The current numbers seem to match my experience better than the old ones. Since our ears are of course very poor sound meters (and mine aren't the best), I assumed I got the wrong idea by listening. So it really is louder than HP's specs.
MikeC wrote:
(Maybe about ECC RAM?)
Indeed.
The thread split was not done well in my view: on-topic posts which had nothing to do with ECC were moved to the ECC thread.
MikeC wrote:
I know a handful of small business with 3~8 people in Vancouver, and I'd say the vast majority would be lost w/ a server. They don't have a specific IT guy in house, usually just one guy who knows the most, and they often have a loose contractual relationship with an IT consultant -- who is often not that great.
Which is why I talked about "outsourcing". And what I had in mind was not hiring a company which consists of a glorified consultant but outsourcing the server. Your orgnization could have an account on some servers in a datacenter managed by a proper IT service company (with enough staff that an emergency, an illness or an accident won't leave you without support). That's what most people do when it comes to web servers of course but you can also do it for Exchange servers and so on.
MikeC wrote:
With MS WS2008, I quickly found I lack the patience and paranoid perspective to deal with all the security functions, which drove me crazy.
I think you might be pleasantly surprised by the user-friendliness of some free server operating systems in that respect.
MikeC wrote:
I like your point about how the Microserver's low cost allows businesses to buy a second machine to keep it as a backup -- this is something I've done with PCs and NASes -- but that 2nd server too would need its own OS & licenses, no?
It depends on the licenses.
If we're talking about MS licenses, my understanding is that you would only need two licences if they were OEM licences which I wouldn't generally recommend for small organizations anyway. I don't know if there is such a thing as a OEM CAL.
EDIT:
MikeC wrote:
In any case, my discussion of the merits of the HP for its intended market is just that -- a discussion. There are a lot of choices out there for collective storage/file sharing. Just trying to touch on this.
Understood. I must admit I've used your comments as a stand-in for a point of view shared by many I wanted to argue against. Lots of people seem to believe they need more powerful server gear than they actually do and it's a shame because it leads to a lot of waste. Sorry for putting you on the spot like this on account of my little crusade.