When You Intend To Establish A Company Or Organization, One Of The Most Important Questions You Must Answer Before Implementing A Network Or Purchasing Infrastructure Equipment Such As Servers Is How Many Servers The Company Needs?

The answer depends on the number of users, the organization’s field of activity, and future needs. In addition, you should consider the prospects of the company’s business activities; for example, is it likely that more users will add to the company in the future?

In this article, we will introduce tips that will help you correctly calculate the number of servers needed by the company.

Are many servers excellent or bad?

As the number of servers is large, there is no problem of lack of bandwidth and storage capacity. Still, significant capital must allocate to purchase servers, which is unreasonable. In addition, the higher the number of servers, the higher the side and maintenance costs. Instead of the organization’s budget being spent on growth and development, it is spent on maintaining and hiring specialists responsible for handling the servers.

On the other hand, if the number of servers is less than the required capacity of the organization, the website or internal services will run slowly, and the productivity of employees will decrease, which will be a significant obstacle to the progress and expansion of business activities. In both cases, the organization will be grounded due to infrastructural problems and will move away from the path of growth and development.

What is a server?

Before introducing the points you should pay attention to when buying servers, we must first provide a brief definition of the server and its function. In the simplest explanation, a server is a computer that sends information to other computers through a local network, manages network resources, and makes them available to clients. A server connects networked devices and allows them to share information and access applications.

How many servers do we need?

When we intend to buy a server or servers for the organization, we must pay attention to various points, the most important of which are the following:

Determining the type of server user: The first thing to check is what the server is supposed to do. Today, there are different servers in the market to perform other tasks, each of which has specific hardware based on their job or specialized hardware that must provide for them to perform particular tasks. For example, the hardware requirements for web hosting differ from those for database hosting.

The issue of what the server should do is the first thing. For example, some organizations prefer to use thin or zero client equipment to reduce the side cost. In such a situation, the server needs to have enough processing power and storage space so the clients can use it. In contrast, other servers are used to back up and archive information locally.

In the following, we point out a few scenarios that will help you gain a clear vision in this field:

• If you plan to use the server to back up information and documents, you should get a server with enough bays to host hard drives.
•  If you need a web server that will host databases that will respond to many user requests, you need to get a server that can support high-capacity main memories and is equipped with enough slots to deploy main memories.
•  Suppose the company’s field of activity is artificial intelligence, data mining, graphic modeling, or video processing. In that case, you need a server that can support powerful central processors, preferably two new generations of Intel significant processors.
•  Suppose the company’s field of activity is cloud services, and the server must always be open and able to provide services. In that case, you need new generation servers such as HP Prolineat Gen10 or Gen10 Plus that can support the latest Intel processors and terabyte-scale capacities.

Determining the number of users:

The number of users is another essential thing to consider, especially if many users will use an internal service simultaneously. For example, suppose your company is active in trading or selling products; In this case, if you do not have a correct estimate of the number of purchase requests from the website, the website may respond to requests very slowly or stop moving altogether. To determine the number of users, you can use metrics such as the number of users connected to the server per minute (users using the server at the same time), the length of time users use the server and the number of requests they send to the server. These criteria will ensure that the server can serve even during peak times.

There is a subtle point in this context. The number of server users is divided into two groups:

• The organization’s employees are connected to the server and use its services to perform daily activities and the external users to whom the server is supposed to serve. For example, in an online store, both internal and external users connect to the website where the server hosts its information and use its services.

Determining business scalability:

Companies with few employees can use an inexpensive server for simple tasks such as document and file sharing. One server can respond to user requests in small companies such as startups. Still, in larger companies, dedicated servers should use for applications such as email and application servers. In this business model, a server efficiently responds to business needs.

The only thing you need to pay attention to is the storage capacity that the server can support. For example, an organization such as a municipality that records many public documents and most documents must be kept for a long time needs a large storage capacity.

Physical servers are deployed internally on the company’s premises and require physical space for deployment and employees to support them. Due to the increasing expansion of cloud services, some organizations prefer to use a cloud server instead of a physical server.

In cloud servers, the service provider company hosts the hardware and provides the required space to consumers through computing models such as PaaS, IaaS, or SaaS and the Internet. In this case, there is no need to hire IT experts to maintain the server, and all you need to do is rent the cloud service you need. And in cloud servers, there is usually no concern about security and data backup.

Data backup:

The most important thing you should pay attention to when buying servers is that they have high reliability and their services and system resources are available whenever needed. There are various solutions to achieve this goal, the most important of which is redundancy. Redundancy means that if a part of the server fails, the backup role will automatically enter the circuit and serve until the damaged part is replaced.

