The following success stories describe two real-world scenarios to illustrate how different organizations might evaluate their particular solution needs and find the right servers to create an appropriate, scalable server infrastructure.
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Our earlier example laid out the bare essentials of the ABC Corp requirements. Let's investigate further. ABC's business is handled in part by an internal sales force for big distributors and customers, and in part by a group of outside manufacturer's reps who sell to smaller distributors and assembly shops that use ABC's widgets. Whether they're internal salespeople or manufacturer's reps, such people want to be able to check available stock, place orders, and track orders, delivers, billing, and payments for their customers. Individual customers can also place and track orders online, obtain pricing information, and interact with ABC's technical support staff on engineering and implementation issues.
Server roles include the following additional information:
- Web server: in keeping with ABC's adoption of Windows 2000 and Back Office components, the Web server in use will be IIS 6.0. This imposes minimum processor requirements of at least 133 MHz, 128 MB RAM, and 1.0 GB disk space; recommended specifications are at least 1 GHz, 256 MB RAM, and 2.0 GB disk space. The Web server documents and files require an additional 5 GB of disk space. Practical specs based on available technology easily and affordably beat all stated requirements, and should include at least 1 GHz processor (2 GHz or better, 2 or more processors recommended), 1 GM RAM, and 100 GB disk space.
- Database server: SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition is mandated by company policy, with the same minimum and recommended requirements stated for IIS in the preceding item. Additional disk space requirements exist here, with more intense processing requirements, indicating that 2 or more processors are recommended, plus 2 GB of RAM, with at least 200 GB of disk space, preferably in a high-speed RAID configuration for best disk access and performance.
- E-commerce server: The manufacturer's recommendations include 1 GHz processor or better (2 or more processors recommended), 1 GB RAM or better, and 20 GB of disk space. Here again, practical considerations make such value easy to meet or exceed.
- Departmental server: This server must support all 50 ABC Corp employees simultaneously, plus as many as 20 contractors or temp workers. Basic Windows 2000 Server requirements apply directly here; a single 1 GHz processor or better will do, with 512 MB RAM or better and 150 GB or more disk space.
Employees also want to share two printers, a high-density color proof printer for brochures and four-color printed materials, and a 40-page-per-minute high-volume laser printer for normal black-and-white printing. Security considerations include a need to manage access to widget information on a per-project basis, as well as FTP services to transfer files between the departmental and the Web server as needed. Employee disk space requirements currently hover around 50 GB, with 48 GB generated in the past year, or an average of 4 GB per month. Planning 24 months into the future, ABC decides to provide 150 GB (rounded up from the actual total of 144 GB).
ABC puts all this information together and consults with a local reseller to choose the right servers. Working with a reseller representative, ABC uses the HP ActiveAnswer ProLiant Sizer for Ecommerce Solutions, the ProLiant Sizer for Citrix MetaFrame XP and Microsoft Windows 2000 Terminal Services to input system requirements and determine a ProLiant server recommendation. E-commerce and database applications require more processing power, which is why the results specify two high-end processors, disk space requirements are more or less pro forma based on the preceding inventory and analysis.
In fact, requirements for the Web, database, and e-commerce servers are all similar enough that ABC decides to standardize on a single server model: the HP ProLiant DL560, which are rack mounted systems designed for a server multiplication strategy. Each DL560 can handle up to 4 Xeon 2.0 GHz processors, up to 12 GB RAM, and up to 287 GB of storage.
As ordered, these machines will include 2 processors, 2 GB RAM, and 200 GB of disk storage, which meets or exceeds specified server maximums for all three roles. The departmental server will be a ProLiant ML310, in a tower configuration designed for incremental growth through internal expansion. with a single 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 200 GB of disk storage. Both types of systems offer ample room for growth: 2 more processors, 10 GB RAM, and an additional 87 GB of disk storage on the DL560s, and 3 GB RAM, and 200-plus GB of disk storage on the ML310.
ABC chose the DL560s because of their compact form factor and easy expansion, since the company's growth strategy is likely to involve buying and adding more servers if they meet high-end growth targets. They chose the ML310 because it meets current in-house processing and projected growth needs without overbuying that platform. Because both servers come with Windows 2000 Server pre-installed, setup and installation proceeds much more quickly than from-scratch installations permit. The departmental server is up and running the day it arrives; other servers are up and running within three days (thanks to help from ABC's cadre of competent consultants, who pitched in and helped out).
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Although HealthCom has only 22 employees, it has unbelievably large amounts of data to manage. The company handles MRIs, CAT, and PET scans for 4 large hospitals in its metropolitan area and provides medical records storage, management, retrieval and delivery for the same four large hospitals, as well as for half a dozen additional smaller hospitals and professional medical practices.
