need to build a server pc

[Khizar_1]

recently my company is doing well in business, as more of clients are being served i am getting worried that i will run out of storage space in my server pc which is intel xeon w3550, intel dx58bp motherboard and 8 gigs of ddr3 ram nvidia quadro 600 and 1 tb wd hard disk. now my concern is that i will run out of storage space in a month or half, so what should i do should i upgrade this pc or build a new one and i need some good graphics handling capabilities as i work in CAD industry.

 

[alexandergc]

I'd recommend upgrading the storage on that PC to a RAID 5 for data redundancy and then getting a completely separate machine for doing your CAD work.

You wouldn't want your CAD rendering to lag your server while it's serving clients.
You also wouldn't want your personal work files to be sharing disk space with client data unless absolutely necessary.

 

[Khizar_1]

I'd recommend upgrading the storage on that PC to a RAID 5 for data redundancy and then getting a completely separate machine for doing your CAD work.

You wouldn't want your CAD rendering to lag your server while it's serving clients.
You also wouldn't want your personal work files to be sharing disk space with client data unless absolutely necessary.

clients dont access the data from my pc i just need some solid storage solution to save the clients projects and it takes up huge space so i need advice in accordance with this problem.

 

[alexandergc]

I read your opening post differently and assumed that you were using the same PC as a server for the clients to view their files.
Reading it again with your explanation, it makes sense now.

I'd recommend going for an SSD to load up your OS + CAD software, then stacking a few 1TB HDDs in a RAID array for the CAD files.

You could set it up several ways:
- RAID0 for maximum performance (but please, please make backups every day/week).
- RAID5/6 for a moderate performance boost with reliability built-in (pretty easy to expand as well).
- RAID10 for performance like RAID0, but with the reliability of RAID1 (though it is the most expensive array setup).

 

[Khizar_1]

I read your opening post differently and assumed that you were using the same PC as a server for the clients to view their files.
Reading it again with your explanation, it makes sense now.

I'd recommend going for an SSD to load up your OS + CAD software, then stacking a few 1TB HDDs in a RAID array for the CAD files.

You could set it up several ways:
- RAID0 for maximum performance (but please, please make backups every day/week).
- RAID5/6 for a moderate performance boost with reliability built-in (pretty easy to expand as well).
- RAID10 for performance like RAID0, but with the reliability of RAID1 (though it is the most expensive array setup).

i am a complete noob when it comes to RAID i assembled my last pc quite a while ago so can you please post some links for help and some links for the parts it will be really helpful

 

[alexandergc]

It really depends on what controller you have on your motherboard.

Worst case, you can probably try setting it up using Windows' built-in software...but it's the least efficient method.

Here's a decent guide on how to do that in Windows using the Storage Spaces function in your Control Panel.
It's really very simple if you're running Win8 or above. In Win7, you'd have to go to the Computer Management console, which is a whole other can of worms.

http://www.maximumpc.com/how-set-raid-5-array-windows-8-and-linux/

Here's a short video guide on using Intel's RST onboard chip (if your motherboard has it) to set up RAID 5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDMn90iYWkw


Hope this helps.