Do I Need A Windows Server?    

No, this is a major problem with many businesses, they hate spending money on IT, considering it money down the drain.

You need ongoing maintenance to get the most from your server. Take a look at our IT Maintenance agreement. If you are in anyway serious about your businesses server needs, then regular maintenance is a must..

If we setup your backup system and it fails 3 days after we walk out the door, then your server fails 6 months down the track, and you lose 6 months worth of information, who's fault is it?

As hard as a lesson as it is, its the business owners fault for not having their equipment maintained on a regular basis.

It's just like servicing your car, you don't blame the salesman because you forgot to put oil in it. Some businesses may be under the misconception that its up to whoever installed the backup system to also ensure that it continues to work without problems indefinitely and that this is somehow included in the warranty. This of course is just not financially viable for the business that installs it.

Your information is nobody else's responsibility other than your own, unless you have some form of IT Maintenance agreement agreement with another company that includes monitoring and testing of the backup system on a regular basis.

Our IT Maintenance agreement.includes this as a standard feature, so there is no excuse for businesses to roll the dice with their information, the very lifeblood of their organisation any longer.

1. The first is the operating system, it should be a server grade operating system. Most Adelaide businesses will run Small business server standard edition or SBS Std Ed to the initiated. This includes Microsoft Exchange which is the mail server of choice for most South Australian business.
2. The way the operating system works is much different to a PC, it is designed for high performance of background application. The services it runs are used to control the workstation PC's you have on your network. Its designed to run 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
3. Its more reliable - A true server has redundant power supplies, redundant RAM, redundant cooling systems, Dual processor capability (not to be confused with dual core) Redundant disks so that if one fails, the server keeps running.
4. Items are hot pluggable, if a power supply fails, a hard disk fails, a system fan, or RAM chip fails, you can replace it while the server is still running, meaning less downtime. Many businesses in the 5-15 PC category could be losing $1-$2,000 an hour (Income+productivity+expenses) sometimes, much more. It does not take too long for that redundancy to pay for itself.
5. Servers are designed to push and pull data much, much faster than a workstation. Think of a great big pump with a massive hose attached, like the ones you see on fire trucks. Day to day, you would not want to water your garden with them, but they serve a purpose and that is to get as much water from one place to another as possible. That's just like a server which does the same thing with data as a fire pump does with water.

In most cases, yes Small business server is the way to go. Microsoft packages versions of their more expensive software into Small business server.

It allows South Australian businesses that would of otherwise not been able to afford this software, to get their foot in the door at a much lower price point. According to Microsoft, its for businesses up to 75 workstations. In our experience, once you get to about 35 workstations, SBS starts to struggle, especially the premium version which mixes Exchange, IIS, and SQL server all on the same server that because of operating system limitations , will only ever have a maximum limit of 4GB of RAM.

Once you get to above 25 workstations, its time to start looking at a separate server for your mail system, a separate server for your database, and separate server for your authentication (logging in) and file and print services.

This is when you really need to start budgeting for IT hardware and maintenance. A business with 30 workstations should be allocating around $50,000 a year on IT maintenance if its being outsourced, this is of course excluding hardware purchases. If its an internal I.T staff person then currently for an experienced I.T manager who knows what they are doing, you will be looking at $80-$100,000 a year once you take into account super, holidays, payroll tax, etc.

This is where outsourcing your network support makes a great deal of sense, although this is beyond the scope of this particular topic, take a look at the CRYSYS network support product we provide.

Crystalising everything mentioned above, you need a Windows server if you are a business with over 5 workstation computers, and you need to ensure ongoing maintenance is put in place to protect one of your businesses greatest asset, its information.