Off-topic question

[shoota]

My father-in-law owns his own financial planning/CPA business and is contemplating a new server. There are five to six workers there and currently the server is running Server 2003. The local computer guy is recommending this:

Dell T320 Server
Xeon 2420 1.9GHZ CPU
32GB RAM
DVDROM
(3) 600GB SAS Hard Drives in RAID 5 (1.2TB space)
Windows 2012 Server (5 users)
Hot Swap Power Supply
5 year Pro Support Warranty
Backup Assist Software
$4600

Labor to install will be $2000 by the time we get all computers rejoined, data transferred, AV reconfigured, backup setup and any software reinstalled.



My question is: Does $6600 dollars sound right in this situation? It seems like a lot to me but then again I could do a lot of this myself while my father-in-law can't. So I'm looking for some opinions from you guys. Thanks!

[Sparky]

Avoid Dell!!!!

Seriously. Just don't do it. I don't know about their server warranty service but their workstation support is horrendous at best anymore. Outright refusal to even look at a PC that was bad for one client of ours at work, 6 dead machines within 2 months at another client, telling the end user to totally disassemble the computer and put it back together... Just awful.

The price doesn't sound too bad otherwise, a bit high but not awful all things considered. There is a fair bit of work involved in migrating a domain properly, getting all the software moved (especially if there is anything special), etc, particularly if the domain needs upgraded before migration or if the domain needs any repairs before migrating. It can add up quickly.

[jspace]

Do you know if it's SBS 2003? If they're using Exchange that price will go up from anywhere to a bit + monthly (labor to move to hosted and deal with subscription stuff) to a metric ton (cost of Exchange 2013 + CALs). If on the off chance they use Sharepoint, factor that in too. You also didn't mention which edition of Server was quoted. Standard fits into that price point, IMO. Somehow I have the sneaking suspicion that's Foundation, however.
Seems a tad high to me for the hardware as well, but I usually work with HPs, and we buy all kinds of off lease and Renew hardware.
Labor is regional, so it's a bit hard to tell if that's fair or not. The place I work at would probably try to get about the same, and we're likely the cheapest in the area.
Of course I would push for Shadowprotect at that price too. It's soooo much better than anything else I've used.

Unlike Sparky, I've had pretty good luck with Dell Server support. Most of the Dell servers I've had to deal with are old ass SBS 2003 boxes where the mobo, or PSU(s), or backplane dies or the owners realize that they DO actually need more than 200GB of space to keep all their crap and have to buy really expensive used SCSI drives. Never called them for workstations.

An itemized quote would make it really easy to break down, but I know for a fact that a lot of IT consulting places don't (won't) do that.
Feel free to PM me if you want to talk about it in more detail.

[shoota]

Thanks guys. I must admit that I don't what server version they currently have installed. I also don't know what Shadowprotect is. One thing I do know however is that the computer guy is pushing for them to use Office 365. I've heard some bad things about that.. Also, I know they are leary of storing clients' personal and financial info in the cloud. Is this unfounded fear or no?

[yojimbo197]

Thanks guys. I must admit that I don't what server version they currently have installed. I also don't know what Shadowprotect is. One thing I do know however is that the computer guy is pushing for them to use Office 365. I've heard some bad things about that.. Also, I know they are leary of storing clients' personal and financial info in the cloud. Is this unfounded fear or no?

Considering Amazon's service has gone down a couple of times, Seagate's service just went down for 2 weeks, and now this, where a guys data got zorched:
http://www.itworld.com/it-management...e-all-my-files


I'd say screw the cloud. Also, if the company that has Cloud storage folds, they don't always provide adequate notice or ways to transfer data.

[PoppaGeek]

I would suggest both local and cloud storage. Keep them in sync. That way if something happens at the location, weather, burglary, zombie apocalypse or whatever you still have the cloud. Also if cloud goes down you have local data. I actually use 2 cloud services, one to back the other. I do not trust anyone or anything with data I find important to me.

[shoota]

Good advice guys, thanks. For some reason the internet is setup for the office by routing it through the server and then on to the PCs. I don't think they even have wireless but I will check on that. Why would it have been set up like that?

[D_A]

Same reason I set it up that way when my eldest son was at home. Filtering. I ran Squid proxy server with DansGuardian content filter and a virus scanner. It intercepted, scanned and filtered everything coming into my network, something that became necessary thanks to the shyte he insisted on trying to download and the sites he was trying to visit.

[Sparky]

In a domain network it is normal (and necessary) for DNS to be handled by the server. Ideally the server should handle DHCP also (router DHCP turned off).

[D_A]

I did that as well, though I usually forget to mention it. Sammy systems are rather good for that kind of thing.

[jspace]

Domain controllers cannot be multihomed, which would be necessary for "routing" traffic through the server. OK, they can be, but it's a massive pain in the ass, and no sane person who knows what they're doing would do it. DNS is required for domains, as Sparky said.
Of course, this is one of those semantics things. To me, "through the server" means that all traffic passes through one (or more) interface(s) and out the other(s) and acts as an ASBR/NAT gateway. To others, "The server is down and my interwebs don't work" is "through the server."

[shoota]

Ok now I'm lost.

[Sparky]

[D_A]

Mine was a little more complicated than that since I was using Squid as a caching proxy to reduce my data consumption (once set up to suit our usage it worked) and the same machine running as a DNS forwarder, plus everything else I mentioned. ALL data went via my server first (necessary for caching, content filtering and virus scanning) with surprisingly little lag.

[anubis]

If you have couple machines then local cache server does speed stuff up a lot. Plus you have control over what reaches people who really don't know what they are doing.

In case of 100+ mbit net the caching is mostly useless though (but i remember it being really useful on 1mbit at home a long time ago )

[D_A]

If you have couple machines then local cache server does speed stuff up a lot. Plus you have control over what reaches people who really don't know what they are doing.

In case of 100+ mbit net the caching is mostly useless though (but i remember it being really useful on 1mbit at home a long time ago )

I was running eight machines at the time and 8Mbit ADSL. Caching helped a LOT when it came to doing OS updates (do first machine, cache files, launch all the rest, just saved a gig or more of downloads) as well as speeding up access thanks to the local DNS cache. The filtering was very useful for keeping a teen into death metal, horror etc in check with younger kids in the house.