Cannot decide between 1U servers for growing company
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@ntoxicator said:
Right, which I was prospecting to have 3 large Hypervisor nodes to handle workload.. but might need to scale larger to handle the future
again, company plans to have 400-500 employee's by year 2020.
Total storage. I would guesstimate would grow larger than 5TB in 2+ years.
That really isn't that much. You could look at a middle of the road R720xd and get several times that amount in just one server.
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But all these 400 future employee's using a RDP wrapper to launch their software? Similar to thin-client. (2X Application Server)
I do not install the needed customer software on the employee's workstations. Much easier to handle. I'd be putting out even more fires on daily basis.
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its Billing Related software.. medical billing. as FYI
So we deal with numerous different EHR/PM systems. One day looking to be able to streamline to one central software. This is a challenge
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@ntoxicator said:
Right, which I was prospecting to have 3 large Hypervisor nodes to handle workload.. but might need to scale larger to handle the future
again, company plans to have 400-500 employee's by year 2020.
Total storage. I would guesstimate would grow larger than 5TB in 2+ years.
That's Pretty tiny really.
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@ntoxicator said:
again, company plans to have 400-500 employee's by year 2020.
Long term growth is actually a spot where hyperconverged solutions will normally shine. They have much better growth paths in most cases. With the Synology approach, for example, you will be at your maximum storage performance (your main bottleneck) on day one and as you grow you will have no good performance growth path outside of ripping and replacing. Going with something like Scale or similar HC paths you grow simply by adding a node. So you could start "small" today meeting today's needs and only buy more as needed in the future so only investing when additional capacity is needed which both puts off the purchase to save money (time-value of money) and reduces risk by only buying capacity when it is needed, not buying it and risking it never being needed. The HC approach grows your storage (capacity AND performance) while you grow compute in lock step so you don't get stuck having to rip and replace to upgrade your bottleneck.
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@Jason said:
400-500 employee's by year 2020.
But right now, honestly. I'm not certain of what I can 100% project for storage needs 3-5 years. I can just take a look and guess at the storage growth on a monthly basis and calculate there.
As using roaming profiles + company shares and other misc. data on network.
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@ntoxicator said:
But all these 400 future employee's using a RDP wrapper to launch their software? Similar to thin-client. (2X Application Server)
They are located down the street from my house. I've been out drinking with them many times.
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Tell Chris Dill hello (If in Texas?)
Yeah before 2X was over-sea's... but Parallels bought them out.
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@ntoxicator said:
Tell Chris Dill hello (If in Texas?)
Yeah before 2X was over-sea's... but Parallels bought them out.
Yeah, Dallas. But I'm the one overseas now. I'm in Texas this month for the holiday but in Galveston. Was living in Nicaragua until a week ago. Moving to Greece in a few weeks. Just here visiting for the moment.
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Busy man!!!
Good stuff.
You're right on about your concerns about growth and up-scaling . I really like what Scale has to offer.
As yes, I would be limited to Synology Rackstation NAS... As RAID-10 array i CANNOT add more disks for additional storage. So that means I cannot grow the volumes any larger than the current 'shelf'
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@ntoxicator said:
As using roaming profiles + company shares and other misc. data on network.
You'll probably want to ditch the roaming profiles. Small companies tend to like those but they really suck and it's problems show quickly when you have many users on it.
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I understand and i see that as issue moving forward
Just every employee uses outlook. Its very common to have employee's shifted from one workstation to another. So having data saved locally on a workstation here is a nope.
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@ntoxicator said:
I understand and i see that as issue moving forward
Just every employee uses outlook. Its very common to have employee's shifted from one workstation to another. So having data saved locally on a workstation here is a nope.
OWA for the win! Stop using Outlook and this problem goes away. Then you could do home folders and document redirection (which can have its own issue) to solve the other common uses for roaming profiles.
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I know I push OWA here as much as possible. Users are not the brightest and often complain 'we dont like the webmail'
Already paying Office365 hosted Exchange.
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I think home folders would create entire new issue. I'm just not familiar and experience with it. Always done roaming profiles & folder redirection.
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@ntoxicator said:
Busy man!!!
Good stuff.
You're right on about your concerns about growth and up-scaling . I really like what Scale has to offer.
As yes, I would be limited to Synology Rackstation NAS... As RAID-10 array i CANNOT add more disks for additional storage. So that means I cannot grow the volumes any larger than the current 'shelf'
Synology is great gear, don't get me wrong. Just looks like the wrong use case for it. We have a Synology ourselves and love it. They are really excellent for backups or for certain classes of NAS file serving - like really excellent as a UNIX home directory server.
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@ntoxicator said:
I understand and i see that as issue moving forward
Just every employee uses outlook. Its very common to have employee's shifted from one workstation to another. So having data saved locally on a workstation here is a nope.
Outlook profiles should never ever be on the network. PSTs and OSTs are never suppose to be there. Microsoft even states this.
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@ntoxicator said:
I understand and i see that as issue moving forward
Just every employee uses outlook. Its very common to have employee's shifted from one workstation to another. So having data saved locally on a workstation here is a nope.
At some point it is worth going to management and users and saying "here is the cost of using Outlook" and lay out the technical impacts and the financial ones and let them decide. Make it their decision, not yours, to live with the problems that it brings and the cost that it incurs to do right. If they want it, fine.
And consider letting users choose individually. I choose OWA and get a far superior experience.
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@ntoxicator said:
I know I push OWA here as much as possible. Users are not the brightest and often complain 'we dont like the webmail'
Already paying Office365 hosted Exchange.
That's what we use, too.
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Tell me what route you would go them? I suppose Im out of touch
yes. I've read that microsoft advises against PST and OST files being on roaming profile (AppData). I can do away with this
Just comes down to issue of migrating a user to a new desktop computer. Management does not understand the issues. Tell me 'Just make it work, fast, and a gun to my head'. So alot of times employee's or an entire group of employee's will be shifted from one part of the office to another.
So either, move entire workstation + desk phone. Or just move their IP phone and they sit at another computer and login and all set.
Yes.. .OWA would fix that. We use Office365 hosted exchange, So OWA is already there
But what would you do for Hypervisor and storage needs? In this case. As I know the Synology does has limitations. HPStorage Works? What other storage devices? FreeNAS with ZFS.. Hell no (in my head)
As will need Domain Controller, & Multiple Terminal Servers. Also have a few linux VM's doing some intranet web hosting.
