Need help from IT mags

[Goniff]

Our outside IT company just told me that our nearly 5 year old Dell server is nearing the end of its warranty and we should replace it with a new one for approximately $14,000. It's running Windows Small Business 2008 and Exchange.

It more than meets the needs of our small office of 9 people. The server is running fine except for a problem with the raid software which is dropping one of the drives every now and then. The IT company has been unable to resolve the problem with Dell. The IT company says the raid software should be replaced with a raid hardware solution. Rather than just fix this one problem, they are recommending an entirely new server. They say a five year old server is at the end of its life and cannot be relied upon.

Note also we are strongly considering moving our in-house e-mail to a hosted Exchange server. Thus, our server would really just be used for sharing files, backups, and network security.

Is my IT company giving me good advice?

[wooley12]

I think all the techies hang out in the Padded room on Fridays.

[auxym]

Disclaimer: I'm not an IT pro or even have any IT training of any sort. Just a guy who spent a bit too much time messing with computers. Random thoughts:

From what I gather these days, soft raid is geerally preferred over hardware. Or at least, such is the case in the ZFS world. No idea for microsoft. Going hardware could be an easy-ish patch. What raid software are you guys running? Have your IT guys talked with the company that actually makes the raid stuff?

14k seems like an awful lot for a file server for 9 people. A quick look on dell.com gets me something that is way too much server (for this purpose) for under half that. Likely a good idea to get your email as a service (from google or whatev). Backup on the same server sounds sketchy. Seriously consider offsite backup, could be from backblaze or whatever.

[Bobcat Sig]

Disclaimer: I'm not an IT pro or even have any IT training of any sort. Just a guy who spent a bit too much time messing with computers. Random thoughts:

From what I gather these days, soft raid is geerally preferred over hardware. Or at least, such is the case in the ZFS world. No idea for microsoft. Going hardware could be an easy-ish patch. What raid software are you guys running? Have your IT guys talked with the company that actually makes the raid stuff?

14k seems like an awful lot for a file server for 9 people. A quick look on dell.com gets me something that is way too much server (for this purpose) for under half that. Likely a good idea to get your email as a service (from google or whatev). Backup on the same server sounds sketchy. Seriously consider offsite backup, could be from backblaze or whatever.

Disclaimer: I am not an IT guy, either. I did run the systems for a Broadcasting outfit and now sell technology.

Definitely the right track. Hell, nearly everything you are asking for can be virtualized and hosted off-site with no worry about the hardware. The hosted exchange server is right path; do so with everything else.

[Goniff]

^^Thanks for the help. I've been messing with computers since my first Commodore 64 but have no formal training. I should have specified the quote for the new Dell server is actually $5,300. The addition of Windows Server 2012 and Exchange Server 2013 and associated licenses and taxes bring it up to $9,300. The IT guy quoted an additional $5,700 for labor to set up the new server. The total = $15,000.

With respect to raid, the IT guy said they have had loads of problems with the software raid and are recommending hardware raid to all of their clients. I'm not sure whether they have spoken to the manufacturer of the raid stuff. I know they have spent countless hours on the phone with Dell trying to resolve the problem. Offsite backup sounds like a good idea.

I am curious about hosting our files on the internet. Right now when I open a 20 MB PDF file saved on my server in my office, it opens instantly. What would the speed be like if the file were saved on a file sharing service on the internet? We have very fast Time Warner business class cable.

[MontuckyFried]

Our outside IT company just told me that our nearly 5 year old Dell server is nearing the end of its warranty and we should replace it with a new one for approximately $14,000. It's running Windows Small Business 2008 and Exchange.

It more than meets the needs of our small office of 9 people. The server is running fine except for a problem with the raid software which is dropping one of the drives every now and then. The IT company has been unable to resolve the problem with Dell. The IT company says the raid software should be replaced with a raid hardware solution. Rather than just fix this one problem, they are recommending an entirely new server. They say a five year old server is at the end of its life and cannot be relied upon.

Note also we are strongly considering moving our in-house e-mail to a hosted Exchange server. Thus, our server would really just be used for sharing files, backups, and network security.

Is my IT company giving me good advice?

Just 9 people? Hell, a 2012 Mac Mini Server could suit your outfits needs. Sounds like your IT company is trying to rip you guys off. 5 years isn't that old either. What's the big deal if it's out of warranty. Is a warranty worth 14k? Maybe to some, but I certainly wouldn't spend that much. Even if you guys decide to pony up for a new setup, there are definitely more economical options out there.

[LiveLarger]

As a devops engineer for a major website I can chime in, but this depends a lot on need and risk. Is this server mission critical? Will you guys lose money if it goes down? Will you be able to work?

