how to buy a server for first time buyers?

Answer 1

Here is a quick overview:

When you are buying a server you need to look down the road as far as you expect it to last, and anticipate your needs. If you are a company of 5 employees and this 1 server will be your e-mail, file sharing, web hosting, firewall, Internet Connection Sharing and print server where will your company be in 3 years? Do you expect to still be at 5 employees? or will you be at 25 employees.

The reasoning is this, a small company can sometimes get away without having a server, just using a powerful workstation to do some tasks, like a file server or print server. Or better yet get a dedicated print server, such as netgear or linksys, and a dedicated networked attached file server, same brands. These devices are easier to manage, and require less administrative skills then a small business server.

If you are bringing your e-mail and web hosting server in house, instead of having it hosted by an isp then you need to be aware of "redundancy." This is having a backup plan in case the primary server has issues. Any server can crash, overheat, shutdown or require a restart for a number of reason. But if your clients and customers are expecting that website to load 100% of the time, you need to have a backup plan. This includes the internet connection itself. If you dsl line goes down your website goes down. If you are running a ecommerce store every second that site is down you are potentially loosing money.

So to answer your question,

CPU: Dual Core Intel® Xeon® 5050; 2X2MB Cache, 3.0GHz, 667MHZ FSB

RAM: 4GB 533MHz (4x1GB), Dual Ranked Fully Buffered DIMMs

STORAGE: Drive 1: 500GB, SATA II, 3.5-inch, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive Drive 2: 500GB, SATA II, 3.5-inch, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive
Optical Drive: 48X CD-RW/DVD ROM Drive

RAID turned on, allowing mirroring of the drives, incase of drive failure.

OPERATING SYSTEM: Microsoft Small Business Server or Fedora, Centos, Redhat Linux, Suse etc.

UPS: You need atleast 30 minutes of runtime off battery backup.

TAPE STORAGE: you should be able to backup all your future data needs onto a single tape, so if that is 100 Gig of data, then you need atleast 100 gig tapes.

SUPPORT: you should look for at least 1 year onsite support if this is your first server. Phone support is nice, but to have a tech come out and repair the system will prevent want to be system administrators from making big mistakes.


Now, once you get this all picked out, order 2. That way you have a backup. Never let everything rest inside of 1 box.

Answer 2

You're spending thousands of dollars in hardware and software for an asset that will become critical to your business. If you're asking this question, it would be foolish to make this decision without expert help. Most IT firms will provide their advice for free, in return for selling and setting up your system. The good ones will first ask you what you want the server to do, then build the system around your needs, rather that try to fit your business around their product.
So... what do you want this server to do? Host a website? e-mail? file sharing? data backup? application programs? remote access? run a domain? internet access? security/antivirus/managed updates? What you do and how you do it determines the system you need.
How many users are going to access it? How often and with what programs? (We'd need to know how much processor to build, what type and size of hard drives, how much memory, etc.)
How skilled are your users? How critical is it going to be to have the server running 24/7 (how much redundancy do we need to build into the system?) What kind of tech support will you want? What is your budget (cost/benefit ratio).
If we understand your business, and your needs, we can build something tailored exactly to your business.

Or you can call Dell, HP or Best Buy, talk to some salesman or clerk who knows less than you, and get whatever they happen to be pushing that month.

Answer 3

Your not being very specific. What type of server. Print, File, Domain Controller,Web, Apps? What OS Linux or Windows. How many clients will be connecting?

Answer 4

Hire a consultant who can help you choose the right hardware and design your network properly.