A question about servers?

Question

An intel core 2 duo processor with a 256 mb high end Graphics card and 2 Gb Ram can serve how many PC's Simultaneously with all
its resources?

Answer 1

Depends upon what the server is doing.

First off, chuck the high-end graphics card. It's useless on a server. Substitute more RAM instead.

If the server is just doing network authentication (Windows Active Directory Domain Controller, for example) it can support several thousand PCs and users. I've seen a single box support over 10,000 users and rarely hit 50% utilization.

If it's just supporting file shares your network bandwidth is going to be more of a limiting factor though several hundred should be possible depending upon the usage levels involved.

If you're serving up remote desktops with basic office applications via terminal services you should be able to support up to about 25 PCs if you kick the RAM up to 4 GB.

If you're supporting high end engineering apps via terminal services, 3 or 4 may be your limit.

If you're running Exchange Server, you should be able to support about 1,500 mailboxes and users with 4GB of RAM.

If you're running a simple POP3 server you should be able to support up to 4 or 5 thousand mailboxes and users, again with 4 GB of RAM.

As you can see, there's no set answer. It all depends upon what you're trying to do.

Answer 2

it totally depends upon your ram. see if you are planning to do as you say, then graphics card is useless as it would just take up 256 MB from you ram. answer these questions to yourself...

1. You need atleast a t1 connection speed.
2. check down for a antivirus and firewall, it is the most important.
3. make it as a standalone server and try to access your server from the other PC.

Try to invest more on ram, i think you can be a host soon.

Answer 3

It depends on your applications but a high end video card is a waste of money. You would be better off putting that money into more memory and making sure the processor has the most internal cache available.