Re: Server Uprade - Need Advice

Tech Tip: Click here to run a free scan for Windows Errors and optimize PC performance

Oh, and one more thing... If you are going to get all new, you may want to
install it yourself. It is not difficult, it will enhance your
understanding of the product, and give you some choices that the OEM's don't
have time for.

For a brief overview of the process, look here:

www.sbsrules.com

--
Larry


"Larry Struckmeyer" <lstruckmeyer(at)mis-wizards(dot)com> wrote in message
news:ege$SKQLIHA.2064@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Ken:

Once again, what Dell is suggesting is fine. But you asked for a second
opinion, so I jumped in.

A very old song had a line: "Fools jump in where wise men fear to tread".
:-)

see below.

"KenM" <KenM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9247060D-7458-4F95-A152-AFAF9CD27ABE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Larry, Ok, sorry for the replies in segments..

You wrote no third party packup software is necessary. Now, I questioned
the sales person from Dell about this. Saying that sbs had a backup
program
built into it and didn't understand why I'd need it. They wrote the
following to me in email.

"Yes, you need the Symantec suite. The SW bundle is basic, you need the
SBS backup SW for your exchange."

I was told that I couldn't backup exchange properly without it. I
currently
have been doing complete backups, but never have attempted to restore
anything. I really don't know for sure if I'm doing it right.

If you are using the SBS Wizards, you are "probably" making good backups,
but there is no way to tell unless you make test restores. You can run
the restore from SBS backup wizard or from NTBackup, BUT (yes, speaking
loudly), choose an alternate location, such as
d:\test_restore. Yes, the SBS backup, properly completed and verified and
occasionally tested, will backup an SBS server so that it could be
restored. Might require a bit more work, but there is nothing about it
that would cause data loss if it is done correctly. That is why you get
the daily reports.


Dell also
said that the external hard drive I was using was not a good idea because
it
was a single pin to read and write to the drive, and if that pin went
bad,
then I would have no backup, or wouldn't be able to recover. The drive
they
sold me was supposed to have multiple pins, and it was removable
cartridges.
I was getting 3, and they told me that best practice as to keep a monthly
backup, a weekly backup, and then use the other for a daily incremental
backup.

Was I told the wrong things???

No backup is valid until some or all of it is restored. Having said that,
no one that I know in the small business arena takes the time to test
restore every file on every backup. But you should test restore some
things some time. Most people like to see full backups every day, but you
can do what they said. I think I would get 2 hard drives, not 3, and 5
cartridges, not 3, but its your call. For external backup devices, USB
and Firewire are good, but ESATA is better.

Some of these removable devices are problematic to SBS backup, which may
be why they want you to get BE.

Great system... sell you hardware that requires that you buy software,
neither of which you really need.

At least one full backup, new enough that you would not go out of business
in case disaster struck your server (read fire, theft, storm damage etc)
should be off site at all times, and your business critical data that
changes frequently/daily, such as your accounting or sales data should be
copied to removable something and carried off site as well. So then, full
backups every day to removable media that is out of the building is the
best approach. Many only take Friday off site, and leave the rest. Some
only take end of the month off site.


You wrote about cpu usage, and you're right, my system is rarely using
much
of it's cpu.

Back to the three drives. They told me that the raid 5 would perform
better
than the raid 1. They did say that I would have 146gb of space,
something
about parity was mentioned. I'm basically looking to get a stable
system.
One that I get good performance out of, and one that is easy to get back
online if I experience a problem. From how I interpret your message,
having
a Raid 5 for the 3 drives is a waste, unless I were to have another two
drives running a raid 1 for the operating system. You think that I'd be
better off just running 2 drives and a raid 1.

"better off" is a relative thing. Peace of mind has great value. With
raid1, if one drives dies your ok. If two drives die, or the raid table
on the controller is hosed, your dead. With raid5, exactly the same is
true. Now there is raid6, which allows for 2 failures, but I would be more
comfortable with the OS on raid1 the data on another set of raid1, with a
universal hot spare. To a large extent that is financial, and to probably
to an equally large extent that is cause raid1 is more in my comfort zone
than raid5. I can easily break mirrors, replace drives, etc.

Putting everything on the
Raid 1 and just breaking it into separate partitions. Is that correct?

And even that has its issues. If you have a 100 GB data partition and use
half of it or 50 GB with 50 free, and your exchange db are 25 you have
room to run exchange utilities on the db is you have to. But if you break
up the drive so that your exchange db sit on a 35 GB partition and you
only have 10 gb free, you will not be able to run the utilities, as they
require that three be 110% free space on the partition holding the
database. Chances are you will never have to do this, and if you did you
could put in a spare drive and move them over, but you see the point.

In Windows Servers there are lots of issues, and in SBS servers they are
complicated by the "everything on one box" and budget restraints inherent
in the SMB space.

Once again, what Dell is suggesting is fine

Backup and Use the Wizards.

--
Larry


Thanks again!

Ken

"Larry Struckmeyer" wrote:

Hi Ken:

You have already purchased the unit and you want conformation of your
purchase decision? Or you are asking pre purchase questions? There
will be
many different opinions on this, and to the best of my knowledge, MS has
never released any "right size" recommendations.

