Small office setup

dextor03 · 07-10-2013 4:05pm #1

I’m looking for some advice on setting up a small office network. The primary function of this office is email, file storage and printing. The office will be for 5-6 users. We would require a large amount of storage for large cad drawings, etc. I have used Small Business Server before but it is now being replaced by Windows Server 2012 Essentials. I have no issue setting up the network but would like some options on a server, storage and email options. Is it best to host locally or in the cloud?
I have used Office 365 before and think it would be a good option as it is only €3-4 p/m month and takes away any hassle about backups, maintenance and support. Should I look at something like Dropbox for Business for storing our files?
Can anyone outline a basic model that I can try to follow to set up this office? I am capable of setting this up myself but would like to hear people thoughts on how best to set it up. Or has anyone used Windows Server 2012 Essentials and would they recommend that I set up everything locally on the one server running Windows Server 2012 Essentials?
Thanks in advance. Let me know if you need any additional info.

lotas · 07-10-2013 4:15pm

Office 365 is defiantly the way to go for a small office. it will give you Exchange, SharePoint and Lync (communications) and is quite cheap as you mention.

As for storage, 2012 essentials and the new 2012 R2 essentials, both offer a feature called Storage Spaces. Add disks to a machine, add them to the pool, share as iSCSI, SMB or NFS and you are all good.

Alternatively, you could look into something like FreeNAS.

2012 R2 Essentials has features to talk directly to Office365 for setting up machines, accounts, etc. might be worth it since you do not have to deal with much management...

Ctrl Alt Del · 07-10-2013 7:10pm

Hi,

What's wrong with SBS2011 !??
5 CALs at around €600 ex. In how many years it will cover the cost O365 !?

Re Cloud..stay away as much as possible...
I've finished setup a cloud recently and i've said to myself is the first and last setup !

Keep everything local,in hand and under your control !
What's your broadband like?
How many lines do you have coming in to your office ?
What size are the email attachments ?
O365 hassle free backup,storage,archiving,maintenance !?? You're kidding isn't !??

They said that if you lose an email ,you can retrieve it from NSA backup...

If you need more info,it's my pleasure to provide you with a free (boards member) e_recommendation and "no-commitment" quotation but all local,in a hardware/software box,sitting in your office and not in the hands of our friends in NSA !

Enjoy it...

gctest50 · 07-10-2013 7:31pm

Ctrl Alt Del wrote: »

Hi,

What's wrong with SBS2011 !??
5 CALs at around €600 ex.
.................................................

If you need more info,it's my pleasure to provide you with a free (boards member) e_recommendation and "no-commitment" quotation but all local,in a hardware/software box,sitting in your office and not in the hands of our friends in NSA !

Enjoy it...

600 ?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832416431

Ctrl Alt Del · 07-10-2013 7:40pm

That is my price,including my phone calls,website order,my bank charges and delivery and/or installation if needed !
I'm buying from an authorized reseller !
Is not OEM and has included media,COA and 5 license !
Comes with a well trusted delivery company,to my office!

BTW,your link has the price for 5 CALS !
If 600 is too much ,you go and buy it and deliver it to me for $268.99

PS
are these guys for real !?
I like to buy something that i know is reliable,it's been delivered and if a problem, i can speak "local craic" with someone here,in Dublin !

Off topic...
Few days ago,on a well known locally based site, a guy was selling laptops with Windows 7 AND Office 2010 at less than the price of Office 2010 to buy on it's own!
When asked about licenses, been told no COA but all programs are been activated !

I've had enough of these cowboys that fcuks up a proper business,that is based on legal COAs,contacts,delivery,support,proper phone & email support !!!
Sorry ,nothing personal,just business day by day...

Mr. Fancypants · 07-10-2013 7:41pm

SBS Essentials works well. As said above it hooks straight into Office 365 to allow passwords to sync which is neat. You can also hook it into Microsoft Azure for online backups if you want straight from the admin console. Very easy to set up too. It supports direct access for vpn functionality but you would need a secure cert for that. Very good value for money all told.
You will want to make sure that the site has decent broadband, but something that is overlooked sometimes by people who dislike Office 365 is that if your internet link does drop you can still use any other internet connection to get working again such as a tethered phone etc.

