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I'm going to be playing admin for my brother's small business. At max 5 users will log on to this system using remote access. Following applications will be run
- Outlook, Word, Excel, Adobe Acrobat
- Autocad (2D engineering drawings, at max 1 concurrent user using Autocad)
- One accounting package (32 bit app)

H/W Configuation we've choosen (HP Proliant)
- Intel Quad Core Xeon processor X3430 (2.4Ghz, 8MB Cache) - 4 GB UB ECC RAM DDR3 PC3
- 250GB 3G SATA 7.2K rpm (want 10 GB per user max, maybe RAID 1 later)
- 64 MB shared video RAM

Q1. Is this configuration enough? Especially for 5 concurrent remote users do I need another display card?
Q2. As I understand generally 32 bit application should work fine in 2008 foundation server.

TIA

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2 Answers 2

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My thoughts:

  • Get the 2nd hard drive for RAID1; it's money well spent.
  • Running CAD over Remote Desktop isn't going to be pretty (though 2008 R2 with SP1 might work better, there's no video acceleration in RD currently). If you're running CAD at the server, you'll probably want a better video card than the built-in one, though you can get away with it.
  • Most 32-bit apps will run on Server 2008; it will very much depend on the app however. If the app runs on 32-bit Vista, it will almost certainly work on 64-bit Server 2008 (including R2). I would suggest calling the company that made the software and asking them if there are any known issues (or if it's a supported configuration at all).
  • Get Server 2008 R2, don't waste your time on the older software.
  • MS Office (Word, Excel, etc) requires a volume license to be installed on Remote Desktop Services; this can not be found in a typical store. You'll have to contact an MS Licensing partner or MS Licensing directly.
  • Adobe Acrobat has special licensing for Remote Desktop environments, make sure you've read the license and can abide by the terms.
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  • I'm thinking that the clients would run Linux and use rdesktop to log into W2008. Also, for Acrobat I found an alternative in PDFCreator to avoid the licensing issues you pointed out. Thanks for all your inputs :)
    – Holysmoke
    Aug 5, 2010 at 7:58
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You should be fine, but might what to possibly consider more storage as it will probably creep with the CAD content.

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  • Yikes there's a lot of potential problems with his configuration you've just glazed over with "you should be fine"!
    – Chris S
    Aug 3, 2010 at 12:53
  • For hardware, it's fine. Software choices will always be more complex.
    – user48838
    Aug 3, 2010 at 13:05

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