The Brief
Our customer had undergone some expansion and was planning for another growth cycle in the near future which required several additional levels of data separation and access permissions, things that could not easily be achieved with a simple network attached storage device in place from their initial start-up.
The requirement brief included segregation, securing and backup of payroll system and data, banking certs and ROS data, customer related data files, the provision of management and owner data storage areas. All this needed to be done within a small footprint due to limited space available in the office space.
The solution
A single box server capable of hosting several virtual machines with capacity for data storage drives. Included in this setup would be a managed domain controller to allow the designation of user specific access permissions.
The server hardware specifications:
- Hypervisor operation system.
- Multi core CPU with virtualization capability, minimum 8 cores.
- 64gig ram to be shered by several virtual machines.
- 1 TB ssd storage tier for vm operating systems.
- 8 TB standard data storage tier for bulk data storage.
Virtual machines:
- Domain Controller to manage access permissions
- File server to manage data segregation and networked drives
- Remote desktop to host and secure payroll and banking client software.
The Quick and Easy Option
We explored a named brand single box server solution that would facilitate several virtual machines for the various tasks required.
This solution came in at a cost of €8,500 for the hardware excluding setup time.
What did PBTech do for our customer?
We designed and built a bespoke small footprint server with comparable hardware to the named brand for a fraction of the price.
That server consisted of a hypervisor host, a domain controller virtual machine, a file server virtual machine, a remote desktop virtual machine. and an automated off site backup solution.
We also repurposed the clients old network storage unit into an onsite data backup and repositioned it in a secure location away from the main server.