If you go for Office 365 SBS Premium you get Office 2013 included in the cost of the subscription which, although still licenced per user, allows you to install on 5 devices. So if a user has a pc, a couple of laptops and a tablet they can install their copy on all of them.

It's not perfect. If there is downtime is it out of your control which can be infuriating. However, a lot of small offices don't have the skills to be managing an Exchange server on site anyhow.

gctest50 · 07-10-2013 8:25pm

Ctrl Alt Del wrote: »

Off topic...
Few days ago,on a well known locally based site, a guy was selling laptops with Windows 7 AND Office 2010 at less than the price of Office 2010 to buy on it's own!
When asked about licenses, been told no COA but all programs are been activated !

That's lovely - then it all goes wrong a year or more later and you get asked to sort it out and they have to buy it all

And you hear "but it was working"

lotas · 09-10-2013 12:24pm

SBS2011 is grand if you have an IT guy willing to maintain your own Exchange/Active Directory infrastructure. You also need to manage your incoming email service, antivirus, anti spam, outgoing email (try send an email to microsoft.com from a standard broadband connection... it wont arrive!). then you have backups, recovery, down time, etc. Yes, SBS is probably cheaper up front (by the way, you will need to factor the cost of the server to run it, plus all the networking gear for it... extra heat the server generate needs to be removed (air con, fans) and then extra power) but by the time you factor all that, Office 365 will probably be cheaper...

for our company, office365 made more sense. We are all techies (IT consultants and developers) but if something goes wrong with an in house install of exchange and you need to spend a day or more fixing it, thats your email down, your users unhappy, your bosses very unhappy and the possibly your clients unhappy. if your working on internal stuff as apposed to billable time, that is a waste... couple grand a year to office 365 (we have 23 licenses on the E1 plan) vs 1 or so weeks billable time to a client... it depends on your billables though i suppose...

dextor03 · 15-10-2013 2:54pm

Thanks for the replies. Think I will look further into Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials and Office 365. Will let you know how I get on.

unnameduser · 16-10-2013 12:52am

I'm not a great fan of 365 or dropbox, at all. That's another day's story.

Try not to compare online prices to prices quoted by local suppliers. Yes local suppliers need to make money but sometimes end users run a search on a product and see a misleading google ad with a low price and presume that it is the going rate.

It sounds like you need to consult a few IT specialists 《Snip》 Either way, a Google search will never reveal a definite price for your set-up.

It sounds like you have a good idea of what you want but need a bit of direction on price and functionality.

Feel free to call, I hope it works out for you.
Best of Luck

pyroger101 · 07-04-2014 5:41pm

Office 365 really is a no brainer as long as you have good broadband and back up connection (use 3g or even better 4g as back up connection and fail over)

A lot of nonsense on NSA snooping. Anyone with a good knowledge of office365 will know that you can set the location of your data and in this case Dublin and or Amsterdam keeps it away from the US and who ever else.

Remember office 365 is not just your mail.
50gb mailbox
25gb storage
10gb SharePoint (company intranet accessible anywhere any time)
Lync for communication and collaboration, presense, screen sharing etc.
Office package (word, excel, powerpoint etc on 5 devices)
Mobile office app access
Web browser office access
Options of lots of plugins and additional features.

If you are not comfortable about the set up, migration and support of this get in touch, we have done this for a lot of companies in Ireland of all shapes and sizes. A lot of our clients would get support direct with us too as we would have enterprise level support access to Microsoft while others would be left waiting for a long time with direct support.

If you are comfortable with the challenge of set up just be sure to dot the i's and cross the T's. Office365 is not perfect just yet but it is certainly on the right path.

Because you are dealing with CAD drawings etc it would probably be best to have an on site fileshare that is being backed up to a NAS then to the cloud. As you will be working over a broadband connection you want to try and keep the heavy work local... although if you are not printing there are other smart creative ways to use azure to have everything offsite.

Happy to discuss further ! Get in touch, Ger

Mr. G · 07-04-2014 9:36pm

With an American firm, you do not know regardless of location.

In terms of email, you can set up a backup ms on your domain cheaply enough for when your emails go down. You can also have the facility to check on emails while your server is down.

