Home Forums Discussions General Discussion making the transition to amazing charts

Jimmie,

I also agree with Indy. You can get one Dell R710 (or T710 if you want a tower and not a rack) that can pull all the virtual machines they are talking about. You will need a copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition which will get you four virtual machines. You will then need two additional copies of Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard to get the 5th virtual machine for another Amazing Charts and the last one for the domain controller (assuming you don't already have one).

BackupAssist (www.backupassist.com) can do all your backups for you.

The server will need the following minimal hardware specs:

Processor: TWO Intel Nahalem quad core procs with hyper-threading.
RAM: 32GB.
Hardddrives: Two 136G drives and four 300G drives. All drives will be 15,000 RPM. The two 136G drives will be in a RAID 1 array and will be for the host. Two of the 300G drives will be in a RAID 1 array and will be for two guests. The last two 300G drives will be in a RAID 1 array and will be for the last three guests.

As far as interfacing between the 5 Amazing Charts and Lytec, this can most likely be done (I would have to look into it) but it would be a totally custom interface using SQL Server Integration Services. Although this most likely can be done, you will need to find someone to develop it and maintain it. If the docs don't have too many demands, maintenance costs should be fairely low - as in going months a time without making changes. If the docs are demanding, maintenance costs could be high making this cost prohibitive. If you decide to go this route, you will need a copy of SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition which will drive up the cost of your server. There are other options that your IT guy may have in mind.

Please note that these are my recommendations. Others on the forum are more than welcome to weigh in with their recommendations. Obviously, there is more than one way to skin a cat, peel a banana, etc.

One other thing, if you don't already have a domain controller, consider SBS 2011 for your 5th virtual machine.

JamesNT