Avoid waste, teach you how to choose the right server

In terms of new server technology, 2010 is a bumper year. For example, Intel Corporation released its Atom processor version for the server market and announced the availability of its latest 8-core Nehalem-EX chip. At the same time, its competitor AMD exhibited its upcoming 12-core Magny-Cours server processor.

With these products and more product launches, the server's prospects suddenly become very broad, which also confuses small business users who are looking for the best fit for their business needs. In addition to weighing the benefits of an Atom-based single-core server with a four-socket, Opteron-based 48-core server, it's important to consider other factors when making your choice. These factors include ease of installation, manageability, energy efficiency, and reliability. You also want to look at the scalability and security features of the server.

In the first part of this three-part series, when you swim in the ocean of small business servers, we will help you navigate the waters. The first step is to assess whether your business can benefit from the server. If your office has a desktop or laptop and you can add a point-to-point network over time, then you and your employees are likely to send emails to another person and have a trusted 'sneakernet' interface. Use a thumb memory on it.

By creating a centralized data repository and providing remote access to employees on the go, servers can make your business more efficient. "A common pain in small businesses is version control, which is the ability to find the latest version of a file or a final list sent to a customer," said Devesh Satyavolu, Microsoft's Windows Small Business Server 2008 team product manager.

In addition, hosting a single corporate email account adds a more professional image to your business. A server also makes it easier to deploy new PCs, updates, and applications on the office network, and you may find it injects new life into your office's aging computers, allowing them to offload hard drive space and CPU resources. Applications and files.

According to Satyavolu, Microsoft research shows that the main reason for a small business owner to buy a server is to protect data from loss and attack. Servers protect corporate data as both a firewall against external threats and an always-on backup solution. It also lets you get notifications about the health and safety of your computer on your network. Daily or weekly reports can alert you to security threats and computers that require software updates.

Obviously, there are a lot of benefits for servers, but when it comes to small businesses considering such a purchase, let's discuss the biggest obstacles, especially in terms of economic costs. The price of servers not long ago exceeded the reach of companies other than the largest companies with hundreds of employees.

There are now many server products designed specifically for a large number of small businesses. For example, Microsoft sells Windows Small Business Server to companies with 75 employees, and sells Windows Server Foundation to companies with 15 employees. A basic Windows Server Foundation server is probably cheaper than the laptop you use to read this article.

Different server types and sizes

Servers usually have three modeling elements: desktop, rack and blade. Most entry-level servers are desktop. You don't need a data room or server chassis, when you're just laying it out; you can hide it just under the table just as you would a desktop. A rack-mounted server is a stack of many servers inside, yes, one rack. Rack servers can be found in small and medium-sized businesses with multiple server and space considerations.

Blade servers are the smallest, most expensive, most energy efficient and most scalable. They feature modular design and offload functions such as power, cooling, storage, and networking to the chassis. The resources in the chassis are then shared by many of the blade servers placed in it, resulting in increased efficiency and flexibility.

If you are paying attention to your first server purchase, then desktop servers are the lowest cost option and should meet the needs of many small businesses. Desktop servers are also the easiest to deploy. Buy from a major supplier and you'll find it is the same as configuring a desktop, where you choose internal components and pre-installed operating systems. With the software installed by the manufacturer, you save a step.

Next, we will continue to study the core components and operating system considerations.

Considering Core Components

Like home computers and laptops, the server offers a choice between AMD and Intel. The server chip is not different from the desktop chip. In many cases, one of the designs is borrowed from the other. (In fact, you'll find some home computer CPUs, such as Intel's Pentium or Atom processors, that are used on entry-level servers.) Typically, server chips have a higher level of quality assurance because they run 24 times a day. Hours, 7 days a week, however, desktop chips are considered to be periodically powered down for a sustained period. The server chip can be used in multiple CPU configurations: the server board is available in single, dual and quad socket designs.

Quad-core processors include most of AMD's Opteron family, although you'll find some six-core Opter processors and the company's first upcoming 12-core Opteron (codename: Magny) -Cours) processor. Intel's Xeon family dominates the server market and you'll find it offers more models than AMD's Opteron family. The Xeon family extends from a single core to a six-core processor, and Intel will soon release an eight-core Xeon processor. Currently, server performance reflects the performance of desktops. The Xeon chip is believed to provide the best performance, but AMD's chips offer better price/performance. This situation may change once AMD's 12-core Opteron product and Intel's 8-core Xeon product are released and referenced.

How powerful (and how many) processors are needed in your server, and different enterprise needs are different. Organizations running complex CAD applications or large databases will require higher performance than companies that simply look for a way to share files more efficiently and securely. Dell, a major server vendor with a line of PowerEdge systems, offers the following recommendations on its website:

"For an office with less than 25 employees, there is one processor and two A server with up to four hard drives should be sufficient. If you have more than 25 employees or if you plan to run a data intensive application, it is recommended to use a server with two processors and four to six hard drives."

However, when choosing a CPU for your server, performance should not be your only concern; you must also consider energy efficiency as a factor. A small business server is likely to run around the clock, so a power-hungry processor may increase monthly electricity bills.

The other two main components of a desktop server are memory and hard disk. Again, the size of memory and memory space is highly dependent on the nature of your business. The size of the memory can have a significant impact on performance and depends on the current activity. As with memory, you can add a hard drive to the server when storage capacity needs to increase. It is also a good idea to increase redundancy by using multiple hard drives to maintain uptime and data availability.

Similarly, redundancy should be considered when selecting a power source for the server. Having a second power supply keeps servers and businesses running while the main power supply is down.

Finally, before blindly adding another server to a network, we recommend evaluating virtualization software options from VMware, Citrix, and other software. For example, turning a server into a number of virtual servers can keep business data separate so that a new application you are testing or using does not interfere with important applications and information needed to run your business. It also reduces hardware and energy costs and allows multiple operating systems to run on a single server.

Operating System Options

"The vast majority of small businesses still use XP," Satyavolu said. Many times, they use the purchase of servers as a driving force to upgrade the operating system of their business machines to Windows 7. Of course, Windows is not the only option; Linux is another option. For Server 2008 Foundation and Windows Home Server, the price gap between Linux and Windows servers for small businesses has narrowed, but Windows-based machines are still more expensive.

We don't have a place to discuss the performance and security benefits of each platform, and the choice depends on the application you are going to run. Be sure to share a detailed list of the applications your business uses with your server vendor before selecting an operating system.

To figure out which operating system choices are feasible, let's take a look at the products on Dell's PowerEdge servers. Dell offers Linux versions from Novell, Red Hat, and Sun, as well as various versions of Windows Server. Windows Server 2008 Foundation supports five client licenses, Windows Small Business Servers provides a total of 75 licenses, and Windows Server 2008 provides unlimited licenses. In addition to the number of users supported by each server, the feature settings vary. For example, the streamlined Server 2008 Foundation does not include Microsoft's Exchange, SQL, and virtualization capabilities.

The last consideration is the cloud. Whether it's a simple third-party online backup solution or creating and running a hosted application, cloud computing is cost effective and energy efficient for your business. Cloud computing also provides a more flexible storage capacity because it does not require hardware purchase; however, you pay for storage when you need it.

Google is advancing cloud computing with its online application package and storage products, and Microsoft recently launched Windows Azure, its first cloud computing server product. With its extensive Amazon Web services, Amazon also offers a number of pay-as-you-go cloud services.