchange servers Ensuring High Availability in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 - TechNet Magazine Article - December 2009

 

Split the roles as it Hub transport/Edge Server etc

[sukh]

1. Yeah 2010 and what is HA?

 

2. In what way?

 

1. High Availability - So this would mean SMTP if your using app relay, OWA, CAS services, HUB's will automatically be FT/LB in the same AD site. MBX, , you can use DAG Groups with native exch 2010 replication. And I dont think your using edge for your gateway?

2. For 700 users you could have all the roles (HUB, CAS & MBX) on the same server, however you wont be able to provide HA for the MBX and CAS server if you intend to use WNLB as they both cant exist in this configuration. You will then have to split the roles. Also, if you plan to use edge you cant have this co-exist on the same server as CAS/HUB/MBX, it must be in on it's own server (even virtual) on the dmz. You need to know what the requirements are and how critical the email services is, it could be that you only want to have DAG and leave the HUB and CAS servers alone.

[jamesfed]

If you SERIOUSLY only want to do physical servers I'd look at something like the HP DL385 G7s - 8 SFF hard drive bays with the option to expand to 16 not to mention more RAM capacity than you could ever need and the ability to use the AMD Opteron 8 and 12 core processors.

 

Should come out at about £2,500 per server......

 

However I would suggest you look again at virtualisation.

 

Here we have 2x HP DL165 G7s (1U version of the above server), same 8/12 core processors - just hook them up to a HP SmartArray and use the new SAS dual port tech to connect the array up to both servers using SAS cables this is wayy cheaper and in many ways faster than iSCSI SANs (not to mention much cheaper).

 

All of the applications you have up there are very read/write intensive so look for faster disks as well.

 

Just in case you are not aware the key advantages of Virtualisation are-

High Availability - one host server goes down the other can take over - thus meaning no network downtime.

Lower power usage - less servers with more RAM/processor/HDD resources will chew through less power than more servers with lower resources

Easy future transfers of OSes - moving OSes around is as easy as cut and paste

Faster response to future needs - if in the future you need a new service which has to run inside its own server OS then you will need to buy a new server...with VMs just start a new virtual machine (at worst maybe get some more RAM)

and quite a few more things!!

[IanT]

If people are going down the visualization route, I always say "do it properly" - I class a visualization system which is FULLY redundant.

 

visualization is great but I've seen so many companies rush to do visualization but with no failover systems as all your servers are in one box!

[Blue_Cookeh]

If people are going down the visualization route, I always say "do it properly" - I class a visualization system which is FULLY redundant.

 

visualization is great but I've seen so many companies rush to do visualization but with no failover systems as all your servers are in one box!

 

For some of us, it was worse before we virtualised on one box!!! Primary schools aren't made of money

[AceDaz]

I am not sure, it is only for around 650 mailboxes

 

High Availablity - you can cluster exchange servers Ensuring High Availability in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 - TechNet Magazine Article - December 2009

 

Split the roles as it Hub transport/Edge Server etc

[glennda]

I am not sure, it is only for around 650 mailboxes

 

its up to you - if you have 2 and cluster them you can have one off and users be still able to access another but its up to you-

[AceDaz]

its up to you - if you have 2 and cluster them you can have one off and users be still able to access another but its up to you-

 

All depends on price lol. As all things!!

[CyberNerd]

All depends on price lol. As all things!!

 

well your not really doing yourself any favours by discounting virtualisation.

[plexer]

@jamesfed can you give some more information on the hp smart array setup that you've used please.

 

Ben

[jamesfed]

@jamesfed can you give some more information on the hp smart array setup that you've used please.

 

Ben

 

Most of what you probably want to know is here - http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01451157/c01451157.pdf

 

Basically think dual port SAS allows multiple redundant routes to data in a Smart Array.