Server vs normal pc with windows Server 2016 installed

twinsen

Hi Guys
Just looking for an advice.
My brother has a two small shops and small warehouse. For good while he was using cloud solution to run his business, but due to crappy network he has, he was constantly disconnected.
The company he buys the software from recommended to him to install the software he is using in one of his shops/warehouse, which make sense I suppose.
The issue I am having is the guys are trying to sell (recommend) him a 1500e server for a software that can basically run on old core i3 with about 5% max cpu usage (requirements are basically 2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 2GB HDD, Windows 7/Windows 8/Windows 10, MS SQL Server 2014 Express Edition. I have been testing software on my machine in Hyperv with one core and never had any issues.
So my question is since my brother has literally zero idea about IT, should I keep pushing him, to let me build him a normal PC( I have spare i5 7600k  8gb of ram, etc) with windows server installed or let him just waste 1500e ?

ED E

Build a basic box with a mobo that has an IPMI and ECC memory too if you can. And dont skimp on the PSU.

Otherwise just fine.

Gone Drinking

They probably are giving him a quotation for a machine that's overkill for the task at hand, however there's benefits that come with that sort of purchase. I'm guessing there's possibly a RAID configuration for redundancy at the disk level, software support and next business day hardware replacements for 1 - 3 years depending. Maybe even a form of backup solution included.

If you build this, you know you'll be the first person he rings if he has any problems with it. It'll be up to you to ensure the software is backed up from whatever machine you build also. Do you have the time to do that? It's quite possible you do, just keep that in mind.

I know what you mean because I look after the PCs in a family members business. They asked me the best way to run a new accounts package and if they should buy a server. Similar to yourselves, I realized it would have been overkill so I upgraded one of their users machines and ran the accounts package on it as a server/client combo, the remaining three office PCs access the database from it with their clients then.

However, as I said, any problems and they ring me. I also made sure they had a backup system in place so as the "server" PC was backed up externally.

Just food for thought before you go leaping into becoming someones go to IT person

Capt'n Midnight

And as performance isn't critical I'd stay away from anything proprietary like hardware RAID.

If you software mirror two SSD drives then data recovery or moving to a new machine will be so much easier. Maybe even go with the virtual machine solution, so you have the option of fixing the image file at home instead of having to do disaster recovery on site.

But yeah having a good backup means less worrying.

emilrasyad

Go with basic build PC, use RAID HDD and sufficient UPS for power backup. Power efficient PC is preferable to save electricity bill.
I myself running my mail, DNS and print server using raspberry pi, don't have any complains.

twinsen

Thanks a lot for all your input.
I bought core i5 machine, with ssd drive , and 1tb drive for backups. Installed also windows 2012 server on the machine.
Didn't go for the raid setup, just created hard drive image in case something goes wrong.
Currently looking for a small UPS that will keep the machine up and running, and need to figure out some decent offsite backup solution.

emilrasyad

twinsen wrote: »

Thanks a lot for all your input.
... and need to figure out some decent offsite backup solution.

something like these https://www.lifewire.com/free-backup-software-tools-2617964 ?

You really want to be backing up the VM, system state, flat files, sql offiste and also have a local repository backing up the VM itself allowing you to spin up that VM when needed when in a DR mode.

https://www.altaro.com/vm-backup/