I'm looking to build a server for a non-profit organization with approx. 25-30 users. It has to be cost-effective, low-power, low-noise and space-saving. In the worst case, some downtime is acceptable, data loss is not.
The new server will replace our current one (file server, AD, DC, incremental backups) and may well take additional roles in the future, so virtualization seems the way to go. Plus I'd like to use it to learn and test stuff. Hence I decided to dig into servers and virtualization and while there's still much unclear to me, I'm starting to get the basics. I'm now looking for help finding out what I could do better with the approach I've come up so far.
So far my plan is to go with a SYS-5028D-TN4T and a NAS with RAID1 at a different location as a secondary backup solution. I'll probably pick Windows Server 2016 Standard & Hyper-V (I have some experience with Server 2008 and we need AD & DC).
I'm unsure on how to equip the SYS-5028D-TN4T. It looks like I need:
- 32GB DDR4 reg. ECC.
- A small SSD for the Hypervisor.
- A bigger SSD (SATA or NVMe) for the VM's.
- A 2TB SSD or HDD for the files and profiles (not necessarily RAID1, since everything gets backed up daily and I could easily throw in another drive)
- 2x8TB HDD RAID1 for backups (which will also get copied to the NAS daily)
Does this make sense? Or should I put the Hypervisor and the VM's on the same SSD/NVMe? Or use CAS / HCI?
What else could I do better? Thanks in advance for your help!
The new server will replace our current one (file server, AD, DC, incremental backups) and may well take additional roles in the future, so virtualization seems the way to go. Plus I'd like to use it to learn and test stuff. Hence I decided to dig into servers and virtualization and while there's still much unclear to me, I'm starting to get the basics. I'm now looking for help finding out what I could do better with the approach I've come up so far.
So far my plan is to go with a SYS-5028D-TN4T and a NAS with RAID1 at a different location as a secondary backup solution. I'll probably pick Windows Server 2016 Standard & Hyper-V (I have some experience with Server 2008 and we need AD & DC).
I'm unsure on how to equip the SYS-5028D-TN4T. It looks like I need:
- 32GB DDR4 reg. ECC.
- A small SSD for the Hypervisor.
- A bigger SSD (SATA or NVMe) for the VM's.
- A 2TB SSD or HDD for the files and profiles (not necessarily RAID1, since everything gets backed up daily and I could easily throw in another drive)
- 2x8TB HDD RAID1 for backups (which will also get copied to the NAS daily)
Does this make sense? Or should I put the Hypervisor and the VM's on the same SSD/NVMe? Or use CAS / HCI?
What else could I do better? Thanks in advance for your help!