We are in need of a server upgrade where one of the new prerequisites is to increase network speeds to our three SW stations. We typically work off the server - yes I know that this is not recommended.

The main purpose to upgrade our server is to increase our SW productivity. We deal with many large assemblies of machines we build, usually comprising of a few thousand parts. Our IT guy has quoted a setup something like this:

• 2x 128GB SSD in RAID 1 for operating system and accounting/product database (accessed by ~10 users)
• 2x 2TB 7200rpm hard drives in RAID 1 for user and CAD data etc.

Through some simple testing of transferring large files back and forth, our current server provides data transfer rates of around 26 MegaBYTES/s write, and 42 MegaBYTES/s read. Ignoring all potential network bottlenecks for now, I'm picking that the server specs quoted above will not yield much higher - at least not to the extent that we want to justify this upgrade.

From this post https://forum.solidworks.com/message/109823#109823 Eric has been seeing 70-95 MB/s.

We are considering a five drive RAID 5 setup for the data instead of the 2x 2TB.

Can anybody offer their server experience vs configuration, or at least advice on making the most out of this upgrade?

Thanks!