Our practice has recently purchased a standalone building and I'm looking at upgrading our entire network. I'm looking for suggestions on some of our hardware as I've essentially pieced together our current network over the last 5 years and would like a clean slate. I will have the opportunity to set up the new system in the building about a week or so before we complete the move.
Current:-HP ML110 (P4/2G Ram/2x36GB Mirrored)
-SBS 2003 R2
-Netgear FVG318
-Netgear GS524T
-Buffalo 2TB NAS
-10 XP Pro Workstations
-3 Wireless Laptops
-Networked prescription printer (Star tsp800rx)
-2 Networked printers
Planned-HP ML350 G5 (Xeon/6G Ram/3x36GB)..purchased already
-SBS 2008 Premium
-Undecided Wireless AP/Firewall
-Undecided Gigabit Switch
-Buffalo 2TB NAS
-10 Win 7 Pro Workstations
-3 Wireless Laptops
-Networked prescription printer (Star tsp800rx)
-2 Networked printers
I know that the beefier server specs should improve AC's performance/access speeds across the board (it'd better!
), I'm just uncertain on some of the ancillary items and whether or not they'll benefit my practice.
1) With regard to the new server, we'll be trying to actually use exchange. Is it possible to demote our current server to a member box solely to run exchange and perhaps as a backup? I thought there could only be one SBS server per domain, so I'm assuming I'd have to run a different OS..
2) I'm tired of fighting viruses and spam all over our network, so I'm considering a network security appliance--but I have no experience with these things (setup OR admin). Are these things overkill if I get a more robust firewall?
3) What is the recommended amount of RAM for those of us who run servers for AC? I know the 2G we have now is pretty slow, and the new server is PC2-5300 and it maxes out at 16GB.
4) The drives that the ML350 has are 36.4GB 15k RPM SAS Hot-Swappable drives. I currently have three of these, and the capacity is 6. What would be the best configuration with regards to RAID and access speeds?
Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, my goal is to improve our network hardware efficiency specifically relating to amazing charts. We have a massive database with approaching 10 thousand patients, so speed has become a huge issue with the amount of data we hold.
