What to choose a server or a regular system unit?

Question

System administration

Hello! Organization for 100 computers.
Goals:
1. All computers in the domain, respectively, ActiveDirectory will be used
2. Shared folders up to 10 folders will be used inside the organization (according to access levels through AD)
3. The PHP site will be running on IIS and the ASP.NET web application
4. Will distribute the Internet via Kerio or SOUTH
OS: Windows Server 2016
So the question arose what to choose? the budget is very limited in the region of 280 thousand kzt, which is about 56 thousand rubles.
If you put a regular system unit with good cooling (core i7, RAM 16 gb, HDD: 2 TB.), then how long will it last? There is a second option for an HP tower server (CPU: Xeon E5, RAM: 8 Gb, HDD: 1 TB 3.5"). Then will 8 GB of RAM be enough for my tasks? What to choose? According to the budget, it is more priority to choose a regular system unit, but how long and if
the server then over time it is necessary to replace something, one PSU costs 25-50 thousand RAM, etc. also space for this organization
Thank you all!

Answer 1

In terms of performance, server hardware (for the same money) is significantly worse , lower.
But more reliable.
Although an i5 will suffice for your purposes, you don’t need to spend money on any i7.
Tell me, is your organization not embarrassed that you need to BUY licenses for AD, etc., and for 100 more pieces?
On the server and on jobs.
Install NAS4Free - this is such a special distribution kit with web management.
There and AD through Samba and a file server and much more. And the server can be cocked regularly through the web panel.
If you need all the baubles - such as file deduplication, etc., then you need at least 4 RAM, preferably 8 G. But 2 G will be enough.
The processor can be an old ancient i3 of the first generations.
Mixing a firewall and a data storage server is not worth it.
Instead of Kerio (which, by the way, is also paid) - I would put pfSense - also a specialized distribution with web management.
The iron is rather weak, old-fashioned, on which even users are uncomfortable to work - this server will have enough

Answer 2

Buy TWO system units, build redundancy at the software level. Win2016 seems to be able to build storage spaces direct without a shared storage. Well, duplicate the rest of the services.
Only to distribute the Internet from the domain controller is a hell of a bad idea. Buy a couple of old system units (Core Duo level and 1 gig of RAM will be more than enough), install FreeBSD/Linux there, and let them distribute the Internet.
P/S/: Yes, and you need to install two disks and assemble them into a RAID1 array.

Answer 3

I will support ralaton121 in the issue of licenses. I don’t know how to deal with this in KZ, really, but in Russia you can get hooked already. And some sit down, although everyone else is as always - as they put a bolt on Billy, they still put it now.
And although we will assume that we put a bolt on licenses, we still need to try not to bet on paid Kerio (about 20 thousand rubles - at least a third of the budget: D)
​​Take a standard system unit, not a server - and you can save a little on the process - then I’ll say for what. Raise freeVmWare (it's free for a single host) and run two virtual machines on it - Windows for AD / file cleaning and Linux for the web. And as a router, put a specialized piece of hardware like Mikrotik - it will be much cheaper than Kerio :) If it will be necessary to authorize by logins (and appetite, as you know, comes with eating) - a proxy is put on a machine with Linux.
16 gig
is of course the minimum at which this design will take off, but it will work che - the cost of licenses for Win2016 Server + 100 user's covers your budget like a bull to a sheep :) Win2016 Server - 50 thousand rubles, oneAD user - 2 thousand - if it's garlic :) )

Answer 4

unequivocally xenon with cores as far as enough. optimally from supermicro.

Answer 5

The license for the server does not fit into such a budget, but here is the hardware. And if the domain, then you immediately need a server OS. But if 56k is only for hardware, and there are licenses or a bolt was hammered on them, two system units are better, hyperv or burned vmware are on them, we cut the infrastructure into them. The main thing in this case is that there is enough memory. By the way, we have two corei7 with 32GB of brains each have been working for 4 years, it seems, even without failures (I didn’t see it in the logs), there are AD and files and sites in PHP. And it seems that both cost in total less than the declared 56k.

Answer 6

Regarding hardware, I would advise you to take something from branded towers and add RAM there over time. An ordinary system unit is also good, but the survivability of iron is significantly lower with 24/7 work.
Now for the software, use ESXi on hardware, and create virtual machines in it. There you can also raise the router (for example, on RouterOS or fSense and even Kerio) and the domain and everything will be like separate servers.
If you are interested in a free replacement for ActiveDirectory, as advised above, look towards ClearOS, there is AD and mail and file balls. But keep in mind, if this bundle (I mean ActiveDirectory on Linux) falls apart, it will be very difficult to restore.