Need Server reccomendations please

[CarlsComputerCare]

Hello everyone. I'm in need of some advice/direction. I'm IT over a church that has about 1200 members, and also has a school with 350 students. Between the church and school, there are approximately 30-50 staff and teachers on-site daily. They currently have no type of server and just never had because of cost reasons, etc. I have finally convinced them that it is time, but before I present my proposal, I wanted to get some advice from the community. I'm assuming that we will need to have a domain controller, as well as a separate fileserver. So I wanted to get options for each. The fileserver will initially probably need to house somewhere around 75-100 TB of drives, setup in RAID (I'll also need options for backup as well). Of course, I want to be able to easily add to this storage in the near future as our needs increase.

There are probably 120 computers on-site, with a small handful of these being Macs. The rest are all Windows. We have four different (VLAN) networks that are used across campus, so the server will need to interact with all of those as well. In the future, we also want to be able to bring in our other five campuses as well and have them connect through our server via site to site VPN (this will probably be a year or so down the road). At that time, we will probably setup a smaller DC at each site. The equipment we get now I just want to be capable of being expanded upon and hadling all of this in the future.

This is my largest scale setup to date, so I want to make sure everything is done right. I (and the church) would like me to stay below $5,000 on equipment if at all possible. But if this is unrealistic, I can probably sell them on a higher budget. Any and all advice and recommendations is GREATLY appreciated. I'll be glad to provide more information if needed.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Markverhyden]

Have you written up some kind of needs assessment? I'm asking because somethings do not add up. You are saying $5k for a server, which is certainly in the ball park. But you have 75-100 TB? If that is true the cost of the storage space will equal or exceed your budget.

 

[PodnutzPro]

and $5,000 will definitely not cover a domain controller and a file server.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Lots more info needed.
That's a lot of users, and a lot of storage. What about applications? E-Mail?
Needs like redirected folders?
That's a huge capacity of storage....I'm guessing lots of that is just old data that they keep around. That much storage with enterprise drives would be very costly. I'd probably break this down into several servers, such as a DC, a File/apps/print server, and then a lower grade NAS for the lump of storage of old data. haven't mentioned email yet.

$5,000 budget....eh....without knowing a LOT more info here...I'm thinking this is a project needs to put at least a 1 in front of that 5....if not a 2. Meaning...probably starting at $15,000..if not 25.
I know software wise, being a church, they'll get deep discounts from Microsoft. or are you doing open source? But hardware wise, I see this being a big project.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I have a hard time believing that a CHURCH has or needs 75 Terabytes of data. What the heck is that data comprised of?

 

[glennd]

and $5,000 will definitely not cover a domain controller and a file server.

that was a typo i think, he clearly left a zero off the end...

 

[CarlsComputerCare]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I should have mentioned that the cost of the hard drives does not go against that 5k budget. We have over 50 terabytes in just this year's data alone. This church is a very modern type of church. We video all of our sermons with 3 different cameras in HD, and that is all produced and sent to television stations nationwide. Along with archiving all of the sermons, we also do a lot of commercials and other video type productions. There are actually several hundred terabytes of archived data that we have but would be stored off of the server.

Email is all through Gmail, as they get unlimited "business" email addresses for free since they are a church. Software will all be Office 365, which is also heavily discounted, and that does not count towards the budget.

I could probably easily get the budget increased to $10,000 for the hardware, but probably couldn't push them much higher than that unless I can show some additional long-term cost savings.

Thanks again everyone for your help and input. Please let me know if I can answer any more questions.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I should have mentioned that the cost of the hard drives does not go against that 5k budget. We have over 50 terabytes in just this year's data alone. This church is a very modern type of church. We video all of our sermons with 3 different cameras in HD, and that is all produced and sent to television stations nationwide. Along with archiving all of the sermons, we also do a lot of commercials and other video type productions. There are actually several hundred terabytes of archived data that we have but would be stored off of the server.

Email is all through Gmail, as they get unlimited "business" email addresses for free since they are a church. Software will all be Office 365, which is also heavily discounted, and that does not count towards the budget.

I could probably easily get the budget increased to $10,000 for the hardware, but probably couldn't push them much higher than that unless I can show some additional long-term cost savings.

Thanks again everyone for your help and input. Please let me know if I can answer any more questions.

