upgrading our small business server (1 Viewer)

We have what we believe to be an aging dell power edge 1800 server. It has 2gb of RAM, Intel Xeon 3GHz processor, a tape backup, and for space the OS drive is running low as is the General Storage drive. It is RAID.

We have an office of around 15 people right now and we are using it as an Exchange Server and Network Storage. We have shared Excel files getting much heavier use by many users at the same time that's scary and slow at times. They often get corrupted. We also are running an Access db with front ends on users computers and back-end on the server. Problem is that the Excel and Access programs experience slowdowns often especially excel. The other things is we're afraid of data loss in case of hard drive failure.

I have been charged with looking into upgrading our server and adding better backup routines.

What are your thoughts on our current server and environment it's being used in?

Any suggestions as to whether I should buy a new server replacing the current one, buy a lower end one to manage file sharing and leave email to the old one. I'm needing advice as to what direction to head.

I have been running SBS 2003 R2 for 5 years. I have run into bare metal recovery problems, even with Symantec's IDR (Intelligent Disaster Recovery).

I can think of few options.

1. Add an array of disks and move the storage to that array.
2. Add another server to manage the file sharing / database application. (probable the best option)
3. Buy a bigger / better server and migrate the current installation. (1) Create a full Windows Backup + Full tape Backup. (2) You could try Acronis to create an image of your server and apply it to the new server, assuming you can verify it will work with both RAID controllers; it should but they don't gurantee it. Either option would require a repair installation of the operating system to re-write the HAL so Windows would work on the new hardware after the migration.

Keep in mind that Access is not efficient when it comes to multiple users on a network. If you are using a front end / back end solution, you may wan to look into using SQL Server, especially if you decide on a migration and upgrade to SBS2008.

One word of caution, I had a catastrophic hardware failure that required me to perform a bare metal recovery. The internal database Microsoft$$SSEE was corrupted aftwards so practice in a test environment. (That's probably good advice anyway)

It doesnt hurt to have too many fail safe solutions, and I would always reccomend testing a bare metal recovery just so you know the whole process works.

i would be surprised if access slowdowns are down to the server itself.

lack of physical disk space won't help, though certainly, as the data will become increasingly fragmented.

if access continues to perform poorly, then it might also be a problem with the design of the application.

Access on RAID configurations works and is fast. You may need to consider who you specify your Volumes. Access should go on a small volume not a gigantic volume. Someone did explain why sometime ago.

Simon

rmulder said:

We have what we believe to be an aging dell power edge 1800 server. It has 2gb of RAM, Intel Xeon 3GHz processor, a tape backup, and for space the OS drive is running low as is the General Storage drive. It is RAID.

We have an office of around 15 people right now and we are using it as an Exchange Server and Network Storage. We have shared Excel files getting much heavier use by many users at the same time that's scary and slow at times. They often get corrupted. We also are running an Access db with front ends on users computers and back-end on the server. Problem is that the Excel and Access programs experience slowdowns often especially excel. The other things is we're afraid of data loss in case of hard drive failure.

I have been charged with looking into upgrading our server and adding better backup routines.

What are your thoughts on our current server and environment it's being used in?

Any suggestions as to whether I should buy a new server replacing the current one, buy a lower end one to manage file sharing and leave email to the old one. I'm needing advice as to what direction to head.

Click to expand...

seriously - not the apps so much, but i would look at the cost of getting a local support company in to advice you on setting up, backups, and maintaining the network in general.

they may advise you to move some of the functions on to a new server, but it's worth paying for the peace of mind this would bring.