Re: Need help... upgrade or new server?
- From: "MSR Consulting" <mattridings@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 19 Feb 2007 13:57:02 -0800
On Feb 19, 2:57 pm, Danny <D...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Here's our situation-
We currently have SBS 2003 running on a Dell PowerEdge 1800. Dual 3.2Ghz
Xeon's, 2GB of RAM, and a RAID-1 with 73GB Hard Drives (SCSI of course). I'll
assume those are the key spec's needed, if any other specs are important, let
me know.
Our network currently has about 15 users on it, and I expect that within the
next 3-4 years, a maximum of 5 more may be added. I dont see us going over 20
users anytime soon.
The SBS server currently runs Exchange, acts as a file/printer server, and
also runs Symantec Anti-Virus Corporate Edition as well as Veritas Backup
Exec 9.1. We use OWA, and I'll occassionally VPN in from home, but not
frequently. Oh, and we also run WinAmp which handles our music on hold for
the telephone system.
I now want to add an email archiving software, MailArchiver by GFI, which
will require the use of SQL (Workgroup Edition of SQL 2005). This
MailArchiver program itself uses minimal system resources. SQL is of course a
different story.
I am thinking of adding another 2GB of RAM (to have a total of 4, the max
allowed by SBS 2003), and a second RAID 1 (two new hard drives dedicated to
the exchange store, as well as the emails archived). I could also do a RAID 5
setup if that's somehow more efficient?
Our exchange store is currently about 12GB in size, and we have another 15GB
or so of PST's that will be migrated to the archive system. I except about
2-3GB per year added to the size of the archive.
Will these hardware upgrades be sufficient? Or am I starting to load up too
many services and going to experience reliability/performance issues? I know
that our hardware exceeds Microsoft "minimum" and "recommended" specs, but
right now our network is very fast and I'd like to keep it that way if at all
possible.
Our technical support company has highly recommended we get a second server
running Windows Server 2003 Standard, and use that as a member server and
migrate over some of the services... but that would add another $6k or more
in cost and will be very difficult to get approved by the company.
On one hand, I have issues of a budget constraint, on the other hand, I dont
want to overtax our server by running too many processor/memory intensive
services, and by all accounts, SQL is memory intensive.
Any thoughts, suggestions & comments are greatly appreciated.
GFI MailArchiver uses more resources than you might expect, not as
much as MailEssentials mind you but still quite a bit, particularly
over time as the users become proficient with doing searches, etc. for
archived email. However your specs are just fine with or without the
memory upgrade except I would go ahead with adding the additional
drives and place the SQL db for MailArchive on that drive...but not
move the Exchange store. As MailArchive is simply a journal off of
Exchange it will be processing the email data at roughly the same time
as Exchange, so splitting the locations of the Exchange Store and the
MailArchive DB will give you better performance than having them both
on the same drive as there won't be as much competition for the I/O.
-matt
.
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