Pricing Small Business Servers
I just got through pricing the hardware, necessary upgrades and software to replace a 5-year old boat anchor of a server for a church with eight users. I decided for the sake of cost to go with a 3GHz Pentium 4 Home PC (eMachine, specifically) with a 200GB SATA drive, 512MB of memory and a 16x DVD Burner. The cost: $499. I added another Gig of memory and a second 200MB SATA drive for mirroring for $300 extra. After I add in the 3-year PC warranty, APC UPS, Windows 2003 Small Business Server (Charity), Symantec Antivirus with Groupware protection and a 300GB Maxtor OneTouch drive for backups, I should be sitting at a little over $2000. Still, I'm saving well over $1000 by not going with a server-class chassis.
I took a chance with the exact same solution for a ministry about three months ago and it is flat-out fast! It runs their Exchange mail, an eCommerce web site and a very active FTP area with ZERO downtime or performance problems. Has anyone else tried to make a bargain PC into a server like this?
posted by Stuart Cowen @ 12:25 AM
5 Comments:
Sounds interesting. Can't wait to hear how it turns out. I have a box I got from Walmart for $300 that I have been playing with Server 2k on. I need to add some memory for it.
dj
Why Symantec? I seem to recall both you and Jason Powell singing the praises of AVG not long ago. They have a server version and you can get a discount for churches. Send me an email for more info (I'm a reseller).
I have not personally tried this, although I am dying to do so. I am more a hacker geek than a real tech, and my job is Youth Ministry. I don't want to get our network too involved to the point that I have to think about it instead of my job.
Jason was hailing the greatness of AVG, I was cursing Norton Antivirus. Symantec's corporate solution is pretty good because it can do Excange mailbox scanning and spam filtering. However, I DO want more information, Mr. AVG Reseller. I'm officially adopting Brian Glass' philosohpy of using cheap tools to do great things.
Other than never touching an eMachine with a 10 foot pole ... I like your setup.
I'm actually getting ready to do something very similar for 2 outside clients. I'm using off-lease Optiplex GX260's so I know drivers will not be an issue. We run Server2003 on GX270's at GCC and they zip right along...these are not "production" level servers, but rather non-critical multi-function "servers".
The other part of my setup includes purchasing 2 identical GX260's ... for an extra $300 the client can now have really fast turn-around should a hardware failure occur. Just need enough time to slap the drives and ram in the other box and you're up and running.
What raid card you using or are you doing software raid?
Servers on the cheap are a great solution for small shops.
I'm also interested in getting solid AVG pricing from ya Chris.
have you ever heard of techsoup ( http://techsoup.org/ ) ? They do cheap licencing for charities and non-profit organisations - and I mean REALLY cheap. There are a couple of gotchas in that you are limited to the quantity of licences you can buy and their support means long phone calls (to be polite) but you will save lots of money.
The only problem with desktop cases can be the size of the psu's and the fans - servers may run a lot hotter as they are doing a lot more and may have heat issues - I guess it depends on the number of users.
Post a Comment
<< Home