[dundee] server recommendation

[Rick Moynihan]

2009/6/24 Andrzej Hajto <tlug at defcon1.eu>:
> Any recommendation for file server running (of course) Linux and Samba
>  for small office, about 20 users?
> What about Dell PowerEdge 840 Intel Core 2 Duo E4700, 4GB RAM, 500GB
> HDD. Good enough? Too good? Any other spec recommended?

Not sure I can offer any real advice, but it might be a good idea to
supply some more information to get a good answer:

Off the top of my head:

- What role will it take?

  + Will it be centralised, will all companies documents/files be
stored on the server?

  + What uptime guarantees are needed?  Would it be catastrophic if
the server was down for two hours?  What % of employees would struggle
to do their work without it?

- What kind of files/documents will it store?

   + I'm guessing it'll be a few small/medium sized word
documents\spreadsheets...  What file sizes are involved?  But if its
full motion video then the server requirements will be different.

   + How much usage is it likely to get?  Is it mostly occasional
usage for sharing files, or will all user home directories be on the
shared drive?

If you can characterise the performance requirements, in these
terms... or better yet get hard numbers for average file sizes numbers
of reads/writes etc... you should be able to plan the capacity better
in terms of CPU/memory/disk-space.  Rather than getting anecdotal
replies of "a Core 2 duo worked/blew-up for us".

The other option is to go for a cheap/cheerful option and phase it in
slowly... i.e. encourage use for sharing documents but not for long
term storage of all home directories etc...  at the point performance
starts to blow, you'll have more information on the usage patterns,
have had the opportunity to capture the stats, and be able to phase in
a bigger more capable replacement ... perhaps with a greater
commitment to it.  Plus of course, you'll get more bang-per-buck in a
year than you will today!  This approach isn't always possible as your
budgets/spending-policies/organisational-structure might prohibit it,
or mean that the upgrade-day never happens.

R.