Earlier this year I was approached by a SMB to do some AD design and documentation for an existing system. There was an onsite network admin/CIO but no one else to help manage and maintain the network. During the intital interview and discussion about their needs, the CIO brought up their recent acquisition. A 6 blade HP blade server. About $25,000.00 to $30,000.00 USD . This is for a SMB that has a total of 50 workstations with a SQL DB, exchange server and a DC with DNS. Now the most users I’ve seen active at any one time was about 30 and they were all using a proprietary application for the db. System performance wasn’t bad. Not lighting fast and users weren’t waiting around for data but the servers were getting on in their lives [5+ years].
I though getting a 6 blade HP Blade server to replace 4 tower servers at $25/$30k USD a bit expensive. I told the guy he should have spent his money upgrading consumer level product switches and routers and updated the towers where needed [if the db server was taxed or users had to wait for logins].
What do you guys think about a 4 blade blade server costing $30k going into a SMB environment with about 30 active users where the existing servers meet demand but are the equipment is aging?
Money well spent? or wasted capital???