And I stand by my statement. So you video a bunch of stuff. Videos that go in a can and are never looked at again. Who cares about your low Sunday, the pastor was on vacation, sermon from 3 years ago? That needs to be burned to DVD/BluRay and filed. Or shoved up to Amazon Glacier and off of your network. And with no server, that stuff is all over the place. One guy video taped it one week, the next week someone else did and he has that video. And many probably have multiple copies of some things like the great TV commercial you did last year that everyone had to download and look at.

 

[CarlsComputerCare]

So, no one has any equipment reccomendations?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What applications do they run? Typically churches run some specialized software for churches, typically it's single PC based but for a larger church such as this I'm guessing they'd have a multi user one with a server component to run/share a database. Plus accounting software.

Often for SMBs you just take 1 or 2 servers and make all the apps 'n data fit in that.
But for larger businesses, you really want to design your servers around the apps and data needs of the business...so I'd want to know what applications they're running. If it's some big SQL or Oracle based church management software.....that would make my server design quite a bit different than if they were just sharing files and running Quickbooks for non profits to 2 users.

Do they have Remote Access needs? If so, how many at once? To a terminal server? or to their desktops? If so, may consider a TSGateway server and possibly adding the Essentials role on it. (so additional licensing).

For the video storage, how do they archive them now? Just stored on some blob drive on existing server(s)? Or is currently stored on some specialized video storage library that interfaces with their current editing software? I'm talking something like this.. http://www.studionetworksolutions.c...TOx84IS7Pa6nKlW1fTRXRkGMtig0njv9nEaApGP8P8HAQ

Right off the bat, I'm thinking a beefed up ProLiant DL380 with 64 gigs of RAM and dual Xeons, and redundant power supplies. So you're around 5K right there. And no drives for the servers yet.
Now..video storage aside, how much storage do they need for "other" data?
So assuming we peel off the video storage, right now I'm at 2 server instances....but I don't know if they have application serving needs above just something like Quickbooks.

So I'd think an HP MSA like a 2040 might fit the bill for server storage. It's connected to the ProLiant server via a fiber NIC. The MSA is just a drive hosting box, you create a big RAID array or (more like I do) a pair of big RAID 10 volumes in it. Stuff that with a buncha 2.5" SAS drives..and by itself you're north of 5 or 6 grand. But I don't know how many servers you'll need yet, nor how much storage you'd need leaving the video storage out.

So...for servers:
*A DC. Fine...you can make a single 127 gig partition for a DC. Just 2x CPU cores and 8 gigs of RAM would be fine.
*A file/print server...for storing office documents, print sharing/deployment. Again, just 2x CPU cores and 8 gigs of RAM would be fine. 2x drive volumes..a 127 gig dynamic C and..we don't know how much storage it would need for the Data volume. I also often make this a second DC...just to have a second DC on the network.
*An accounting/application hosting server?. Probably 4x cores and 16 gigs of RAM...a 127 gig C (dynamic), and...we don't know what app(s) they need served...so I don't know how much space the D volume would need...or a 3rd volume in case they have a heavy database driven app..for logs and/or other database functionality.
*A remote access server...TSGateway? If to proxy to desktops, just a single 127 gig dynamic C volume, and 2x cores and 8 gigs. If an actual terminal server...a large second volume for profiles (dunno how large without more details)...more cores, and more RAM...to be determined by what apps are run on it.

**As you can tell by my description (dynamic disks)...I'm thinking virtualized here....server 2012r2 "Datacenter" edition...for maximum flexibility of guest licenses.

So you see...for the actual server recommendation....need a heck of a lot more info. They probably only have active directory user accounts for the 30-50 staff you mentioned. Do other people get accounts too? Or are they just sitting down at the computers as guests? Do they access anything as guests, other than the internet/Gmail?

Back to the video editing...if it's not going to be a nice archiving product like linked above, which is designed to interface with certain higher end video editing software, if they just need some growable "blob" storage....just snag something like a Synology that is meant to expand via additional chassis being added to it as storage needs grow. Something like the RS2416 model, ...which, if it gets outgrown, you can daisy chain an expansion module to it.

How about existing switching environment?
Existing firewall?
Existing wireless?
Do they have a server cabinet already?
Existing battery backups?
What do they use for backups?

Please come back with more details of their existing setup.

 

[CarlsComputerCare]

What applications do they run? Typically churches run some specialized software for churches, typically it's single PC based but for a larger church such as this I'm guessing they'd have a multi user one with a server component to run/share a database. Plus accounting software.

