What should we do, what's the best solutions

[jurgen]

Hi,

I'm currenlty working on a project and don't know what to do. What's the best solutions, buy one big server or buy several small servers.

At the end of the road, we must have a
MS SQL Server
MySQL Server
IIS Server for Intranet, Extranet and FTP
Sharepoint Server
Terminal Server (Application mode)

Software licenses are no problem because we have corporate agreement with microsoft.

Can someone give me a founded answer to this question

Regards

Jurgen

 

[NickFerrar]

Personally I'd go for separate servers for most of that.

The IIS server presumably needs to be on a DMZ if accessed by 3rd parties?
The rest would likely sit on your internal network. Not sure if the two SQL servers could be combined, they'd probably conflict somewhere. What will be on the terminal server?

 

[jurgen]

The IIS will be accessed only from our remote offices and through VPN connections. Only ftp can be reached from internet but only from systems from remote offices. On the cliënt there is an ftp application that downloads by timeperiods some files.

The MySQL en SQL Server on one system is now problem, that we've experience in.

On the terminal server there will be applications installed like office 2003 and our own developped application. There are 5 remote users who can access this.

 

[technome]

I hesitate on recommendations..
On two clients I have AD FSMOs, 2.8 Ghz, 2 gig ram, u320 raid 5, 15k drives running as general file servers, with SQL 2000/Dynamics , TS for admin mode via VPN to Sonicwall firewalls. Have backup Exec, Symantec CE, APC battery backup software, Adwatch, SQL agent,and raid monitoring software running. No problem with throughput or reliability. Personally I would not add anymore services to my present setup nor would I have TS application mode enabled due to the AD FSMO role. I consider the above setups "pushed", but since there are roughly only 35 workstations on each network, the systems are fine. If this were for a workgroup or member server, I would enable application mode.

Sounds like security will be maintainable as long as the VPN is used. SQL and IIs need mucho memory. I would put IIs ,ftp on another server, as Nick points out for security, as a member server, definitely not a AD DC. Never used MySql, so I have no ideas for integration. The second server does not need to be as robust as the first, but I would at least mirror the drives, security will need to carefully instated on the DMZ for the second server. I would not place SQL or MYSQL on a DMZ machine, too risky and would require too many ports to be open between the internal network and the dmz.