Does this make me a bad person? Oh God.

[sdeph5200]

Ok so I have this client, who owns a Mortage Company. This client is having me build them a server system w/ a Raid 5 configuration, and lots of other nifty things. Well after selling them a few laptops from Omax, and working out a $2058 Server system, I worked out a "deal" with them

Comments

Some Advice, Assuming you have 20 users

[joezollo]

My suggestion is to install Windows Server 2003 R2 and set it up as a domain controller with active directory for authentication. In any network environment with over 10 users, AD becomes more of a requirement. Simply have all the computers join the domain. Also be sure to setup a login script that mounts the users home directory, in case they want to store anything on the server.

Since you're going for RAID5 (for 20 users, it is a good idea), it would be wise to get a raid controller that uses PCI-X to connect to the motherboard. You'd also be wise to use SATA hard drives. I believe HighPoint has a product called RocketRAID which has 5 or 6 serial ATA ports and connects via PCI-X. If we were 5 years in the past, I’d say go SCSI, but SATA is slowly becoming the standard for server hardware. Now, if you're dealing with less than 20 users, RAID5 is overkill, RAID1 would be cheaper and easier to manage.

As far as running software directly off the server? Horrible idea! That puts way too much strain on your bandwidth and hardware. Most applications wouldn't even function if you just ran the exe from the server. Your best bet is to enable roaming profiles on the server and install the software locally.

And you absolutely need a legal license for server 2003, which can cost a bundle. Most importantly, make sure you do this when everyone is out of the office, you'll need a good 6-8 hours to get 20 computers setup, in comparison, it took me 5 hours to get 15 setup.