Servers - Configuration considerations

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Before you consider your server configuration you need to develop a plan for your network. Yes you have to have a network, how else are you going to access the server from your workstations? One of the bonus you receive from a network server is the increase in security for you computers!

Portions of this page were extracted from Build a Server Guide.

A network consists of a network hub or switch, wiring, and network cards for each device. A device is considered to be a computer, a printer, or other peripheral that you need to share to other users.

There are different 'topologies' that a network can take. The normal topology would be the 'Star' topology, think of it as a central hub with all the devices connect to the hub only. All connections from one device to another device has to go through the hub. Most servers today have a 'Hot Swap' capability, not only for the hard drives but the addon cards and power supplies.

Also consider the name of your Domain for your network, make it as simple as possible, you will be typing it a lot for a while!

The easiest way to setup your network addresses is to use a spreadsheet, four columns listing:

The computer name, the assigned IP, the subnet mask IP, and the gateway IP. You will have to calculate the subnet mask IP or you can use this url: calculate subnet mask

Once you have the network design you can proceed to the server configuration.

Servers require a domain, this is the best of two worlds, Security and Service. A domain will give you the additional security by requiring all connections to the network to be authenticated by the Domain Controller. No user id and password, no access.

In addition to the security feature you gain in services that a work group does not have. Services such as DNS (Domain Naming Service) or DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) that help configure your network naming and IP structure.

One server can perform all these tasks and do others also. You can use one server to be:

Domain Controller - The domain controller is the primary server that controls all the functions and security for the domain.

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DNS controller - Domain Naming Service, this service is used to resolve names into IP addresses for devices, when a user issues a query for a named device this service returns the IP address.

DHCP controller - Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is a service that controls the automatic issuing of IP addresses to client computers. With this service you can have all network properties automatically configured when a workstation connects to the network. One rack can hold all the servers a medium size business owns.

WINS controller - Windows Internet Naming Service a Windows version of DNS, faster than DNS when installed on a Windows Server, local network only.

Print server - This service is useful when you have shared printers, you can configure the server to download all the necessary drivers from one point instead automatically.

File server - A file server is just that, a server that stores files for your employees from documents to application installations.

Specialty servers - These servers range from Application servers to installation servers.

If you were to have one server this server would have to be very powerful and have a large storage capacity. It would also be very expensive.

Your best solution is to spread the tasks across two or more servers, this would be more economical. If you compared the cost of one server with all the requirements to two or three less powerful servers you would see a large cost savings by buying the less powerful servers.

In my experience the most powerful server would be the Domain Controller, then another server for DNS, DHCP, WINS, and print, and finally a File storage server.

You could split all the functions between two servers, Standalone servers are good for small business or small remoter locations. Domain Controller, DNS, DHCP, and WINS on one server. File storage, print, and backup services on another server.

As you can see you have three options for setting up your network servers.

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