HealthCom uses an impressive laundry list of applications and services, but wants to make records and images available to authorized physicians and medical personnel on the Web as well. The cornerstone of the implementation is a medical records database, which manages a staggering 420 GB of data. About half of this data consists of high-density scanned images, and the other half represents medical records. The image database is growing at 6 GB per month, and medical records at about 2 GB per month.
HealthCom wants to plan only 24 months ahead, so it projects storage requirements at 800 GB at that time: 380 for current holdings, 192 GB for growth, and 200 GB for software, employee use, and other data collections it uses. HealthCom has retained a special medical systems consultant to help it design its next generation of systems. 562 GB or more is needed for databases, 100 GB for the departmental server, and 100 GB for the Web server.
HealthCom expects it will need to support up to 200 simultaneous Web users, who will also access the database system. In-house needs are relatively modest: planning for 10% growth over the next two years, and access for up to 6 each consultants and temporary workers, the internal (departmental) server needs to handle only 40 users (38.62 rounded up). Because in-house users can also access the database server, other internal requirements include only file and print sharing, access controls, and access to several minor shared applications for time tracking and account management.
The server role analysis for HealthCom leads to the following roles:
- Web server: In keeping with HealthCom's adoption of NetWare, basic NetWare 6.0 Server requirements also cover this platform's Web server needs.
- Database server: Oracle Server 8 has been chosen for backward compatibility with the HealthCom's Oracle database. Stated requirements at the level of processing required indicates that 2 or more highly powerful processors are required, along with 2.0 GB of RAM or better. Disk space requirements mandate 562 GB of storage or better.
- Departmental server: This server must support a total of 40 simultaneous users. Basic NetWare 6.0 Server requirements apply directly here; a single 1 GHz processor or better will do, with 512 MB RAM or better and 100 GB of disk space.
Employees also want to share three printers, a single high-density color proof printer for brochures and four-color printed materials, and two 20-page-per-minute high-volume laser printers for normal black-and-white printing. Security considerations include a need to manage access to widget information on a per-project basis, and FTP services to transfer files between the departmental and the Web server as needed. Employee disk space requirements currently hover around 40 GB, with 24 GB generated in the past year, or an average of 2 GB per month. Planning 24 months into the future, HealthCom decides to provide 100 GB (rounded up from the actual total of 88 GB).
The key to this exercise, given HealthCom's use of NetWare 6.0, is the ProLiant Sizer for Novell iFolder, designed to accommodate heavy database, transaction processing, as well as Web and departmental server use. Configuring the tool for the various server roles
- Web server: ProLiant ML330 with a single 933 MHz Pentium 3 processor, 512 MB RAM (quadruple the sizing tool's recommendation), two smart arrays: one for the system drive (36 GB), and one for the data drives (150 GB).
- Database server: ProLiant ML350, with 2 866 MHz Xeon processors with 256 KB cache, 1 GB RAM (as per Oracle recommendations; sizer indicates only 256 MB required), a smart array with two 36 GB drives, and an MA6000 external storage array with 16 36 GB drives (total storage 648 MB, 72 GB for the system, 576 for databases).
- Departmental server: Requirements here are virtually identical to the Web server, so the sizing tool makes the same recommendation: ProLiant ML330 with a single 933 MHz Pentium 3 processor, 512 MB RAM (quadruple the sizing tool's recommendation), two smart arrays: one for the system drive (36 GB), and 5 for the data drives (150 GB).
Working with the sizing tool requires some knowledge of server components and capabilities, including choices for network interface cards, disk arrays, number of memory slots to occupy, and so forth. For those in doubt about such choices, we urge you to consult user's guide included with the tool. If you don't have access to a qualified reseller or consultant, this will help you work your way through the various choices you'll encounter.
The ProLiant ML330 is a good choice for the Web and departmental servers, since it can be expanded as follows:
- Up to two 1.4 GHz Intel Pentium III processors (one additional, both faster than the starting point)
- Up to a total of 4 GB RAM (3.5 GB more than the starting point)
- Up to 400 GB storage (300 GB more than the starting point)
This leaves plenty of room for growth in processing power for both Web and departmental needs. The ProLiant ML350 is a far more capable platform in all dimensions, with the following expansion capabilities:
- Up to two 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon processors (one additional, both faster than the starting point)
- Up to 12 GB RAM (11 GB more than the starting point)
- Up to 1174 GB storage (526 additional GB, nearly double the starting point)
Clearly, the ProLiant ML350 still leaves lots of room for further growth, even for a demanding application.
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