If it's critical, then yes, a five year old server is old. It may last for 30 years, but it usually won't. Failure rate increase exponentially from around 5 years. For mission critical hardware, we cycle servers every three years.

If it isn't critical, I'd say fuck it, make sure you have backups of everything and just let it run.

I also recommend hw raid instead for software raid. You as a user, won't notice much difference, but it is guaranteed to make those IT people more happy. You generally want to keep them happy as you have top priority when failure happen. And they do and will happen.

Edit: I have to add, just for rant that I wouldn't buy a Dell server at all. It's pure trash. You generally get Grade A HW from IBM and Supermicro. HP is mediocre and Dell flat out suck. You will find that a lot of IT folks will tell you the same.

[Goniff]

As a devops engineer for a major website I can chime in, but this depends a lot on need and risk. Is this server mission critical? Will you guys lose money if it goes down? Will you be able to work?

If it's critical, then yes, a five year old server is old. It may last for 30 years, but it usually won't. Failure rate increase exponentially from around 5 years. For mission critical hardware, we cycle servers every three years.

If it isn't critical, I'd say fuck it, make sure you have backups of everything and just let it run.

I also recommend hw raid instead for software raid. You as a user, won't notice much difference, but it is guaranteed to make those IT people more happy. You generally want to keep them happy as you have top priority when failure happen. And they do and will happen.

The server is mission critical because it hosts our e-mail and we can't function without it. If we moved the e-mail to a hosted Exchange, we could probably live a couple of days without the server if we could access needed files off of a backup tape while the server was being repaired.

[LiveLarger]

If you are nine people, I wouldn't host email in house. It could and probably should be moved to a cloud.

[mall walker]

If you are nine people, I wouldn't host email in house. It could and probably should be moved to a cloud.

Agreed. Also, is there any reason you specifically need the MS server licenses? $4k for licensing on a box that just hosts shared files / backups (assuming you move to a hosted email service) seems totally absurd to me. You could run some sort of Linux server and manage your backups/shared files that way. I am not aware of a reason why you couldn't run a large NTFS partition on say a Debian server although I could be wrong. Then you're just talking about a box / possibly some setup cost.

Edit: this is assuming you replace the hardware at all.

[Skidog]

Get a dell r720 kick up the ram and drives you'll likely keep it under $7k or less. Move your exchange to office 365 the migration path is easy I've done it for 50+ users from I'm house exchange. Full blown in house exchange for 9 people is overkill.
IT co is trying to sell you something even more overkill. Check dells refurb good deals and warranty. Might think about virtualizing stuff too. Hyper v or VMware you'll use the server much more efficiently.
I do this for a living I did not stay in a holiday inn express last night.
Good luck. Pme if u want to talk through solutions.

[sethschmautz]

What kind of a business is this? How much data (not including email) is currently taking up space on your server? Where do you live? How fast and reliable is your Internet access? What would happen to your business if you lost the files on your server? What would happen to your business if the Internet went down at your office and your email was no longer accessible?. What other mission critical software are you running? Any of those accessing data on your server?

We're all arm Ccair quarter backing here, so the more data we have, the better. My company has grown from 4 to roughly 90 people and we are still running Microsoft SBS (although not for long). I agree with others on here that hosted email and maybe even cloud storage would be worth looking into. Even hosted voice, to be honest. However, if your data and email is Mission critical and you move those to the cloud, you'd better think about redundant paths to the Interwebz.

Seth

[timeo]

Not an IT guy but I am responsible for our company's IT needs, w/ 11 employees.

Agree to move the email to a hosted solution but make SURE you have proper bandwidth. When you make this switch, every email is going out on your pipe, including internal emails. If someone sends a 10MB file to 5 people internally you are pushing 60MB thru your pipe and it has to leave and then come back five times, all at the same time. We had a T-1 which ended up being too slow as we send a lot of large files. We ended up adding a Comcast business line in addition to the T-1.

Then just replace that server for about $5-$7k for hosting files w/ a hardware RAID and a cloud backup like Carbonite or Backblaze for additional redundancy.

[Snow Dog]

A while back I interviewed with a multi-national that ran it's local R&D office on a Windows 98 machine. As long as you have a solid (tested) backup strategy all you need is a thousand dollar computer with lots of storage. And a backup system handy. If email is your concern I pay a hosting company $8 a month for unlimited email and storage. Or you can use an email service like zoho or gmail as your mail server while keeping your domain name.

[stuckathuntermtn]

SBS sucks and you have to put Exchange on it, which is otherwise against best practice. They actually got rid of SBS. The reason your getting disk errors is because you're running SBS which is the domain controller and the email server, and possibly because that's running on a software raid. Again, DC and Exchange on the same server is bad. At least all the built in error correction saves you.
Office 365 is a pretty great service and it's cheap. Doesn't sound like you need a $14,000 server. I'd say migrate to Office 365 and get a new file server in the next year or 2.
It sounds like you need a new managed services provider.
I will say this though in their defense: 5 years is generally the life cycle for office tech. That said, people push it way past that.

