SAS vs Enterprise SATA for small business server

[Dsolash]

Hey guys,

Recently my company's old dell poweredge failed. We are a very small company, running at most 6 users at once, basically only using our server to distribute users and as a file storage. We've been quoted crazy prices for 1.5k plus, but I see no need; we really don't use our server that much, only 9-5 weekdays, and barely at those times. Our workstations hold most of the data. I've decided to go the route to build it. Price is the highest priority, but I still need some reliability.

SAS drives are super expensive and require me to buy a separate controller. Is the error correction and reliability even that much better on SAS drives? The enterprise SATA drives I'm looking at all seem to have pretty solid reliability. I've searched the internet and largely find pre-2012 posts discussing this, nothing very recent. I will just be running 2 drives in RAID 1.

So far my build is as follows:

2x Kingston DDR4 ECC Ram 8GB (might even chop out one stick to save more money; nothing runs on the server)

ASRock C236M WS Micro ATX mobo

Xeon E3 1220 V5

Case and power supply are whatever I need to run it, it's not rack mounted.

Currently I have an SAS controller: SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8

The SAS controller runs $111 on the egg. Sas drives seem to start somewhere around $100 a piece but for sub-150gb. I was looking into WD Re drives or Seagate Constellations.

Any other recommendation would be great.

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Rogue Leader]

If you are just using it as a file server mainly Enterprise drives are fine. SAS drives work better for large multi user virtualization or if you will have a very large amount of users accessing the same drives all the time. You really don't need it.

 

[boosted1g]

The crazy prices probably includes a windows server OS and the cost of transplanting all of the GPO and other settings to the new server. So $1500 is not that far off.

Enterprise sata is just fine, from the sounds of it you have no reason for faster read speeds then what enterprise HDD can do.

 

[USAFRet]

We are a very small company, running at most 6 users at once, basically only using our server to distribute users and as a file storage.

No need for SAS drives with that usage.

I will just be running 2 drives in RAID 1

And what are you doing for an actual backup situation?

 

[Dsolash]

In reponse to everyone, I was assuming that. Both Dell, HP, and the off site it guy which is only called when I'm not available all suggested SAS so I was second guessing myself. Thanks for all your responses!

The crazy prices probably includes a windows server OS and the cost of transplanting all of the GPO and other settings to the new server. So $1500 is not that far off.

That's the problem; it's 1.5k without that. Its 2.5k with.

I will just be running 2 drives in RAID 1

And what are you doing for an actual backup situation?

I have a 3TB desktop HDD set up by an off site IT guy. It was fine, untill the .bkf file literally disappeared when I was restoring data. Guessing faulty USB cable. Used recuva on both the desktop hdd and the computer I was working with, no remnants whatsoever. Only thing left is a "recent file" link to nothing. Currently going to clone the old SAS drive that's in the old server and see if I can salvage anything using a bootable clone software.

This time around I'm just going to get a third drive probably- since I can actually connect to the SATA interface. Also a cloud solution. We don't have more than 200gb of data so I'm assuming it won't be too much.