SBS 2003 Premium R2 Hardware Upgrade - Advice sought!

We are now running SBS 2003 Premium Release 2 with SQL 2005.

The system it runs on seems to be struggling in the CPU area and I'd
appreciate some advice on a way forward. For information, the current
config is:

Dual Pentium III 966 Mhz Processors
2.0 Gb RAM
2 (Mirrored) 80 Gb HDD - 50% Used

We cannot add more memory to this motherboard and processor usage
during the day seem to be 70-100%.

We have two SQL Database applications, one of which is new, plus the
usual Exchange e-mail, and a push e-mail application.

I presume we have two basic options:

1) Get a second server and offload some of the applications on to it,
or,
2) Upgrade to a bigger, faster server.

The advantage of 1) would seem to be more fallback capability, but the
disadvantage would be having to SBS operating systems, licenses, etc.

Any thoughts?

I'd be particularly interested in any recommendations for minimum
config for option 2).

TIA

JohnK
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Newbie in Clustering
    ... Principal SQL Infrastructure Consultant ... Microsoft SQL Server MVP ... > the first server and no one on the second server. ...
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  • Re: SBS 2003 Premium R2 Hardware Upgrade - Advice sought!
    ... With R2 he won't need CALs, however, if he moves SQL or Exchange over to a second server. ... 2nd server it can't be an SBS OS and you can't take any of the SBS applications such as Exchange or SQL and put those on a 2nd server-you need additional licenses etc. I'd look at option 2 and utilize a swing migration to accomplish the move to new hardware. ... One thing to look at is which processes are really using the CPU, and see if there's an easy way to offload some of those functions to a second server. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
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