Which cpu for server??

[jaapi]

Hy,

I work in a non-profit organisation (15 people) and we need to upgrade our server.
We use the server mainly for ms office and medical software (SQL database). We work only on the server and use RDS to log in... we have basically no client-software. The server does everything, office, medidoc, internetexplorer, dns, dc, dhcp, ... . (no exchange or anything like that)

current server:

IBM X3200 m2 server
Xeon X3360 @ 2.83Ghz (quadcore)
4GB Ram
Raid 1
windows server 2003R2 standard 32bit
office 2003

We do not have enough memory...that's for sure.
So we want to upgrade to server2008R2 64 bit, office 2010, 16GB RAM (if we can afford it...32GB)

But I have no idea wich processor is going to give us the best performance. The processor does not have to do 1 big task like 3D rendering but has to process alot of small tasks from 15 to 20 users (in the near future) at the same time.

What is important for us? one expensive cpu or 2 cheaper ones, lot's of cache, more cores, higher clockspeed, ... ????
Is de new Xeon E5 2620 better than eg Xeon X5650??

Any ideas???

Thx alot

Tom

 

[das_stig]

Leave the older server to handle dc dhcp, print services.

I would buy 2 x Amd 6/8/12 core servers and 1 x 4 core Intel Xeon.

Migrate the RDS to AMD's with an equal number of users, ram @ 2GB per user, a couple of good size hdd's in raid-0. More cores will be better for multiple user logging in.

While the Intel is used as the SQL server, 8GB, raid-1 for o/s and raid-5 for data. Fast speed over cores for data crunching. 8Gb ram so you can have a big cache.

Connect them all up with a good quality 1GBe switch. You can get good reliable Netgear SOHO versions for £80.

Server 2008 R2 x64 a good choice, but if Office2003 does it all currently, save the money of Office2010 and the licences, if you must update, go with Office2008, or go wild and use openoffice and don't bother with a licence, but you might want to evaluate it first just in case it doesn't do all you need it to do.

 

[jaapi]

@ das_stig: Thx alot!!

A few more questions:

- why AMD's? I hear Intel is better. AMD is cheaper?

- buying 3 new servers would be great, but we cannot afford that. (unless you can show me where to buy servers for less than 1700 euro). Our budget is about 5000 - 6000 euro for hardware, on the condition that we only have to pay for the installation of one server (around 1500 euro's)

- a friend of mine who is manager of IT networks, also told me to keep the old server for DC, DNS and DHCP... I don't really see the point. Our domain consists of 1 server, that's it. DNS and DHCP is not a heavy load for a server... so what's the point of running and maintaining an entire server only for those purposes? (I'm a noob, so maybe this is a very stupid question, sorry for that)

- more cores is better for mutliple users. which would you prefer if you can only buy one server... E5 2620 (2GHz, 6 cores, 15MB L3) or X5650 (2,66GHz, 6 cores, 12MB L3)... new vs. old - cache vs. clockspeed?? 2 cpu's or 1 (I guess 2)

- thx for rule of thumb: 2GB RAM pp - so we need at least 32GB for 15people

- I suggested the combination of RAID 1 for os and RAID 1 or RAID 5 for data, but our external IT partner said that that is not done. We should go for RAID 10 in that case. I didn't understand why. Do you have any idea?

THx alot for the information!!

Tom