[stuckathuntermtn]

Oh, sorry, that is kinda incoherent. SBS sucks. You're supposed to have email and dc on separate servers, but you can't with SBS. That and the admin console that doesn't work with AD and can conflict with it and fuck it up is awesome.

[Goniff]

Thanks all. Much to digest. It seems there is a consenus to move the e-mail to a hosted server like Office 365. Speedtest shows 14 Mbps down and 1.8 Mbps over our Time Warner business class service.

Our combined mailboxes currently hold about 100 Gb. If we move to Office 365, loss of internet at our office for a short period of time would not be a big problem because we could still get-e-mail on our mobile devices, which could also be tethered to our desktops to provide internet access. 4G access in our office is strong. I think loss of internet at our office is an even bigger problem with Exchange on our own server because we lose all access to e-mail.

It also appears there is a consensus that a 5 year old server should be replaced in the near future. Assuming we buy a new server, is there any reason to upgrade to a newer version of SBS if our current 2008 version is only being used for sharing files, network security, print server, and tape backup?

We have 175 Gb of data spread over three 500 Gb drives managed by the raid software. Our mission-critical data are almost all Word docs and PDFs. If we keep the old server but switch to a hardware raid, should we replace the three drives with new ones? I assume drives are the most likely component to fail in a 5 year old server? Our IT guy said switching to the hardware raid is a labor intensive task because the server has to be rebuilt. Perhaps it does not make sense to pay for this labor and then have to pay for it all over again two years later if we get a new server.

I signed up for Backblaze and am testing it now. This seems like a good solution because if our server crashed, we would be able to quickly recover the individual files we had been working on and restore them to our desktops. At any given time, we probably have at most only 50 documents saved on the server that would need to be restored if the server crashed.

No one said much about saving our files in the cloud instead of on our office server. Is cloud storge in real time too slow? I am not sure my IT guy would encourge this solution as it would make him almost obsolete.

[RShea]

First off the Raid issue and software could in fact be the problem. Software raid on MS Servers is not very reliable (as you are finding out) and hardware is usually more reliable and better solution. SBS 2008 Standard edition is a solid product, but SBS 2011 Standard is the last version that Exchange is included and has been discontinued by Microsoft. Microsoft's solution is Server 2012 Essentials- which is the Server package that allows up to 25 users. However the Exchange is expected to be hosted in the Cloud (Office 365)- which you mentioned there was discussions on doing anyways. Unless the company is growing very fast, Microsoft Server 2012 Essentials is probably a viable solution instead of Server 2012 Standard at the higher pricing quoted with the Exchange licenses. Server 2012 Standard edition would allow you to turn up a local copy of Exchange instead of the Hosted Exchange though if you do not go to the cloud with the Exchange email.

As for keeping the old server hardware- you have to ask yourself if the $5300 for a new server is an expense justified vs just replacing the Raid (new Dell perc hardware raid controller or whatever) and some new hard drives- since the old drives are getting to the point that they probably are harder to find matching models and as you state most likely to be the most failure prone going forward. How important is reducing the down time or being able to work even when the TWC connection is out and you have everyone sitting there waiting for the service tech?

Cloud storage of the documents (if in fact they are only Word and PDF stuff) could be done- depending on the speed of your internet connection (TWC speeds quoted down would probably be fine, upload could be OK or a bit low depending on how many users would be sending the data back to the hosted server). If nothing else a the server crashed then you could probably have a hosted cloud solution with a good backup strategy.

Finally if there is no Line of Business application that requires the Microsoft Server (Database, etc.) then you could also investigate a local NAS just for the files storage (still could be Raid configured)- typically they are running Linux based OS and just fine for small file sharing.... No mention of the printer sharing (sounds like you have the existing server being used for LAN file sharing, Exchange email, and probably some sort of printer sharing.

One other thing is moving everything to the cloud would greatly reduce your up front expenses ($5k to maybe $10K for a new server and the time to migrate the data...) but ongoing fees Monthly, quarterly or annual depending on the company selected for the cloud and their billing cycles. Part of the issue would be if you have an ongoing contract for support with the IT company... proactive Managed Services type of updates for the local workstations and backup monitoring, antivirus, etc. does not go away for the local systems, so someone has to be in charge of do this.

[Skidog]

Fuck that "it guy" seems its already been determined he's trying to rape you. FYI server rebuild should be a flat rate IMHO not hours based. Agree 5 years is server life cycle, then it moves to a qa/QC type role as that's less mission critical. Mostly good info for you in this thread. With office 365 you'll get cloud storage. Its not slow unless your files are fucking huge.