Often for SMBs you just take 1 or 2 servers and make all the apps 'n data fit in that.
But for larger businesses, you really want to design your servers around the apps and data needs of the business...so I'd want to know what applications they're running. If it's some big SQL or Oracle based church management software.....that would make my server design quite a bit different than if they were just sharing files and running Quickbooks for non profits to 2 users.

Do they have Remote Access needs? If so, how many at once? To a terminal server? or to their desktops? If so, may consider a TSGateway server and possibly adding the Essentials role on it. (so additional licensing).

For the video storage, how do they archive them now? Just stored on some blob drive on existing server(s)? Or is currently stored on some specialized video storage library that interfaces with their current editing software? I'm talking something like this.. http://www.studionetworksolutions.c...TOx84IS7Pa6nKlW1fTRXRkGMtig0njv9nEaApGP8P8HAQ

Right off the bat, I'm thinking a beefed up ProLiant DL380 with 64 gigs of RAM and dual Xeons, and redundant power supplies. So you're around 5K right there. And no drives for the servers yet.
Now..video storage aside, how much storage do they need for "other" data?
So assuming we peel off the video storage, right now I'm at 2 server instances....but I don't know if they have application serving needs above just something like Quickbooks.

So I'd think an HP MSA like a 2040 might fit the bill for server storage. It's connected to the ProLiant server via a fiber NIC. The MSA is just a drive hosting box, you create a big RAID array or (more like I do) a pair of big RAID 10 volumes in it. Stuff that with a buncha 2.5" SAS drives..and by itself you're north of 5 or 6 grand. But I don't know how many servers you'll need yet, nor how much storage you'd need leaving the video storage out.

So...for servers:
*A DC. Fine...you can make a single 127 gig partition for a DC. Just 2x CPU cores and 8 gigs of RAM would be fine.
*A file/print server...for storing office documents, print sharing/deployment. Again, just 2x CPU cores and 8 gigs of RAM would be fine. 2x drive volumes..a 127 gig dynamic C and..we don't know how much storage it would need for the Data volume. I also often make this a second DC...just to have a second DC on the network.
*An accounting/application hosting server?. Probably 4x cores and 16 gigs of RAM...a 127 gig C (dynamic), and...we don't know what app(s) they need served...so I don't know how much space the D volume would need...or a 3rd volume in case they have a heavy database driven app..for logs and/or other database functionality.
*A remote access server...TSGateway? If to proxy to desktops, just a single 127 gig dynamic C volume, and 2x cores and 8 gigs. If an actual terminal server...a large second volume for profiles (dunno how large without more details)...more cores, and more RAM...to be determined by what apps are run on it.

**As you can tell by my description (dynamic disks)...I'm thinking virtualized here....server 2012r2 "Datacenter" edition...for maximum flexibility of guest licenses.

So you see...for the actual server recommendation....need a heck of a lot more info. They probably only have active directory user accounts for the 30-50 staff you mentioned. Do other people get accounts too? Or are they just sitting down at the computers as guests? Do they access anything as guests, other than the internet/Gmail?

Back to the video editing...if it's not going to be a nice archiving product like linked above, which is designed to interface with certain higher end video editing software, if they just need some growable "blob" storage....just snag something like a Synology that is meant to expand via additional chassis being added to it as storage needs grow. Something like the RS2416 model, ...which, if it gets outgrown, you can daisy chain an expansion module to it.

How about existing switching environment?
Existing firewall?
Existing wireless?
Do they have a server cabinet already?
Existing battery backups?
What do they use for backups?

Please come back with more details of their existing setup.

Thank you so much for taking the time for your detailed response. I will attempt to answer all your questions below.

The main database that our church uses is web-based application specialized for churches. All users login via the web interface, and there is no software to install. They also use some Access databases as well, with the most users sharing one database being around 10.

Accounting software is Quickbooks Premier. We have a total of 8 church campuses/schools, each having it's own accountant and own Quickbooks company file. All accountants need access to all company files.

The video storage currently consists of about 20 "pairs" of 3 TB USB enclosures in RAID 1. These drives are divided up between four users in the video department. It is a mess! I do like your idea about the Synology, and just keep all the video storage separate from the server storage. Also, the video department users are the only Mac users as well, so this may help simplify things also with mixing their storage with the Windows users storage.

Leaving out the video storage, we could probably be fine with 10 TB of storage for starters. But eventually we will want to host the other campuses off of this server as well, which will probably need to go up to 15-20 TB at that time.

