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Author Topic: Set up a business server or just continue with cloud?  (Read 2557 times)

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Justin

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    Set up a business server or just continue with cloud?
    « on: October 26, 2016, 01:31:53 PM »
    I work for a small/medium sized company that has about 150 employees. Part of my duties is to offer low level (in-house) IT support, fixing software issues, building/upgrading PC's, installing small office networks, etc. We are using a cloud based server which is fairly reasonably priced for our file sharing, the amount of storage we use equates to less than 300GB of files. Unfortunately, we are at 50 users for our cloud based system. If/when we switch over to the more than 50 users mark, we jump into a substantially higher price bracket ($8K+ annually). This is several thousand dollars more than what we're paying now.

    I am wondering if there's a feasible on-site server alternative that will cost less than $8,000 a year, that would be easy enough for me to manage. I know that cloud based server companies offer a great amount of flexibility and features, I've enjoyed them immensely. As far as maintaining a server, I don't have a lot of experience in that realm, however I believe that I would be able to get educated on it and perform just well. I would even look into taking some classes at the local college and from the manufacturers. If I can save the company money and add value to my position, it'll be a win for both me and the company.

    Please give me some ideas on maybe some NAS devices or server systems and software that would be decent combinations. Thanks.

    Geek-9pm


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    Re: Set up a business server or just continue with cloud?
    « Reply #1 on: October 26, 2016, 04:06:19 PM »
    Times have changed. A few years back a dedicated server was the way to go. But new technologies have changed the rules.
    Quote
    Cloud servers can be configured to provide a similar level of performance, security and control of a dedicated server, but instead of being hosted on physical hardware that's solely dedicated to you they reside on a shared “virtualised” environment managed by your cloud hosting provider, meaning that you benefit from ...
    The quotation above is from Rackspace.
    If the company you have is been too rigid about the price structure, look else where.
    Personally, I don't have enough experience to advice yhou.
    Here are links of interest:
    https://www.rackaid.com/blog/dedicated-cloud-hosting/
    The above is about the argument that dedicated is better.
    On the flip side:
    https://www.znetlive.com/blog/5-differences-between-cloud-and-dedicated-servers/
    Above says cloud has better pricing.
    And:
    http://www.jwrider.com/lib/clientserver.htm
    By J. W. Rider, a consultant.
    The above is more about understand the different ways to network computers.
    He says:
    Quote
    Client/Server computing is NOT any old distributed computing.  This is a case of over-generalization, when a term is confused with a broader subject.  In fact, client/server may be used in non-distributed computing, but most of the applications of client/server are indeed distributed.  At the application layer in distributed computing, the “business-aware” components are transferring business-related information between processes that may or may not reside on the same computer.   In a well-designed distribution computing system, the information seems to be transmitted directly.  However, the application layer components don’t really send the information directly.  Instead, they rely upon lower level components to package the information appropriately and to broadcast the information through the local area network (LAN).  The lower levels provide the “communication transparency” that makes it seem like the business-aware components are in direct contact with one another.  The application layer components are not concerned with how the lower levels perform the task, as long as it is done transparently.  Distributed computing could be accomplished without client/server (but the modern practice is indeed to use C/S).

    Hop you find an answer.  :)

    DaveLembke



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    Re: Set up a business server or just continue with cloud?
    « Reply #2 on: October 26, 2016, 06:14:06 PM »
    The cloud pros and cons

    Pros:

    - Not your hardware and when there is a failure of hardware the company that is giving you this cloud server service has to deal with fixing issues.
    - Data stored at a different location works as a offsite backup solution

    Cons:

    - Limitations in users and storage capacity or pay more etc
    - Internet connection goes down for any reason and you might be dead in the water with a bunch of employees twiddling their thumbs.

    The Local Server pros and cons
    Pros:


    - You can have as many people connected to it as you like as the server will support.
    - Much faster movement of data between server and user
    - Internet bandwidth freed up for other needs ( you might be able to go with a lesser bandwidth tier service and save some money )
    - Need more storage, its as simple as adding a drive or set of drives for RAID.
    - Internet connection down, your business might be able to keep running if everyone is working at one site over local network.

    Cons:

    - Now you need a backup running and offsite backup for data as well in case of fire etc.
    - Hardware failure you have to fix it and it costs the company
    - Requires more IT hours per year to maintain.
    - Electric bill for a power hungry server that might be running 24/7/365
    - Life cycle for server, eventually you will have to buy another newer server because this server will lag with computing needs increasing as well as hardware eventually fails ( fans, drives, RAM, power supplies, etc ).

    Also to note.... Depending on your server needs $8000 might be plenty or not enough for 150 users. It all depends on what the users are doing at that server. If its just  file sharing then you could get by with a lower end cheaper server. If people are connecting to sessions and running server side applications, the price quickly increases as for you will need a server with plenty of processing power and RAM to host 150 users. This can easily go over $8000 if your server side processing requires heavy processing needs.

    camerongray



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    Re: Set up a business server or just continue with cloud?
    « Reply #3 on: October 27, 2016, 02:09:47 AM »
    What is this current cloud service you are paying for?  What software does it run, what does it do.etc?