Task 3: Select a Form Factor for the Servers

The goal of this task is to determine the most appropriate hardware form factor on which to deploy the file servers. Form factor refers to the combination of the servers’ characteristics including:

  • Processor architecture (32-bit versus 64-bit)

  • Number of CPUs and their speed

  • Amount of memory installed

  • Disk storage capacity

  • Disk subsystem design

  • Number of network card ports configured

The form factor will be decided at a high level based on the organization’s strategy: Scale up or scale out. Fewer servers with large memory and high performance CPUs can be easier to manage and more cost-efficient for some infrastructures but may be a single point of failure. Using smaller commodity servers with lower capacity ...

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