For a company with say ~1000 staff members, financially it may be too expensive to go Office 365, but for a company with ~15 staff members, it is more attractive.

Personally, I prefer to have a server and not in a datacentre. I have nothing to hide from the NSA, but a properly maintained system shouldn't go down. The cloud can have downtimes too.

Ctrl Alt Del · 07-04-2014 10:27pm

Hi,

First,the issue with NSA...no comments !
The location of the O365 data is in Ireland DC,replicated to Amsterdam AND replicated to USA. I hate how many times i have to repeat my self:Microsoft have setup external cloud based applications used by them BUT kept confidential sensitive company's information hosted internally.Do they knows something that we dont know ?
Also,as Patriot Act or another law (name it escape me now,something with Safe Harbour) allows the US Government to request and receive data from Microsoft irelatives of where data is stored,as is "virtually" everywhere. There may be some issues with EU law re data protection,you can be right here... BUT if the Angela's phone got tapped in EU,what else do we expect from a small provider like ...you and me ?
Re email security,it can be easy as "reading" the SMTP and POP3/IMAP traffic between servers.So,lets get talking about email security !

Office 365 bundle
Most of the people uses email and probable storage.
How many SharePoint sites I've sold or seen ? Zero.
How many Lyncs ? Zero.
Also,the cost of O365 for Office 2013 is CRIMINAL ! I cant understand why someone will pay extra every month to get Office package when for less than €200 ex you pay once off and get ..ownership of the product !? AND support as well ... with updates !

Onsite Server
If the business is dealing with huge file sin size,such as drawings,will not be better to have an on-site Exchange Server and File Sharing Server !?
Can you see Charlie sending (over a 8M dload and 1M upload bband) a 5/10M file attachment to his boss and screaming from other corner of the room or desk: Boss, but i've sent that file to you half an hour ago !!!
Don't want to talk about time outs and retries.
True,is working fine for some users that can have good fast broadband connection along with a fast good reliable backup if needed.BUT,when you add the price of them two...it goes over my on-site budget of a small hardware /software SBS2011 solution !

I hope it does make sense !?
Please advise...

Regards

Mr. G · 08-04-2014 7:27am

Ctrl Alt Del wrote: »

Hi,

First,the issue with NSA...no comments !
The location of the O365 data is in Ireland DC,replicated to Amsterdam AND replicated to USA. I hate how many times i have to repeat my self:Microsoft have setup external cloud based applications used by them BUT kept confidential sensitive company's information hosted internally.Do they knows something that we dont know ?
Also,as Patriot Act or another law (name it escape me now,something with Safe Harbour) allows the US Government to request and receive data from Microsoft irelatives of where data is stored,as is "virtually" everywhere. There may be some issues with EU law re data protection,you can be right here... BUT if the Angela's phone got tapped in EU,what else do we expect from a small provider like ...you and me ?
Re email security,it can be easy as "reading" the SMTP and POP3/IMAP traffic between servers.So,lets get talking about email security !

Office 365 bundle
Most of the people uses email and probable storage.
How many SharePoint sites I've sold or seen ? Zero.
How many Lyncs ? Zero.
Also,the cost of O365 for Office 2013 is CRIMINAL ! I cant understand why someone will pay extra every month to get Office package when for less than €200 ex you pay once off and get ..ownership of the product !? AND support as well ... with updates !

Onsite Server
If the business is dealing with huge file sin size,such as drawings,will not be better to have an on-site Exchange Server and File Sharing Server !?
Can you see Charlie sending (over a 8M dload and 1M upload bband) a 5/10M file attachment to his boss and screaming from other corner of the room or desk: Boss, but i've sent that file to you half an hour ago !!!
Don't want to talk about time outs and retries.
True,is working fine for some users that can have good fast broadband connection along with a fast good reliable backup if needed.BUT,when you add the price of them two...it goes over my on-site budget of a small hardware /software SBS2011 solution !

I hope it does make sense !?
Please advise...

Regards

If the data centre or servers are owned by Microsoft, regardless of where they are, you have no guarantees. The problem I have with it is that a back door is a back door, and Microsoft probably have many.

They do comply with the EU Safe Harbour, which is required under the DPA if located outside the EU.

