Looking for hardware advice for a customer

[szlamany]

I've got a new customer that we are going to develop an app for.

Basically they process lots and lots of documents - PDF's and Word Doc's. Our app is going to let them drag-and-drop these files into a screen which will then "move" then automatically into a share on a file server. The app will also manage these files "via" a CASE NUMBER - so we are going to have MS SQL running with a database of these cases.

Long story short...

At any rate - there are not many users - dozen or so - so the MS SQL part is the least of our worries hardware wise.

But the documents get into the GB's in size.

Do you have any opinions on what a file server like this should be? Raid setup? Is SAN a solution? I know nothing about this stuff. I'm looking to help move them toward a solution...

Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated!

My initial thought was that we would simply run MS SQL on this file server - since it's such a small part of the whole picture. No reason for another server...

[Derek Whigham_1]

My opinion would be to have a small xeon x2 server with 2Gb Ram with MS SQL Server. This server could also the fileserver , but I would seriously think about the weak point which is the number of physical disks that can be within this server.

http://www.ibeast.com/content/tools/RaidCalc/RaidCalc.asp

This link will help you calculate your useable storage with various raid / disk count setups.

If you have performance issues you may not be able to add more disks to handle the IO Rate.

http://www.europc.co.uk/pages/ProductPage.aspx?PID=117161

Something like the server above may be required depending on the load.

You should also ensure that the network connectivity is 1000BT (GigE)

I would go for a NAS instead of a SAN unless you are going to need serious storage (4+TB) and > 16 Physical disks.