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Tech Perspective: Servers for SMBs

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by techperspective

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Small and midsize businesses are facing a challenge: They need more server computing power, but thanks to the current economy, budgets are shrinking. How can you afford the server you need? According to Gartner, lower-priced server products and suites are viable alternatives to higher-end systems.

How does your organization evaluate servers? What is your current plan for deploying server hardware? Which vendors best meet your server hardware needs? Do you use rack-based servers or traditional towers? Why? Have you used software suites, such as IBM Small Business Suite or Microsoft Small Business Server? What was your experience?

You can read the related Gartner article, which will be posted 3 A.M. Monday, at
https://www.techrepublic.com/article.jhtml?id=r00220010430ggp01.htm

7 replies

by wireless traveler

I work for a small/medium business. We evaluate our server by looking for hardware reviews and our resellers advice.

We put new equipment into test environment for a short time before deployment.

We've used Dell, Compaq, IBM and built clones with quality motherboards from ASUS and have had about the same level of satisfaction.

We've switched to rack based equipment over the past 2 years and have found the maintenance and monitoring to be much easier.

We are currently using MS SBS 4.5 and are migrating to MS Win2k Servers with AD which we are finding challenging because we are a small/medium business. But even as a small to medium business, many solutions that we purchase are now being developed around components only found in the Win2k OS. In many ways we found the use of the small server suites to be great for our staff to maintain, in many other ways, we found the restrictions and 'bugs' to be very difficult to work around. Where you can setup users home directories, creating new user accounts has a lot of draw backs in terms of what volumes and how share points are created. I would recommend the SBS solution for most small business even today.

by hkat

Hi..
I've got 2 remarks:
2. In the second picture Novell small business suite is nowhere to be found!
1. buying and installing the system is one thing.. manintenance is another! My experience is that if you choose for a very low budget system, soft and hardware, after a while the customer comes back to you with q's like: Can my system handle a webserver too? and so on.. Most of the time its better to choose for a system thats capable to handle the demands of the customer in the near future than advice a minimal configuration. Also the system has to be rocksolid! turn it on and leave it... Systems like Windows NT still need to much maintenance. Linux is still to unuser, maintenance, (we're talking about small bussiness here!) friendly. The best is still Novell 5.1 small business suite!

greetz

H. Kat
Network Specialist LAN-alyst BV The Netherlands

by russell cohen

I don't have any input here, just a question regarding the software suites mentioned. As far as I am aware, there are only three products competing in this space, yet the product which I understand created this category - Novell Small Business Suite (NSBS) - does not receive a mention. Is there any particular reason for this oversight?

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