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Mark OlivierFlag for United States of America

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How Many Servers to Use

We're taking over IT support for a client with two servers.  Server 1 is the PDC and file server, Server 2 is the web server, FTP server, and runs Sql.  There are 2 in-house users, and 2 remote access users that mostly upload to FTP.

The servers are pretty old and we think It's time to replace them, and we're trying to determine if it's in the best interest of the client to combine all the features into one server, or to keep the functions separate into 2 servers.  Can you tell me what type of information we need to gather to make an informed recommendation.  Do you have any other suggestions?

Thank you for your input..
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Steven Sheeley
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How much data and how many users?  What are the clients OS?
How many network printers?
What is the web server used for?  Advertisement or otherwise?
How old is old, 3 years, or more?
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If there is not a need to replace the SQL and FTP box I wouldnt. I am assuming the FTP files get transfered to the File Server, right?  If that is the case I would Would replace the the PDC\File server to accomodate more space and faster cpu.
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Both servers are running Server 2003 Std., and the boxes are 7 years old.  We recently upgraded thge RAM from 1 GB to 3 GB.  There are two network printers and they're not shared across the server.
From a support point of view you really don't want to be supporting 7+ year old kit so the logic is sound there for an upgrade.

I would look at keeping the 2 servers separate as was mentioned above. As mentioned above PDCs have a funny habit of being problematic if too much is done on them. the web server should be fine with SQL server (the 1gb to 3gb will help a load too on the old system) and generally makes more sense to have these separate.

Are you thinking of a migration to Windows 2008 or are you sticking to 2003?