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waszkiewicz
Asked: 2009-09-10 01:19:06 +0800 CST

What's the best server configuration (hardware and software) for my company?

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So, here is the question: I started to work for a small company, where the system is a bit weird... 13 workers, developers mostly, two servers and a lot of cables. I would like to know what would be, in you opinion, the best installation for my server room.

Here is what we already have:

  • 2 servers running Windows Server 2003 (1 for communications, 1 for the developers work) --Software-- *ESTOS ProCall for telephone *Tobit David for Email *A few internal programs and a lot of files that need to be accessed
  • 1 double-wan router
  • 2 switches
  • 10 telephones
  • 12 workstations (all Windows XP or Vista)
  • 4 printers (for different applications)
  • 2 Notebooks for external work

The most important for us is to have a good telephone ans email system, what is not really the case at the time. We use ISDN because of a better quality, but the whole software compatibility between David and ProCall is bringing on some errors, and I think it's not normal to have to reboot a server every 2 days... I would like to have suggestion for a "perfect" server room for us. I was thinking of making the communication server work on Linux or MAC OSX Server? For geographical information, the company is in Germany. Low costs would be good.

windows-server-2003

2 Answers

  1. My 2 sen.

    1. Virtualisation - there are tonnes of benefit from this. You could try to setup your physical servers to host a number of virtual machines that can be configured for various tasks and applications.
    2. VoIP - you may want to consider using some software phone solutions so that you can dump the physical phones. It is possible to run Asterisk inside a VM.
    3. WiFi - you did not mention wireless. Wifi would be fairly useful for laptop users particularly. It helps reduce cabling (especially in the meeting/training room).
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  2. Best Answer

    We are missing a lot of info, but I'll add my first thoughts: You don't talk about other services such as Active Directory, SQL, backups, etc. Assuming you need AD, I'd keep a physical domain controller. Like Sybreon, I'd say look at virtualization, Separate the different applications onto dedicated VM's that way if you have to reboot one, you don't bring down everything. Spin up a Virtual Domain controller as well so you have a live backup of your AD. Definitely the Development server and Test/QA server should be separate virtual servers.

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