Company wants to purchase new server(s).

Hey TE,

My IT Manager has put me in charge of researching, presenting, implementing new server(s) at our company. Might possibly get opportunities to do server implementations for customers also. I have less than a year experience, so I'm in a "Baptism by fire" kind of situation. I'll have to present to the IT Manager, General Manager, and Director of Operations (Owner) at the end of this month. So the pressure is on for me to find them the best solution.

What my IT Manager has directed:

Here are the details of what I would like in the purchasing of new server technologies:

Use 3 categories:
1. Best Solution
2. Mid Solution
3. Low Solution

Rank each server off of price from most expensive to least expensive into each category.

Within each category list the:
· Brand name: I would prefer Dell but I am open to other alternatives based off of the price, quality and standards. Your research may prove us NOT to purchase Dells.
· Make/Model: Just to support the Brand Name
· Price: As stated highest to lowest
· Pros and Cons: See Below
· Your Opinion: Need your honest opinion, you will be responsible for managing these and you will need to tools to make everything 100%. Need your gut instinct.

Note: I only require that each server MUST be rack mountable, into our current rack.

Categories to take into consideration for Pros/Cons:
· Hardware Expansion: How will these servers accommodate adding new hardware to it? Ie. Can we add more RAM, NIC’s, whatever…
· Virtualization: Best suited for expansion and accommodating more virtualization (very important)
· Scalability: How will these servers work with us as we head into a 3 year to 6 year solution.
· Easy-to-use: Will there be a lot of complications with setup? Will there be add-on’s we need to purchase to make it more complete?
· Disaster recovery: What provides the best and least amount of solutions to mitigate downtime.
· Best hardware life: How are these ranked based off of longevity? Can we get a lower quality product last as long as the top level product? Note: this may be hard to find.
Intangibles: What does this server have or do not have that would make it a good purchase or a bad purchase. Is there something that alerts us if a server is down?

Additional details:

My IT Manager also wants to implement an Exchange server. We are/will be running MS Dynamics CRM and AX. Sharepoint. As he stated, I'll be the one managing this stuff.

Anyone have any suggestions on server technologies? Brand preferences? Any questions that I should be asking myself?

This is a huge undertaking for me as I have limited IT experience, but it seems to be a very, very good learning experience. I'm not looking for anyone to give me all the answers. Just some guidance and/or mentoring.

Thanks in advance!

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Comments

rapyoke

Without knowing price range (i.e. $3k or $30k) and intended use (i.e. what will be run on it) it's really very difficult to give you recommendations. My baseline suggestion would be to get two fairly beefy boxes (for high-availability) and put a hypervisor (ESXi or XenServer) on them. The basic versions are totally free and still incredibly powerful, so there's really no excuse not to.

If your budget allows, I'd also look into SAN's.

joehalford01

We use dell pretty much exclusively. They are easy to work with, you can review all the specs and purchase it without talking to a sales guy, they have awesome business credit, and the machines themselves are good quality. I can tell you one thing for sure, as I was in your shoes not too long ago. You will be tempted to purchase lower end hard drives, the prices of SAS 10K and 15K drives can be hard to stomach. Remember, this is a server. You need server grade hardware.
The R710's are very nice machines, I think they've replaced them with an R720 now but I'm not sure. How many users do you have? A couple of these servers with the right amount of memory and hard drive space can service quite a few virtual machines running various services.

eserfeliz

I've never done anything like what you're being tasked with, but it sounds like a great opportunity.

Here are a few questions I'd be asking myself, in some sort of rough order:

Which systems/applications, other than Exchange, will we be running/supporting?
How many different models will be required to maximize utility? (processors/cores, RAM, storage, power supplies, redundancy, etc.)
How many (concurrent) users will be utilizing these services? Is this number expected to change within the next 3 to 6 years?
Will this be a Microsoft solution, a FOSS solution or a hybrid of the two?
Will I be supporting these servers, do we have the staff to support them, or will I need to purchase a support contract along with the hardware?
What will my storage requirements be for these systems? Will a SAN be necessary to store the data?