[stuckathuntermtn]

Which is odd, because the markup on computers isn't much. Maybe they have some special. There is no SBS anymore (thankfully), you'd just get Server 2013. I bet migrating all those users and files to it will suck because SBS admin console doesn't use AD. Ugh. I HATE SBS.
Office 365 makes migrating from Exchange and integrating with AD easier. I think. I've never done it. It's a good deal if you go with that and a small file server. Waaaaay less than $14,000.

[sethschmautz]

I think RShea's advice is solid. While Stuck obviously doesn't like SBS, there are many who use it and it works fine. As I said, we are at 90 employees (not all Domain users) and we're just outgrowing it. We do Exchange (very large), SharePoint (very large), AD, WSUS, etc. on that box and we've been avoiding upgrading due to licensing costs. SBS is an inexpensive way to run a lot of those applications. We also have a very talented Systems Admin...

I think the idea of going with Essentials and hosted Exchange is a good one, and it sounds like you have a backup plan for Internet Access in the event your main connection gets severed. I think you're on the right track.

If it were me, however, indeed think about whether you need server software at all, or if you could get away with a large NAS with hardware RAID, cloud backup, and managing each computer individually...

Seth

[RShea]

SBS sucks and you have to put Exchange on it, which is otherwise against best practice. They actually got rid of SBS. The reason your getting disk errors is because you're running SBS which is the domain controller and the email server, and possibly because that's running on a software raid. Again, DC and Exchange on the same server is bad. At least all the built in error correction saves you.
You're supposed to have email and dc on separate servers, but you can't with SBS. That and the admin console that doesn't work with AD and can conflict with it and fuck it up is awesome.

How many SBS installs have you done? Big companies best practices states having separate servers for primary Domain Controller and the Exchange server- but SBS has just worked fine for the over 15 years I have used it starting with SBS 4.5, then SBS versions 2000, 2003, 2008, etc.

Same people that state do not put Exchange on the primary Domain Controller are the same ones that want 2 different Domain Controllers also. As for the you can't do that with SBS- that was true in earlier years, but today you could do a SBS 2011 license and the Premium add-on license, and with the extra Server Standard license and virtualize servers on the same box to do it the best practices way, but for a under 10 user company that is really OVERKILL (unless they need the SQL or other benefits of the Premium).

[RShea]

Which is odd, because the markup on computers isn't much. Maybe they have some special. There is no SBS anymore (thankfully), you'd just get Server 2013. I bet migrating all those users and files to it will suck because SBS admin console doesn't use AD. Ugh. I HATE SBS.
Office 365 makes migrating from Exchange and integrating with AD easier. I think. I've never done it. It's a good deal if you go with that and a small file server. Waaaaay less than $14,000.

SBS since can ONLY use Active Directory (no workgroup mode like Standard server can do) There is no Server 2013, either, never will be- it is MS Server 2012 available in 4 flavors- Foundation, Essentials, Standard, and Data Center editions. The migration costs between local server and cloud Exchange would be the same- transfer the email over to another server either way!!
Exchange on the Server has to have Active Directory - every exchange server has to be using Active Directory- but again best practices is to provide for at least two separate domain controllers , and optionally, additional domain controllers for performance or redundancy, a separate file server, a separate Exchange server, a separate SQL Server and neither be the primary domain controller.
So please quit posting advice about something you admit you have never done.

[evilwilson]

I work for an IT consulting firm that specializes in data center solutions. As I am sure you will now realize you are going to get many different options and most of them will work just fine. You just need to decide what works best for you. Here are my thoughts. Yes that price is way to high. I just priced out a server for a small business client that I have. They are about the same size as you guys. It came in at around 7k including all software and hardware upgrades as required. I like hardware RAID better than software for ease of use and performance reasons and I typically recommend a 3-5 year replacement cycle for the hardware.

I agree with moving email to the cloud for a company your size. I have had really good luck with Office 365.

For backup I really like the barracuda backup appliance. The drawback to most, not all, cloud based backup products is that in the event of a disaster restores can take longer because all of your data needs to be sent over the Internet. Barracuda solves this problem by allowing to backup to their appliance locally and the data is transmitted to 3 separate data centers across the U.S. In the event of a server failure data can be restored from the local copy, in the event of a building disaster data can be restored from the internet. The best of both worlds.

I like the idea of cloud based file services but you have a very valid point on file sizes. If you work with a lot of large files it will take them longer to open from a cloud based service.

Just my two cents
-Evilwilson

[stuckathuntermtn]

No, SBS has that damn console and you look at the server and some techs have added users thru that and some users did thru AD and 1 list wouldn't show both. It's fucking stupid.