Server specs

[brianrosenfelt]

Hi guys

Getting ready to quote a new customer; 20 phones; CRM integration (with Act!); heavy call recording; will be using a Patton PRI gateway.

We've used Dell Optiplex 390's in the past for other installations, but concerned about the load necessary for call recording, etc.

Was thinking of a low-end server with RAID 5 SATA drives; 8GB RAM; Server 2008 Foundation; quad core processor

Is this overkill? They also have several remote phones and remote paging over a VPN.

The client is willing to pay for the heavier hardware...just not sure if we'd see any real performance gains vs a workstation with dual core proc and 8gb of ram running Win7.

Thanks for the advice.

-Brian

 

[jtrollen]

Just my 2 cents regarding RAID 5. I always avoid RAID 5 like the plague because of the risk involved with the parity bit (just Google it and you will find tons of info). I highly recommend using RAID 1 or RAID 10 if you need the faster write speeds. I think for this installation you would probably be okay with RAID 1. A quad-core definitely seems like overkill, especially with SATA drives because the data write speeds will be your bottleneck and not the processor. I would rather get a dual-core processor and put the extra money towards going RAID 10.

 

[haywardi]

Hi,

A couple of thought.

In any business scenario the telephones are CRITICAL. Yes its possible to put 3CX onto a workstation and it will run well.
However, will your customer thank you if it turns out that the W/s is under spec?

IMHO nothing winds customer up more than the conversation. "Oh, you want 20 more telephone, that'll mean the hardware I put in place a few months ago needs to be replaced". They tend to think you're taking the P.

Given your customer appears ready to pay up, then its not going to be hardwork justifying.

RAID 5! Sorry Brian, RAID-5 has worked well in the industry for MANY MANY years (banks use it extensively). However, be careful on the size of the HDD's you use. Keep them no larger than 1tb and use lots if necessary. Also RAID-5 is not a substitute for a back up, you should view it as just a way to keep your systems running when you have a failure. Oh and finally use a dedicated RAID card.
Iain

 

[jtrollen]

My company provides software to banks and insurance companies, and believe me, just because they do something doesn't mean it's good. RAID 5 was popular years ago as a way to get more storage space with redundancy when hard drives were expensive. Drives are cheap now and there is no reason to not go with RAID 1 or 10. RAID 5 and parity bits are just too risky for me and I have personal experience with this. If you need more info here are 13 pages of discussion about it. You can take or leave my advice I was just trying to be informative.

Why I don't like RAID 5
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/137136-why-i-don-t-like-raid-5?page=1

-John

 

[haywardi]

Hi John,

LOL LOL know what you mean about the banks But I was merely trying to balance the discussion on RAID-5. Like all IT solutions it's what ever fits the business need best.

The messages therefore are:

- Choose your RAID solution that best fits your need (I personally run 4x 2tb arrays as it gives me 6tb available rather than 4tb). I know its a risk.
- Because HDDs are Physical, replace them with brand new every 2-3 years AT MOST, I do this religiously and touch wood have never had a failure.
- RAID is NO substitute for backup - it merely keeps a system running in production.
- If your controller fails (as the start of the related post states) the chances are you're somewhere without a paddle depending on how it fails... BUt expect to be restoring from backup, anything else and you're lucky.
IMHO
Iain

 

[davidbenwell]

We are Dell Resellers and can do a good deal on the below spec

PowerEdge T110 II Tower
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1220, 4C/4T, 3.10GHz, 8M Cache, 80W TDP, Turbo
Ram: 8GB Memory, DDR3, 1333MHz (2x4GB Dual Ranked LV UDIMMs
RAID CARD: PERC H200 RAID Controller 6Gbps
Hard Drives: 2 x 2TB, Near Line SAS 6Gbps, 3.5-in, 7.2K RPM Hard Drive
OS: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Foundation Edition, English, 64 Bit

List Price: £1289.00, should be able to get this for under or near to £1000 for you.

the above should handle your needs well

 

[eagle2]

I would say a much lower specifications server will do the job.

For example -- a HP Proliant Microserver N36L (or newer N40L) with AMD 1.3 (1.5 GHz) CPU, 4 GByte DDR-3 RAM, 2x 250GB SATA HDD, MS Windows 2008R2 Foundation Server (bundle) for less than € 350.- is working fine at my customer premises in a 32 SC call-center environment with all calls been recorded permanently.

Regards