Help on building a small business server

[tkelly911]

Using the superb guidance in this forum, I have sucessfully constructed two high end personal PC's which worked perfectly from the first start up.

But now I have a much more ambitious project. I would like to build a server for my law practice for website, applications and email functions. There would be at the most only five users. I currently pay a lot of money for a remotely hosted server, so in building such a device I will not worry about cost.

I am aware of the additional complexity involved in not only building but in managing a server but I have the time to learn. Of the Microsoft products I have looked at, SBS seems to fit the profile best, although I know I will need additional software to host a website as well.

The security and integrity of my data is very important but that which must be protected has a small footprint, and can easily be backed up by almost any means.

I have looked at other threads regarding servers and I have not seen any request comparable. I am not looking for a "budget" build at all. But the problem is that unlike when I used the guidance here to sucessfully build my PC's I had plenty to go on. I have no idea where to start in terms of recommended components for a server versus a single user PC.

I would appreciate any advice or help in that direction.

[glc]

Before I give you recommendations on hardware for a server, I'd like to suggest that you think twice about hosting your own website and email. Good commercial hosting is dirt cheap these days - you can get everything you need for 5 bucks a month. I'd recommend that you build the server with only your LAN needs in mind. SBS would be an excellent choice, and you will need Windows Professional on all the workstations in order to be able to join your domain - Home versions can't do this.

[tkelly911]

GLC,

I last implemented email/website/LAN back in 2003, so I was completely unaware of the availability of services mentioned, and I can see you are absolutely correct in saying I need not concern myself with email/website hosting when affordable solutions abound. I was amazed at the available options and I will pursue this avenue.

So I would like to take you up on any suggestions for a server to address just my applications and data storage using SBS, without the concern for email and site hosting.

I don't mean to be too repetitive in thanking you, but your simple post has no doubt saved me untold expense and aggravation in trying to accomplish myself what I can affordably purchse. Thank you.

[glc]

Okay - here's an entry-level "server grade" system that will give you plenty of expansion room and will allow you to run RAID 5 for true server data integrity. I'm not going to address a backup system, which you certainly do need to plan out.

Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER RC-692-KKN3 CM690 II Basic Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Newegg.com - Antec EarthWatts EA-500D Green 500W ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Newegg.com - ASUS P8B-X LGA 1155 Intel C202 ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server Motherboard

Newegg.com - Intel Xeon E3-1220 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 80W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80623E31220

Newegg.com - Kingston 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/4G

Newegg.com - Western Digital RE4 WD5003ABYX 500GB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive (4)

Newegg.com - LG Black 22X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD-RAM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA DVD±RW SuperMulti Drive - CD / DVD Burners

PROVANTAGE: Adaptec 2271100-R 6405 RAID 0/1/10 SATA 512MB PCIE 3.3/12V MD2/LP SFF-8087/1 Int Kit with Cable

[Tin]

I think a quad core is overkill for a low-traffic server with 5 users. Especially because its going to primarily be used for storage purposes. You can do just fine running a dual core and save yourself some money. If you planned on running the services you posted originally, I can see it. From what Ive seen, most storage/backup servers sit there idling away most of the time because theyre severely over-spec'd. I recently built a Supermicro Atom D510 server running CentOS for my brothers office using the Adaptec glc linked above. He has 8 client computers on his network. Running SFTP, workstation backups, and file storage, it hardly presents a load to the CPU. Id also look into RAID 6 over RAID 5, as theres better fault tolerance. You can lose 2 drives in the array vs RAID 5. The downside to RAID 6 is slower write performance due to there being more parity calculations, but the security is worth it. The read performance is about the same as RAID 5. The card glc linked is capable of RAID 6. Just some food for thought.

[Jeri]

Why is a RAID card necessary? Doesn't the board support RAID?

[jdeb]

Originally Posted by Jeri Why is a RAID card necessary? Doesn't the board support RAID?

Here is a link for a pretty good breakdown of your question.
http://www.adaptec.com/nr/rdonlyres/..._hwraid_10.pdf

[glc]

I don't trust motherboard RAID 5, especially in a mission-critical server. I will only use a true hardware-based RAID card in servers.

Tin, RAID 6 is very inefficient with only 4 drives, and that's only a 4 port card.

[Tin]

In my experience, RAID 5 will mainly prove useful when running a hot spare or 2. Once a drive dies, it can be a very long process to rebuild the array. If you have a hot spare, you can just pop it in and go. Once a drive dies, read and write performance is severely degraded. The same goes for RAID 6. The OP may also wish to look into RAID 10, as it offers better redundancy (1 drive per sub-array). The downside to RAID 10 is that you lose half of your usable space, but the overall data security is inherently better.

[Preston]

Originally Posted by glc I don't trust motherboard RAID 5, especially in a mission-critical server. I will only use a true hardware-based RAID card in servers

Funny thing...until I started reading about servers (for my home server build project), I always assumed that "onboard" RAID meant that the motherboard controller was a hardware controller. So much for my assumptions.