Is this overkill?

mikeroq

mikeroq

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Working up a quote on a new server for a Dental office customer of ours.

Currently there "server" is a desktop PC they got from Patterson. i5-2400S with 2x 1TB drives yikes. They have had it for a while.

Today I was out there since they were having issues with their xray. They have a Sirona Orthophos XG fancy 3d unit. We moved the reconstruction of the images to a Lenovo Thinkcentre I sold them back in late 2016 to be used for working with the images. Having the Sirona software, Eaglesoft, SQL server and then trying to process an xray is just a little bit too much for it to handle.

So my current specs are:

Poweredge T430 Tower Server
Xeon E5-2620V4 2.1ghz 8 core
32GB DDR4 ECC
2x480GB SSD RAID 1 for OS/VMs
4x1TB or 4x2TB 7.2k SAS in RAID 10 for Data
Server 2016 Standard w/ 10 device CALS


With this opportunity to move from Windows 7 to actual Windows Server I was thinking:

VM1: AD/File Server/Eaglesoft
VM2: SQL Server/Sirona/Reconstruction Server

Workstation wise they have:
4 OP Rooms
1 In Lab
2 Front Desk
1 Office

8 machines total.

Too much? Too little?
 
Primary care docs don't make much (relatively) either, we have one client who's in a terrible ratty little office.

But he's rolling a Tesla Model S and has been for a couple of years, so I don't feel like he could be hurting too much.
 
mikeroq said:
Working up a quote on a new server for a Dental office customer of ours.

Currently there "server" is a desktop PC they got from Patterson. i5-2400S with 2x 1TB drives yikes. They have had it for a while.

Today I was out there since they were having issues with their xray. They have a Sirona Orthophos XG fancy 3d unit. We moved the reconstruction of the images to a Lenovo Thinkcentre I sold them back in late 2016 to be used for working with the images. Having the Sirona software, Eaglesoft, SQL server and then trying to process an xray is just a little bit too much for it to handle.

So my current specs are:

Poweredge T430 Tower Server
Xeon E5-2620V4 2.1ghz 8 core
32GB DDR4 ECC
2x480GB SSD RAID 1 for OS/VMs
4x1TB or 4x2TB 7.2k SAS in RAID 10 for Data
Server 2016 Standard w/ 10 device CALS


With this opportunity to move from Windows 7 to actual Windows Server I was thinking:

VM1: AD/File Server/Eaglesoft
VM2: SQL Server/Sirona/Reconstruction Server

Workstation wise they have:
4 OP Rooms
1 In Lab
2 Front Desk
1 Office

8 machines total.

Too much? Too little?
Click to expand...

I'd go with two processors on the server. Did a quick look but could not find specs for the 3d device. So maybe look into what they have on the specs. How much disk space is currently being used.
 
I personally will not do any server with spinning disks. Do SSD all around.

That 3d Pan do they allow for VM. Usually the images are handled by a high end desktop that the hardware manufacturer supplies.

They may want to finance so reach out to your Dell rep regarding that. They can finance the entire project
 
I think it's under spec'd....why hurt the performance to the end users by crippling the server with 7,200 nearline SAS (basically just SATA desktop drives) where the most important part is...the data volume?

It's nice for you to have the SSD up front for the hyper-V host OS, and hopefully the C drives of the guests...so that once a month reboot will be nice and fast. But the other 99% of the month...they just sit fairly idle. 99% of the month..the real work is done on the data volume....where all the end users LOB apps installs run from, and data is sent back 'n forth...all the disk I/O is from there. So the dentists office will experience the slowness of desktop class spindles all day long, and that once a month update/reboot of the host OS's, nice and fast on the SSD, only gets experienced by you.

I'd at LEAST go to 10krpm on the tail end, not much more expensive these days than re-named SATAs.
I'd also go to 64 gigs, leaving 16 for the host, 12 or 16 for VM1, and 16 or 24 for VM2
 
You could also go with 2.5" SAS for the improved latency - peak capacity per drive is lower, but I'm pretty sure that responsiveness-wise a 7200 2.5 is pretty close to a 10k 3.5. It all depends on how much data they're storing, imaging can be substantial.

And nearline SAS has its place, like the 8x2TB RAID6 I put in a few months ago. Sure it's an imaging server, but it's basically bulk storage that they're adding to by sometimes as much as 8-10GB/day on busy days.
 
All we've seen/used for the past..quite a few years, are 2.5". I haven't seen 3.5 in a new server come through out office in a long arse time. So I'd be 10k 2.5" which is faster than the old 10k 3.5"
For an imaging server..to me that's just a NAS...so, yeah I'm fine with SATA for a NAS. But we're talking a dentists office here..they want fast fast fast imaging. And throw in that bulky SQL in the mix. And the sharing that virtualization brings with multiple servers. And...some other apps which are "heavy" to begin with even on a good day.
 
The hard part is how do I justify this level of hardware when they are running on an i5 desktop with 1tb of space and have no complaints about the speed of things. (and honestly this is the highest specced server I've quoted. I've got bigger places running on less)
 
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I'll mention something I've seen over the ~25 years of doing "this".
Seen places that upgraded from "workgroup" to a full server with a domain and yada yada. Sometimes a little desktop running NOTHING else but file sharing or some little app...runs surprisingly well. It's not doing anything else.
Convert them to running off a server....with low spec hardware...and things get a heck-of-a-lot-slower. Why? Because that server...is doing a TONNA more things in the background. Add virtualization to that...that big disk volume is running 2x servers. Take your I/O on the disk and double it! So going with kinda slower drives...you get people whistling after double clicking and icon and waiiiiiiiting for it to do something, drumming their fingers on the desk.

Yeah, servers (good ones) ain't cheap. Talk to a client about a server and just to start the conversation you're 7 grand to get the ball rolling with a base server, software licensing, and consulting time for a small network migration. Not knowing what else is on your clients network you might be around 10k or more. I just got done kicking Dentrix around at a dentist client of ours, 16 workstations...but 3 servers.
 
mikeroq said:
The hard part is how do I justify this level of hardware when they are running on an i5 desktop with 1tb of space and have no complaints about the speed of things. (and honestly this is the highest specced server I've quoted. I've got bigger places running on less)
Click to expand...

A common strategy is to put together 3 quotes, good, better, best. If you've not already done so sit down and have an uninterrupted chat with the customer. Things like general technology changes, like SSD, etc. Put together a bid with the three scenarios. Many properly informed buyers, when presented with 3 reasonable scenarios, will usually take the middle one.
 
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