Be mindful of your background imagery and sounds. No barking dogs or kids.. no windows or kitchen.

As for the question; I refer you to Yakko: http://wavs.unclebubby.com/wav/TOONS/Animaniacs/NOPANTS.WAV

I've worked with Andrew in the past - He has been a good resource to discuss some planning items out with. And xByte has done right by me on more than one occasion.

@Hubtech said:

why two servers? AD lives just fine on VMs. how big is your business?

Large enough - We technically have two 'business' units. Over all we have about 300 employees. As for AD playing well with others, if Small Business Server could handle the 300 users AND was still production, I'd go that route. SBS worked very well for me in the past, and I had very little issues with it.

@coliver said:

@Dashrender said:

Looks like one modern server could replace this whole lot, VMs baby!

Not only that but I am beginning to think that the T620 you currently have could make for an excellent virtual host. Maybe sell your other servers and max out the RAM in that bad boy... Providing you aren't struggling with disk space or IOPS that would probably work fairly well..

I have the report showing my IOPS around here in email. I'm happy to post it, most of what we have is files,.. which may be getting smaller since the drive failure (still in the clean room for eval).

ALL of the servers / boxes need to be scrubbed and rebuilt IMO - total fubar in my opinion.. which since I'm not MCSE CCNA or any of the other alphabets,.. doesn't mean much to some.

I'm leaning towards 2 Physical (1 for AD) and going VM. However the software we use isn't supported in a VM environment...

@coliver
Updated device list above.

I think I subscribed before other outlets where really available - or more likely before I knew of them.

Scrapped it is.. what I was thinking anyway.

@coliver said:

@g.jacobse Well if that is the case it wouldn't hurt to reconfigure that array, one big RAID 10 would be a really good use of those drives.

What are you running into right now? Just too much gear for what you are doing? Are you virtualized?

Not really running into any thing as of yet. Other that the biggest item.. IT'S NOT A DOMAIN! No Active Directory...(yes,..Insert Facepalm here).

No VMs running,.. though I have considered it.

@coliver said:

The real question isn't what you have right now. It is what load is being used by those servers. Are all the drives full? Then you may want to look at a R730xd (I think that is how they denote it) which provides a silly amount of drive space / SSDs in a 2U box.

The t620 is set up retardedly. 6 500GB drives; 3 logical drives at 500GB each. Two logical drives are 465GB Free. Not really a capacity issue.

I don't remember I worked with ZONES several months ago and ran a DPAC report.. I should find it. but the level wasn't enough to warrant this level of gear.

@Hubtech said:

@g.jacobse whatcha gonna do with that old hardware :)?

'Sell' it back to xbyte to offset the cost of the new box. Otherwise, I'll just keep it and make it right

My subscription is about to expire.. I'm leaning towards not renewing it.

What would you opinion be?

I'm not completely sure what the question is.. I have the following - looking to replace much of it - maybe

PowerEdge T610
Service Tag: GCFFSL1 | Express Service Code: 35580042613
1 physical 146GB drive
HR Server: Running Abra Suite (uses MSSQL DB)
Also a file server

PowerEdge T610
Service Tag: C7QTXR1 | Express Service Code: 26589718045
7 physical: 3 73GB 4 500GB
Fiscal Server: Abilia
Also a file server

PowerEdge T620
Service Tag: 85RTGX1 | Express Service Code: 17763314149
6 physical: 6 500GB
Transportation: Vehicle dispatch / Fleet management
also a file server (limited)

PowerEdge T310
Service Tag: 2XSBFN1 | Express Service Code: 6396511213
Running Spiceworks

The other three 'servers' are desktop boxes running either an external USB drive for a share or internal drive shares.

xByte may buy back hardware I have. I have a PE server still in a box - can't get to it since it's currently buried under other boxes, and a IBM class server. Goal is to par down but still have what I need.

Most of these are 4u units. The only one I don't think I can get rid of is the t620 since it was paid for with grant money - to much paper work.

Dealing with AT&T to test the DSL line at a site..

Unfun

@scottalanmiller said:

As the largest lexicon in spoken history, knowing all words in English is effectively impossible.

Which is why (as I understand it anyway) English is the hardest language to learn as there are so many words, and different words for the same thing, and 'same words' for different things.

Hmm... that there is a run on sentence..

@Hubtech said:

@Dominica said:

@StrongBad said:

Oh boy. LOL. Where is that tart post when we need it

Alas, I'm probably the only chick on here that would think it was funny to be a called a Mango Tart. Too much butthurt from those without my sense of humor.

Ordered the rails. I've got a buddy with a hardware store so i'm going to build the rack out of some Cedar or something like that instead of boring old pine

Pine is good for the 2x4 internal frame. you can skin it with nearly anything.

@Dominica said:

@StrongBad said:

Oh boy. LOL. Where is that tart post when we need it

Alas, I'm probably the only chick on here that would think it was funny to be a called a Mango Tart. Too much butthurt from those without my sense of humor.

I feel that until I reach at least 300 posts I need to keep my humoristic responses to a minimum... Don't want to get thrown out yet.

Poking around here... what better way to kill time,..I mean work.

@Dominica said:

I can't quite understand how companies can't see that when they have a problem and go to a vendor to solve it, 9 times out of 10 the vendor is going to give a "solution" from stuff the vendor sells. It's like wanting to buy a fuel-efficient family car and only talking to a Hummer salesman. Of course they are going to put you in a Hummer, it's all they have to offer!

And upsell everything so \that you spend more than you need to.. I want to haul groceries,.. not quarry gravel...

@Dominica said:

@g.jacobse That happens to me sometimes when my laptop goes to sleep.

face hits desk having dozed off
Huh...Wha,... Oh hey I use FF,.. Chrome sometimes,.. IE only if being held at gun point.

It completely kicked me off..
\Had to log back in...

@scottalanmiller said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

How much did they spend? I've bought HP's super-budget Proliant servers for less than $200 in the past. So six of those would come in at $1200. If you know nothing about virtualisation and would have to learn, then six budget servers could, in theory, work out cheaper. And how unreliable is HP's software RAID, anyway?

In this case it was not HP, it was Dell. Same difference, just saying. But Dell does not have the equivalent of the $200 HP MicroServer. Their entry level is basically a $600 - $800 desktop unit. There is no way that six of them was anywhere nearly as cheap as a single slightly better unit with hardware RAID.

And the software RAID not working is what brought the topic up. Third party awkward software RAID that both HP and Dell offer is not

I tossed it about a time or two,.. Software RAID or hardware - Even with my lack of knowledge and hand on experience with RAIDs, I'd go hardware.. just seems safer and more reliable.

@Hubtech
Nice - I've thought of building my own (home) rack but was over complicating things. Using rail stock makes sense and the job cleaner and simpler.

yawn

Finished LOST: Episode No place like Home part 3

Now going to bed..I've done enough of IT for one day.