Yes, the 30-50 staff and teachers would need AD accounts. I'm not sure how to go about other users yet, as far as guests. We have about 350 students in the school, with probably about 150 of those being of age to use computers during the schoold year, so I believe that I would like to have accounts set up for each of those students as well. If for no other reason than for tracking and accountability purposes. And they would each have their own little storage slice as well.

I think we are good with all our current networking equipment. We have a firewall in place. There are two Netgear ProSAFE GS748T 48-Port switches on-site, and two Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch ES-24-250W 24 port switches on-site. Wireless consists of 12 AC Unifi APs.

No server cabinet yet. That will have to be added, as well as some more battery backups.

Backup system is currently non-existent, as their storage system for the past 5 years has been strictly Dropbox.

Hopefully all of this info will help clear things up and give you a clearer picture of what we need. Thanks again for your time.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

So the video editing is done only on Apples? If so, any particular software used? I ask, because..(see that link above for the video storage server)...some video storage servers "integrate" with editing software, so it has organized library storage of videos that plugs into an interface of the client software.

I have to head out for the morning, doing a wireless/ vid cam expansion at this huge horse stable/farm/riding arena place. Back around noon.
"Cool" on the Ubiquiti gear!

 

[Markverhyden]

So you really have three businesses, school, church and production studio.

I would break out the production studio from the rest. To be honest, the setup you mention using USB drives is unfortunately all to common, and very risky. Using the RAID functions built into any *nix works well, I've used it for many years boot drives. But I would not be using it for production storage unless there is a known good separate backup.

Have you looked at FreeNAS by ixsystems.com? OEM solutions, like those from HP and Dell are great and expensive. If you have no problems rolling and supporting your own FreeNAS has Enterprise level capabilities. Beyond building your own boxes they have vendors that sell hardware certified by them. It's a great way to get a lot of storage at economical prices.

 

[CarlsComputerCare]

So the video editing is done only on Apples? If so, any particular software used? I ask, because..(see that link above for the video storage server)...some video storage servers "integrate" with editing software, so it has organized library storage of videos that plugs into an interface of the client software.

I have to head out for the morning, doing a wireless/ vid cam expansion at this huge horse stable/farm/riding arena place. Back around noon.
"Cool" on the Ubiquiti gear!

Thanks again. The Apple guys all use Final Cut Pro on their machines.

The church just had a board/staff meeting, and I've now been given a deadline (They want this up and running yesterday, while I have been trying to get them to go to a server for two years now.

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but if I go with the ProLiant DL380, is there anyway that I can just use it for my DC and my fileserver for the time being, possibly setup as RAID 6, and then just expand a year or so down the road when budget allows to a HP MSA 2040? Or is this not feasible?

Sorry for all the questions, but honestly I've never done a server this large of a scale. It's usually just an office with 5-10 employees working off of Dell Tower server. This is a learning experience for me, but they are fully aware of that. In fact, they are actually glad of that because I'll be discounting my labor heavily for the setup.

I want to pull the trigger on something tomorrow, so looking for all the help/suggestions I can get before doing so.

 

[PodnutzPro]

a deadline, that is funny. To quote Miracle Max from Princess Bride: "You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."

 

[PodnutzPro]

Obviously a network is not a miracle, but it does some time for planning it out and the board is probably not familiar with the process of network design.

 

[PodnutzPro]

With that much data and that many users, no, do not try to use just one server

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Technically the answer is "Yes you can do that"....but is it worth a day or three of your labor when it comes to re configuring it down the road. You have to take a full image of the server (backup to VHD or VMDK)...shut them down, reconfigure the server to the fiber SAN (there's a few hours)...build the hypervisor host, create the VMs...restore/attach those backup disk images, etc etc.

Too many times I see the project start to get budget conscious, and it's often said "We'll just get this now, and get more stuff later"..and then that "later" never happens.

 

[CarlsComputerCare]

Technically the answer is "Yes you can do that"....but is it worth a day or three of your labor when it comes to re configuring it down the road. You have to take a full image of the server (backup to VHD or VMDK)...shut them down, reconfigure the server to the fiber SAN (there's a few hours)...build the hypervisor host, create the VMs...restore/attach those backup disk images, etc etc.

Too many times I see the project start to get budget conscious, and it's often said "We'll just get this now, and get more stuff later"..and then that "later" never happens.

Understood. So, based on all the info you have, what would be your final recommendations for me?