File Server Load

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Is there a recommended load for Server 2003 R2 regarding file server usage?
I have 250 employees accessing 750gb of data (Word, Excel, PDF). Can a
2x2ghz Xeon, 4gb RAM server handle this many file requests?
 
Re: File Server Load

Hello,

i would say it depends on more things, like:
-type of file. Requests on huge 200M access files hurts deeps the filer
(80Mbit/s just for one user).
-The subsystem disk (SAN / NAS /DAS ...) / 10K / 15K tr/mn
-One big file sytem...

It seems ok for me, but it depends if you have more "intensive" users or
more "normal" one !

Do you have statistics on your current servers ?
--
Cordialement,
Mathieu CHATEAU
http://lordoftheping.blogspot.com


"scooter" <scooter@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E17DA43A-AE18-4F80-9477-6C265907AD6A@microsoft.com...
> Is there a recommended load for Server 2003 R2 regarding file server
> usage?
> I have 250 employees accessing 750gb of data (Word, Excel, PDF). Can a
> 2x2ghz Xeon, 4gb RAM server handle this many file requests?
>
 
Re: File Server Load

Hi scooter,

If this server is only used as a file server (no apps like Exchange or SQL)
then this spec should be more than adequate. File usage (opening, saving
writing etc) is handled by the client pc's system. The thing you most may
want to look at is your network infrastructure, perhaps go
gigabit..especially if these files are large and/or compressed.

Coraleigh Miller

"scooter" <scooter@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E17DA43A-AE18-4F80-9477-6C265907AD6A@microsoft.com...
> Is there a recommended load for Server 2003 R2 regarding file server
> usage?
> I have 250 employees accessing 750gb of data (Word, Excel, PDF). Can a
> 2x2ghz Xeon, 4gb RAM server handle this many file requests?
>
 
Re: File Server Load

Thanks Matheiu and Caroleigh.

The server would only be serving files... there are no high-end apps
running. We DO run Diskeeper's Undelete to provide a Recycle Bin
functionality to the network drives, but it's minimally invasive. 90% of the
files are under 10mb, but there are some very large PDF files that are
100-300mb (scanned documents at too fine of a resolution). Right now we're
experiencing periods of slowness browsing the network shares, but I think
it's more related to DFS-Replication and its maintenance as well as the U320
SCSI arrrays in use now than the servers themselves; the memory and CPU usage
never gets all that high.

I'm thinking about going with one server connected to an iSCSI SAN
(EqualLogic, to be specific) for all of the file serving needs. The SAN has
99.999% uptime, but a single server would be the single point of failure. A
two server cluster would eliminate that risk, but I still need to make sure
that all of the users hitting a single server would not be a bottleneck.

The servers are gigabit with gigabit switches, but the user switches are
100mb - so that will still be a bottleneck.

Thanks.




"Coraleigh Miller" wrote:

> Hi scooter,
>
> If this server is only used as a file server (no apps like Exchange or SQL)
> then this spec should be more than adequate. File usage (opening, saving
> writing etc) is handled by the client pc's system. The thing you most may
> want to look at is your network infrastructure, perhaps go
> gigabit..especially if these files are large and/or compressed.
>
> Coraleigh Miller
>
> "scooter" <scooter@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:E17DA43A-AE18-4F80-9477-6C265907AD6A@microsoft.com...
> > Is there a recommended load for Server 2003 R2 regarding file server
> > usage?
> > I have 250 employees accessing 750gb of data (Word, Excel, PDF). Can a
> > 2x2ghz Xeon, 4gb RAM server handle this many file requests?
> >
>
>
>
 
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