Dell Server PowerEdge 1800

[EriCartman13]

My dads business is buying one of these. Is it a good server? Does dell rip you off with this?

[alc6379]

They're OK servers.

You certainly won't be using one of these for an entire enterprise operation, but if you need a server with good service capability, and you're cost-conscious, then it's pretty good.

Looking at the 1800's specs, it can be pretty beefy, though. Max 12GB RAM, up to 2 Dual Core Xeon processors, and RAID capability. That's pretty good-- I've worked a good bit with that particular chassis, and it's pretty solid-- good cooling, and it's pretty easy to work in. I'd say it's a fair bit more attractive than the SC series of servers. Not that those are bad, but they're fairly entry-level compared to the rest of the lineup.

[EriCartman13]

Thanks a bunch. Yea since my Dad's business is not very big, probably only going to be about 10-15 employees in the near future, he did not need something to powerful. It is going to be sweet.

[alc6379]

Thanks a bunch. Yea since my Dad's business is not very big, probably only going to be about 10-15 employees in the near future, he did not need something to powerful. It is going to be sweet.

Heck, if that's the case, an 1800 might be over kill. One of my consultants runs a Poweredge 800 with a 3.2ghz Xeon, 2GB RAM, and that is almost over kill for 10-15 users.

[EriCartman13]

I said in the near future. Could expand bigger. They were using a computer as a server that was set up and that was just not cutting it. I mean what if they lost all of there data? Plus it makes you a little more "professional".

[MartyMcFly]

My advise from experience, is that what you do now, will have an effect later on. Once your Dad finds out how useful the server can be, no doubt they will use it more, for file storage, or email exchange. Then use it as a domain controller, and the business will become reliant on this server more and more through an expansion of the possibilities. Thats all good, until the server breaks.

To cut to the chase, if his company can afford it, better to get two servers now, and future proof any contingency. If they had a tape back up, even better.

[EriCartman13]

Yes we got a tape backup. But I don't think he could afford 2 servers. But the backup should be good enough right?

[MartyMcFly]

Well the tape backup will be fine for keeping backups of data, and restoring against a software problem, and it is unlikely that a new server would actually breakdown, so you most likely will never need that second server.

It's just risk management. If the business begins to rely upon the server, then it would be good to have a second, incase the primary server has any problems. If he can't afford a second, then it is a case of running with that risk, albeit a fairly small risk. he should just keep an eye on how dependant the business becomes of the server, and keep track of the risk associated with not having a backup if it goes wrong. It all depends on the business anyway, and how they do business.

The worse that would happen, is downtime for the period that the server is fixed. As long as they plan for what they would do whilst that service is not present, it would be ok.

[alc6379]

Well the tape backup will be fine for keeping backups of data, and restoring against a software problem, and it is unlikely that a new server would actually breakdown, so you most likely will never need that second server.

It's just risk management. If the business begins to rely upon the server, then it would be good to have a second, incase the primary server has any problems. If he can't afford a second, then it is a case of running with that risk, albeit a fairly small risk. he should just keep an eye on how dependant the business becomes of the server, and keep track of the risk associated with not having a backup if it goes wrong. It all depends on the business anyway, and how they do business.

The worse that would happen, is downtime for the period that the server is fixed. As long as they plan for what they would do whilst that service is not present, it would be ok.

Of course, you could get the best of both worlds-- RAID1 or RAID 5 with hotswappable drives, tape backups, dual NICs, redundant PSUs, ECC RAM, etc. About the only thing that could take you out is a motherboard failure-- with the new Dual Core Xeon chips, you could probably even lose a CPU core and still be OK. It's more expensive than 1 "plain old" server, but if reliability is important, you can get that, even in a single server, it just costs more.