Building a network based server????

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Dan345

New Member
Hi,

I currently need a server based network, and i already have four workstations, which i want the server to control workstations. All workstations have at least 1.5GHz, 256MB RAM, and hard drive is over 20GB. Two of the workstations have onboard NIC cards and all data for workstations are to be saved on the network server.

One of my staff pupil has seen server for £1850 with server software install, system includes high level resistance, dual processors, RAID. It also has tapped backup.

But I believe that building the server would be cheaper and better, can anyone suggest what specification and componets i will need which may be better and similar value of the one described by my pupils. I need a windows based server. :confused:

Thanks
 
A server depends on what you are going to use it for. You can run Windows server off a desktop computer if you wanted to, but if it couldn't handle the load then you would need to get more powerful hardware for it.
 
In your case, I would suggest you put together a fairly ordinary desktop system with 2 to 4 GB of memory and a good sized SATA drive. It takes very little computing power to drive a simple 4 or 5 node network. You might want to use one of your existing machines as the server and get something newer and more powerful to replace it. Just put a new, bigger drive in the "server" machine.

You can use either Windows 2003 or Windows home networking software to drive it. Don't fuss with tape backup. Old fashioned and fussy. Best to use a NAS (network attached storage) or even do backups to other drives on the network. My own network is peer to peer and I use a NAS which is configured as a two drive RAID. The drives are mirrors of each other. If a drive fails in the NAS, I can swap it out with a new one even while the system is running. If you don't use a NAS, then you may want to build a RAID into your server. That makes the server significantly more complex, of course. You can build a 2 drive NAS in this country for less than $300. I don't know about prices in the UK.

It isn't a complex problem at all.
 
I'm thinking of doing the same

Dan345 said:
Hi,

I currently need a server based network, and i already have four workstations, which i want the server to control workstations. All workstations have at least 1.5GHz, 256MB RAM, and hard drive is over 20GB. Two of the workstations have onboard NIC cards and all data for workstations are to be saved on the network server.

One of my staff pupil has seen server for £1850 with server software install, system includes high level resistance, dual processors, RAID. It also has tapped backup.

But I believe that building the server would be cheaper and better, can anyone suggest what specification and componets i will need which may be better and similar value of the one described by my pupils. I need a windows based server. :confused:

Thanks
Click to expand...

I am thinking of doing the same. Please write back to this thread with the detailed results. I am just wanting to do some file and print sharing at home with about 4 PCs.

Hear from you soon:)
 
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