For example, if the main power supply fails, the secondary power supply will be included in the circuit and will not allow the power required by the server to be interrupted.

The second way to achieve the principle of redundancy is to divide the workload among several servers. Obviously, in this scenario, you need at least more than two servers, which increases the purchase cost and energy. Still, on the other hand, it guarantees reliability and does not allow business activities to stop.

What servers are available to businesses?

Usually, medium-sized companies need at least three to five physical servers, and the right option should purchase according to the business needs and the mentioned points. Once you’ve got your physical servers, you’ll need to move on to the applications that provide your required services. For example, you need a database server if you plan to record and store structured information.

In the following, we will introduce the servers you may need to provide online services, but before that, let us briefly explain the virtual server.

Virtual Server

Most of the online servers that companies use are virtual servers. A virtual server is software or, more precisely, a hypervisor that partitions a physical server. Virtual servers allocate specific resources from the physical server, such as main memory, central processor, and storage space. From the end user’s point of view, he owns a physical server that provides the required services, while it is the hypervisor that coordinates and manages these activities behind the scenes.

Consumers can rent virtual servers at a lower cost than a physical server because hosting companies provide virtual servers to a wide range of users, thus reducing the cost of renting these servers.

Web Server

Web servers host the websites you use every day. And these servers are focused on providing web content to users.

Web servers receive GET and POST user requests, process them, and return the result. GET request is used when a user wants to receive information and will not send data to the server. In contrast, a POST request occurs when a client intends to send information to a server and then waits for a response.

For example, filling out a form on a web server and clicking a button sends a POST request from the user to the server. Typically, network administrators connect to these servers through command-line terminals.

Database server

There are countless ways to store and access data, one of the most common of which is Structured Query Language (SQL). Typically, one database server on one server is physically installed. This server type is used for data storage, sharing, and simple access to information. Database programmers can create required databases on these servers using scripting and specialized database language.

Typically, web applications connect their server-side components to a database server to provide data as users need it. The vital security point that you should pay attention to is that the web servers and database servers should be located on different machines so that if hacker attacks, hackers do not get access to all the essential information of the company.

Email Server

An email server is used for the structured management of emails in organizations. These servers can manage emails and send data to other servers. Typically, an email server runs on the SMTP protocol; although there are other protocols that modern email servers operate on, SMTP is the dominant protocol. When you use the above servers and SMTP protocol, some information, such as formatting, may be lost when emailing users.

It is why sometimes, when you receive an email from an organization, your email shows only text. Ports used by email servers include port 25 (SMTP), port 587 (secure SMTP), and port 110 (POP3).

Proxy web server

Large organizations concerned about hackers gaining access to their information use a proxy web server capable of supporting various protocols. These web servers receive user requests, evaluate them, filter them if necessary, and send the result to the end user.

Domain Name System (DNS) server

A domain name system server translates domain names to IP addresses and vice versa. This server is what your browser refers to when you type the domain name and press enter. In this case, users don’t have to remember IP addresses, and organizations can choose a suitable domain name. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) typically provide domain name system servers to their users. However, most organizations prefer to use free services such as Google’s domain name server at 8.8.8.8. When users create a domain name, they use DNS servers. Domain Name System servers work based on a hierarchical approach.

FTP server

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers host and share files between users. By default, these servers do not use encryption, significantly reducing their security factor. Because of this, more secure alternatives to the FTP server were invented, including SFTP, which is FTP over the secure SSH protocol. This type of server allows users to upload files to it or download files after authenticating through an FTP client. Also, users can view server files and download files as desired. Ports used by FTP servers include ports 20, 21, or port 22 for SFTP.

File Server

A file server differs from an FTP server and is a more modern server that can map networked files to drives. It means that users can use their system browser to check the folders. The main advantage of this model of servers is that users can upload and download shared files. In this case, file access permissions are controlled by the network administrator. Typically,   file servers in corporate networks are installed in a Windows or Linux Active Directory environment.

DHCP pleasure

A DHCP server uses the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to configure the network settings of users’ computers. A DHCP server on a local network is used instead of manually configuring (static) IP addresses and other network settings for clients. In this case, the above server provides the network settings dynamically to the local network member computers.

 last word

In this article, we tried to review the essential points you should pay attention to when buying a server. As you have seen, the purchase of a server depends on the type of user or, more precisely, the applications installed on them. To be more precise, to establish the server programs we have mentioned, you need to prepare the appropriate physical infrastructure so that you do not face any problems in the future.