Recommended for file-, domain- and printserver? 2

[ilovecocks]

What would you give as recommended specs for each of the three types?

Best specs for fileserver?
Best specs for domaincontroller?
Best specs for printserver?
All based on the standard windows 2003 server sp2 enterprise edition.

 

[Zelandakh]

Define size of company.
Define throughput.
Define requirements.
Define business objectives.
Define number of printers.
Define number of files and growth rate of files.
Define uptime policy and/or requirements.

You ask for recommended specs then ask for best specs.
You post a lame question about hardware requirements into an Exchange Server forum.
You specify Enterprise Edition for no apparent reason.

 

[ilovecocks]

Yes i realise now, that i clicked the exchange instead of 2003 server forum.
There is a reason Enterprise supports up to 8 cpu's per server and supports x64, standard only supports 4 cpu's and no x64 support.

Define size of company: Government

Define throughput: We have about 200 users that are all active at the same time

Define requirements: We need it to run spot free, with a bit to spare at peak hours

Define business objectives: To keep a government research and development department running.

Define number of printers: atleast 40 maybe more

Define number of files and growth rate of files: Massive number of files, too many to spend time on a scan, growth rate varies, but can be up to a few GB a day.

Define uptime policy and/or requirements: uptime at 99.9%

 

[58sniper]

There is a 64 bit version of Standard.

Your answers are still nowhere near what we would need to see before making recommendations.

"too many to spend time on a scan" isn't going to get you much help, and would likely get the post removed.

You don't mention how many locations, or the number at each location.

You don't mention how much is printed each day.

You don't mention how much file activity is done, nor who is doing it, and from where.

You don't mention HOW they are accessing the network, such as internally, externally, mobile, etc.

You don't mention explicit disaster recovery requirements.

Based on the posts you've made in other forum areas, I think you're ill-equipped to handle designing (or even recommending or suggesting) a network infrastructure without extensive research. Professionals such as Zelandakh, myself, and others here spend hours, days, weeks, even MONTHS designing a solution for a single project (at a fair market rate). Your question (and your initial response) are not clear nor informative enough to even speculate as to what would be involved.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[LWComputingMVP]

ALL SERVERS:
*use RAID.
*buy from reputable, name brand - HP, Dell, IBM, etc. WITH 3 year 24x7x4 response service contract.
*12-16 GB+RAM SIZE C: drive (do NOT store anything but application files on the C: drive - a properly managed server will never have a need to exceed 8-10 GB of space on the C: drive - with the exception of a Terminal Server in App mode).

FILE SERVER:
If you're data has the potential to grow "a few GB a day" then you'll need a server chassis that can support many disks... I would say at least 7, possibly 14. Then get a SCSI/SAS controller and setup at least a 1 TB array... maybe more depending on how much space you actually do grow per day. You can also look into Direct Attach Storage and even SANs. File serving is not an intensive CPU or RAM type of thing. I'd say any CPU and 512 MB of RAM, but you could double that to be safe. You'd probably be better off with multiple gigabit NICs.

PRINT SERVER:
I had 160 printers running off a single box with no significant load. And this was a 500 MHz CPU with 1 GB of RAM (part of a cluster). So again, any server with 512 to 1 GB of RAM.

DOMAIN CONTROLLER:
I had 1000+ people logging in to 3 DCs - with processor RAM configs ranging from Dual 300 MHz/288 MB of RAM to 933 MHz/512 MB of RAM (and that spec was actually at the smallest site; newest machine). This WAS 2000 and 2003 does raise the bar - but it doesn't launch it into orbit. A basic server with 512-1 GB of RAM should be fine. Of course, for redundancy, you do want two DCs.

You can get varying levels of redundancy on the other equipment depending on how much money you have. If you implement a SAN you could use an Active-Active cluster and run file and print services off each cluster node with the other node as a backup for the current node's functions (meaning the print server runs off Node 1 but Node 2 can run things if Node 1 fails and Node 2 runs file sharing but Node 1 can act as a backup to Node 1). You DO still have a single point of failure - though SANs tend to be more reliable than Windows/PC hardware.

 

[ilovecocks]

@lw
thank you that is all i needed to hear, we are running a DAS with 15 disks (1 as hot swap) in raid 5 or 0/1, still haven't decided yet. We have two servers with, 4 duo core 2 processers and 8gb of ram each. So i guess we are fine with this, both redundant and both attached to the DAS. They are going to be running redundant with the above and exchange aswell in VMWare virtual center.

Thank you for your help, that is all i needed to know.