Small Office Server option

Have a next door neighbor that is about to open up another small office (Tree company) and all she needs for her files and storage is just a storage solution that she can remote into and access, and transfers files from. That's about it. I was thinking about the HP Media Server EX485/EX487 which comes with Windows Home Server since she doesn't need that much administration work. She as about 5 users at the moment who needs access to the server. What do you think? Am I thinking to small of a setup?

thanks

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Comments

Jordus

If she doesnt need it like yesterday, take a look at Windows Server 2008 Foundation

Therhino

why not just get a old comp you have laying around through centos on it enable samba set some user permission and iptable entries to allow for access from inside the office and for certain external ips and then allow for port 22 access for you so you could administrate it

remyforbes777

I agree with the Linux option. Why spend all the money on hardware and Windows licenses when you could throw Linux on there, configure it and be done.

Therhino

you may wanna check out freenas or webmin

darkerosxx

murdatapes wrote: »

Have a next door neighbor that is about to open up another small office (Tree company) and all she needs for her files and storage is just a storage solution that she can remote into and access, and transfers files from. That's about it. I was thinking about the HP Media Server EX485/EX487 which comes with Windows Home Server since she doesn't need that much administration work. She as about 5 users at the moment who needs access to the server. What do you think? Am I thinking to small of a setup?

thanks

What you're looking at doing would meet your requirements.

I have a WHS and it works like a dream. Set it up and go. Logins from remote locations are easy, downloads/uploads are easy, user administration is easy... everything is easy, even for a person that doesn't do admin work.

I work with Linux for a living and it's nice not to have to mess with it at home.

Silentsoul

remyforbes777 wrote: »

I agree with the Linux option. Why spend all the money on hardware and Windows licenses when you could throw Linux on there, configure it and be done.

I will offer up a nix solution too. I am messing with Amahi.

Its very nice, clean gui. Take a look, it runs on fedora 9. Which is basically redhat/centos

Amahi Home Server - Making Home Networking Simple

Silentsoul

So what are you going to use?

Or have you decided yet?

murdatapes

thanks fellas for the replys. very interesting. I m still skeptical on implementing linux right now cause I have very little knowledge in that area ( besides some basic commands) and this needs to be up before Tues or Wednesday of next week. if I had months to plan I would try the linux option cause it would give me time to read and learn

dynamik

There's really nothing too it, especially if you "****" with the GUI.

Even simpler, I'll second the FreeNAS option. Super simple web-based GUI will give you everything you need. You'll have it up-and-running in 15 minutes.

darkerosxx

murdatapes wrote: »

thanks fellas for the replys. very interesting. I m still skeptical on implementing linux right now cause I have very little knowledge in that area ( besides some basic commands) and this needs to be up before Tues or Wednesday of next week. if I had months to plan I would try the linux option cause it would give me time to read and learn

By the way, if you need email and stuff, too, you could spend a few hundred bucks extra and get Windows Small Business Server 2008. It has a slick interface much like Windows Home Server:

Windows Small Business Server: Home Page

Silentsoul

murdatapes wrote: »

thanks fellas for the replys. very interesting. I m still skeptical on implementing linux right now cause I have very little knowledge in that area ( besides some basic commands) and this needs to be up before Tues or Wednesday of next week. if I had months to plan I would try the Linux option cause it would give me time to read and learn

Let us know what you end up going with and how it turns out. You should definitely take an old machine and start messing with nix. That way the next time this comes up you'll be ready and have more options to choose from.

rwwest7

Should have some sort of RAID set up as well. Windows Server also has Shadow Copies, I'm not sure if Linux has anything like that. It really helps for quick restores of files without digging through backups. And users can easily restore their own files.

Silentsoul

rwwest7 wrote: »

Should have some sort of RAID set up as well. Windows Server also has Shadow Copies, I'm not sure if Linux has anything like that. It really helps for quick restores of files without digging through backups. And users can easily restore their own files.

If you are going with raid, make sure you do hardware raid, software raid is not sufficient for production servers. I just had to deal with an issue with a software raid issue from the guy before me. Was a complete pain had to wipe and restart.

When you set the server up as soon as you have the OS installed and everything you need on it. IMAGE IT! If you plan on supporting this server in the future, if you have an image and good backups you can be back up from a total failure in no time flat. Restore your image, restore your backups and your up and running.

You can restore in image in under 10 minutes. How long does it take to install an OS. 20-30 maybe longer depending on OS and hardware.

Just some things to consider.

Also if your looking for a decent mobile imaging solution, i am using FOG :: A Computer Cloning Solution - Home It runs great on a laptop running ubuntu/Cent install is simple and it can resize NTFS partitions to almost half their size.

Daniel333

You say, "another" office? What does their existing setup look like? Macs? Vista? How many employees? How many do they expect to have in 2 years? How will they get online? How about their phones? Email/Hosted Exchange? And if this server blew up next week, how would they recover?

Windows Home Server is just fine if they have say... 5-10 employees. If they have more than 10 and plan to grow, you would be doing them a disservice to do anything less than move then towards a small business solution. $1000 today might save then days of down time or costly consultant fees a couple years from now.

If you are hesitant on deploying a Linux solution, don’t do it.

Get us some more details and I can give you a final recommendation

murdatapes

I can't say enough about the replys. Seems like I have all of you on my shoulders as little IT bugs

. She is giving me sometime to work with Centos, and i will see what I want to do from there. As far as users, she does not want to many users accessing the data so it will only be 3 users. Her database is also getting developed right now as well, so that will give me more time to play with Centos. She loves the idea of WHS, but also loves that she can save right now as well. I will post back. At work.