[SOLVED] Basic server setup for small office

[neiluk]

Basic server setup for small office?

Hi guys, sorry if this is posted in the wrong section.

I'm putting together a small server to use at work. The office will have 4 users (only ever 3 active at one time). The purpose of the server is to be centralized storage for everyone's documents, photos, video clips etc. There will be no streaming or anything.

I found a quad core xeon 3.1GHz workstation (Dell T1600 ) with 16gb of ram and i have added 3x 3tb drives to it along with a 128gb ssd for the boot drive. I'll probably setup the 3 drives in raid five to offer some data protection.

Mine 2 questions are - this hardware should manage the task yeah? Secondly, should i use Openmediavault or just simply Windows 10 pro? I know there are other software options, but these are the only two i am familiar with.


thanks for your time reading this

 

[Jstonez]

Basic server setup for small office?

Hi guys, sorry if this is posted in the wrong section.

I'm putting together a small server to use at work. The office will have 4 users (only ever 3 active at one time). The purpose of the server is to be centralized storage for everyone's documents, photos, video clips etc. There will be no streaming or anything.

I found a quad core xeon 3.1GHz workstation (Dell T1600 ) with 16gb of ram and i have added 3x 3tb drives to it along with a 128gb ssd for the boot drive. I'll probably setup the 3 drives in raid five to offer some data protection.

Mine 2 questions are - this hardware should manage the task yeah? Secondly, should i use Openmediavault or just simply Windows 10 pro? I know there are other software options, but these are the only two i am familiar with.


thanks for your time reading this

You do not need an expensive server chip to network 4 computers.

 

[neiluk]

Thanks for the reply. The system was given to me so... it was cheap

 

[Jstonez]

Thanks for the reply. The system was given to me so... it was cheap

Windows will do this without the pro, but pro will be easier to setup. I would say yea that you are good to go but if you can add ram I might do that, however with 3 or 4 computers you might not even need that

 

[neiluk]

thanks for helping me with this buddy! I was hoping you would say windows as i have been a user since 1990 lol.

I'll have to look into it's raid options as i have never ventured there yet. I am hoping it has something similar to raid 5 that will allow one drive to fail without total disaster.

 

[USAFRet]

thanks for helping me with this buddy! I was hoping you would say windows as i have been a user since 1990 lol.

I'll have to look into it's raid options as i have never ventured there yet. I am hoping it has something similar to raid 5 that will allow one drive to fail without total disaster.

In addition to any 'RAID', you also need a true backup situation.

RAID of any type is not 'data protection'. It is only for continued uptime in the event of a physical drive fail.

 

[neiluk]

Ah i see, so you would recommend an external hard drive or maybe a cloud service to do regular backups to in addition to the servers raid ?

 

[USAFRet]

Ah i see, so you would recommend an external hard drive or maybe a cloud service to do regular backups to in addition to the servers raid ?

The 'how' and 'to what' depends a lot on what you're backing up, time tolerance in case of data loss, etc, etc.
A backup procedure, its software, and any hardware is just as important as all the other infrastructure you use.

The general concept is 3-2-1:
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite.

 

[neiluk]

The 'how' and 'to what' depends a lot on what you're backing up, time tolerance in case of data loss, etc, etc.
A backup procedure, its software, and any hardware is just as important as all the other infrastructure you use.

The general concept is 3-2-1:
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite.

understood! I'll setup both!