I do know that my workplace has moved away from Dell, due to reliability issues, especially related to unprofessional courier services when parts failed. The parts were not packed well and were transported to us damaged; after a while, my manager would shake the box and if the part was rattling around inside - he would send them away and refuse the package.

Go directly to the vendor webpages: IBM, HP, Dell, and look at the solutions that match your organization's scale and size. Oftentimes they have surveys that will allow you to assess your needs and make recommendations. Find contact information for the vendors for your country and see if they have sales support. Most of the time you can get a sales engineer to walk you through the assessment process and make recommendations for you. I would suggest you go over their recommendations with a fine toothed comb, however; they will try to sell you the moon. From their analysis, appraise the needs of your organization and proceed from there.

KPLC

rapyoke wrote: »

Without knowing price range (i.e. $3k or $30k) and intended use (i.e. what will be run on it) it's really very difficult to give you recommendations. My baseline suggestion would be to get two fairly beefy boxes (for high-availability) and put a hypervisor (ESXi or XenServer) on them. The basic versions are totally free and still incredibly powerful, so there's really no excuse not to.

If your budget allows, I'd also look into SAN's.

Management doesn't know their price range either. They haven't given me a number. I believe they just want to see what's available at what price ranges and go from there. IT Manager wants to use all MS software. We've already got 6 Hyper-V servers going on our IBM tower server right now.
I believe it'll have to be pretty beefy. They want to run AD, Exchange, IIS, Sharepoint, Dynamics CRM and AX, etc.

KPLC

joehalford01 wrote: »

We use dell pretty much exclusively. They are easy to work with, you can review all the specs and purchase it without talking to a sales guy, they have awesome business credit, and the machines themselves are good quality. I can tell you one thing for sure, as I was in your shoes not too long ago. You will be tempted to purchase lower end hard drives, the prices of SAS 10K and 15K drives can be hard to stomach. Remember, this is a server. You need server grade hardware.
The R710's are very nice machines, I think they've replaced them with an R720 now but I'm not sure. How many users do you have? A couple of these servers with the right amount of memory and hard drive space can service quite a few virtual machines running various services.

We've got about 25 users here in Laos, plus another 10 or so in Thailand that they want to set up with Sharepoint/Infopath services and whatnot. They're also looking into potentially hosting CRM/ERP services for customers. So future expansion is high on the list.

KPLC

eserfeliz wrote: »

I've never done anything like what you're being tasked with, but it sounds like a great opportunity.

Here are a few questions I'd be asking myself, in some sort of rough order:

Which systems/applications, other than Exchange, will we be running/supporting?
How many different models will be required to maximize utility? (processors/cores, RAM, storage, power supplies, redundancy, etc.)
How many (concurrent) users will be utilizing these services? Is this number expected to change within the next 3 to 6 years?
Will this be a Microsoft solution, a FOSS solution or a hybrid of the two?
Will I be supporting these servers, do we have the staff to support them, or will I need to purchase a support contract along with the hardware?
What will my storage requirements be for these systems? Will a SAN be necessary to store the data?

I do know that my workplace has moved away from Dell, due to reliability issues, especially related to unprofessional courier services when parts failed. The parts were not packed well and were transported to us damaged; after a while, my manager would shake the box and if the part was rattling around inside - he would send them away and refuse the package.

Go directly to the vendor webpages: IBM, HP, Dell, and look at the solutions that match your organization's scale and size. Oftentimes they have surveys that will allow you to assess your needs and make recommendations. Find contact information for the vendors for your country and see if they have sales support. Most of the time you can get a sales engineer to walk you through the assessment process and make recommendations for you. I would suggest you go over their recommendations with a fine toothed comb, however; they will try to sell you the moon. From their analysis, appraise the needs of your organization and proceed from there.

Thanks for the questions! I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment as I don't wont to fail. Finding support locally is going to be tough, as I'm in Laos. It's still very much a developing country in terms of society and infrastructure. The presence of big firm resellers and distributors is nil. That will add to the cost of shipping and support.

As for the company, there is much potential for growth. The IT department currently consists of the IT Manager, a contractor to help with CRM/AX development, and myself. This project will pretty much be my baby.