The one thing that I would have suggested is that you *not* purchase OEM
software, but rather OPEN. It is less than xx months until the release
of
the next version, so I would strongly suggest Software Assurance at the
same
time.

I did not see any AV in your list. Lots of folks here prefer Trend CSM
for
SMB as the AV of choice. No third party backup software is necessary,
but
if you have a history with and are comfortable with BE, it should be
fine.

The rest is probably over-kill for your LAN. Have you opened task
manager
on your existing server and watched the processors? I doubt you see any
spikes approaching 50%. I don't see anything in your list that will
ever
cause the processors in your proposed system to do more than idle. The
concept of "faster" for email is not relevant, and QuickBooks does no
work
on the server, it just loads to your workstations. If you want to speed
up
the load times, consider GB nics and switches, not that you would really
notice the difference for QB or MS Office documents.

The concept of three drives is a bit mis leading. Assuming RAID5 you
have
the usable space of 2, or 146 GB. I personally don't see any
justification
for this unless you also have two in RAID1 for the OS. Otherwise, you
are
better served, imo, with two 146 GB drives in RAID1, since RAID5 will be
problematic if one of the 3 drives fails, and performance will become
severely degrade until the failed drive is replaced. If you feel you
can't
live without RAID5, consider a hot spare.

As for partitions, there are many opinions, likes, dislikes for this.
Given
"about" 146 of usable space, RAID1 or RAID5, I would consider 35 to 46
for
the OS, and the rest in one large partition. Alternatively, you could
split
it up to accommodate Exchange on one and WSUS on one and all user data
on
another.

For one nic or two, most go for the MS default of two and use the server
as
additional "security". Sort of like the layers of an onion, if you have
a
NAT router at the perimeter, and the server also doing NAT, you have two
"layers" of NAT that must be passed through. MS says that with the
addition
of ISA (SBS premium) the server and the LAN is (more) secure. But
others go
to one nic, and add a firewall appliance at the perimeter. If you use
one
nic, you should not use a simple NAT router such as a home level Linksys
BE
class router. Those are not firewalls. Sonic Wall and Watchguard are
examples of firewalls. For what it is worth, SBS Next will use one nic
only, no ISA on the same box, and will rely on a perimeter firewall.

The reliability and performance of the embedded NIC is up to DELL to
straighten out. I have never installed or managed SBS on a Dell, but
this
group often has issues with Broadcom NIC drivers, so you would want to
be
sure you had a version that works.

Having said all of that, you will be fine with what you have selected.
Just
don't expect your email to arrive more than a couple of nano-seconds
faster.
:-)

--
Larry


"KenM" <KenM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:C414E106-15BD-412E-894F-ED58195A0EB9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I'm replacing a Dell poweredge sc420 that I have used for a server for
the
past year and a half. I don't have a lot of experience with servers,
the
SC420 was my first attempt at running SBS2003. I want to make sure
that
I'm
purchasing something that will give me much better performance as well
as
reliability. My old machine has 2 80gb sata drives on a raid 1. Here
is
a
description of the new machine.
It's a poweredge 2900 with a Quad Core Xeon Processor E53352x4MB
Cache,
2.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB, I chose 4GB 667MHz (4X1GB), Dual Ranked Fully
Buffered
DIMMs vs 8x512. I don't know if I was better off with the single
ranked
512
or the dual ranked 1gb. I chose a Integrated SAS/SATA RAID 5 PERC
5/i
Integrated. I got 3 - 73GB 15K RPM Serial-Attach SCSI 3Gbps 3.5-in
HotPlug
HardDrives. I will be running Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 R2
with
SP2 Standard Edition. For a NIC I got Embedded Broadcom NetXtreme
II5708
GigabitEthernet NIC. I had them put a cd-rw/dvd drive in it. Also
getting
Redundant Power Supply with Dual Cords for PowerEdge 2900.
For backup I will be getting RD1000, Ext USB Drive with bundled SW,
and 3-
Removable Hard Disk Cartridge for RD1000, 80GB Native/ 160GB Comp.
Also
purchased Symantec Backup Exec v11d Small Business Server Suite.

Now is this a good setup? My network consists of 4 client computers
running
XP pro, and 3 network printers. All clients access the internet. We
also
connect to our computers from home using remote access. I plan on
adding
2
more clients eventually, but won't ever really need much more. We run
Quickbooks in multiuser environment, UPS Worldship, and we use Outlook
Office
for shared contact list, calendar, etc. Will this be much faster
than my
old machine which was a Pentium 4.

Also, Dell sets the entire thing up on one partition. In the past I
had
reconfigured (reinstalled) everything to put operating system on C:
partition, Data for exchange & fax & other shared files on D:
partition,
and
other program files like outlook, and client apps on e: partition. I
know
nothing about how raid 5 works. I just finally figured out raid 1.
should I
leave it the way it comes for now, or would I be better off starting
over
when I get it and reinstalling? Will it work the same as raid 1? In
the
past I created array ( build/clear it), then I install sbs, created
partitions and then completed install with the above partitions.

Also, NIC. Do I want 1 or 2. I'm real confused about the way to go
with
this. I've been reading the community a lot and I get mixed things.
And
am
I going to have problems with the NIC installed in that computer.

Any advise is appreciated.

Thanks, Ken








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