Ctrl Alt Del · 09-04-2014 12:07am

Ok, understood, noted, thanks !

But lets talk a moment about the issues around security of the email in the Mr Cloud based setup !

What is the difference between having email in the cloud and having it in-house on Exchange hosted !?

Cloud vs Exchange

Easy to access as an end user
Both at same level if you have an internet connection ,with a small advantage for Exchange due to integration with Outlook,mobile devices and OWA(O365)

Guessing the password
Easy for both but cloud have so that after few attempts it locks you out. Exchange needs to be configured trough AD, by default not enabled

Easy access to guess the password
Very easy for Cloud "anyname _at_cloud.com" will give you the login. For Exchange, you'll need IP,DNS name, domain, login name which is harder in a way to get it by mistaken guessing foul play.

Third Party access (authorised / unauthorised):
Cloud based is a known-unknown that you're not the owner of the storage, been that a logically or a physically approached analysis
Exchange, if good security policies in place maybe, but if I really want access to your storage, i'll break in and steal the server hardware or backup drives / tapes not encrypted

Man in the middle intercept:
Cloud, not sure here, some providers are using SSL and encryption, but talking as per sources (sender to receiver) or server's SMTP transport (Server to server in same DC or externally hosted) quite tricky to establish a pattern, rule or fact. Same old POP3/IMAP leaves open door for traffic mirroring or intercepting by third party.
Exchange, by default plain old SMTP or even worse POP3 or IMAP. In latest versions,POP3 / IMAP is off by default and SMTP needs to be configured

Interaction with SysAdmin
Cloud, i guess younger generation that doesn't understand too much about "business rules" and are fascinating by Cloud's photo and music sharing functions and so on, will chose and love the cloud idea, ignoring other factors well known.You can guess what song you'll have while been on hold with provider support.Also,a plus,having a team of people well trained (despite been in same mindset) gives a lots of options from same poolbut working ok pool of solutions.
Exchange, I can assume is for older guys, "dinosaurs" like we've been labelled on another topic here.But you can see the IT chap doing his rounds banging his head in the wall trying to figure out whats wrong.Excahneg can be static from SysAdmins and very scary fro non so IT guys that does n understand how the latest Service Pack changes can affect the local server!

Backup
Cloud, not sure...forwarding to another email account and archiving the messages there ? Or purchasing thirds party plug ins ?
Exchange, limited but not restricted backup solutions (hware & sware) for proper backup, archive, storage, encryption, acces at later stage.

Restore
Cloud, based on the chosen provider, I guess you'll have some SLA in place, not sure, i'm open to feedback here
Exchange, based on the backup solution, you can have it in minutes or hours/days. Also, is fully visible to management, users and technical staff in a way that can be quantified in minutes or hours.

Business Level of affected service acceptance
Cloud, nothing that you can say here, but you take it easy and softer knowing that you haven't done anything wrong and along you, satisfaction that out there are other hundreds of affected users too...When on the phone to a client, you'll say to clients that the systems are down due to Cloud been unavailable, sound more accepting and professional maybe as an excuse as why i cant get that account or invoice on the screen!
Exchange, could be that you've not spend the money to upgrade the server hware / sware as agreed or required on last meeting,you're looking to blame someone, can't say on the phone my internal email is down and...i feel sorry for the SysAdmins .

Interaction Internal Users - Business - Provider

For Cloud i guess the business people will listen to techies that recommend it (unless the MD have heard it in the gold course on weekend an don Monday the IT guy is on phone to Cloud Provider)then,the techies will have to drop their technical skills and begin a new learning curve:negotiating SLA / contracts,Reporting,Tracking and not lastly...blaming someone else for the issue ! Who is going to manage this relation !? We could have a re-branding option for the IT Dept...At some point,somewhere was a report covering the future of SysAdmins when cloud will take over the majority of the business.Look at how Microsoft is pushing for Server Cloud and drops SBS product offering.Whats the catch !? More continuous repetitive constant consistent revenues from O365.IS that good for you as user or a business or is good for them ? Dunno...
For Exchange,i guess is more like set-it-and forget-it with complete transparency and full control on all lines of communications (horizontal and vertical) across an organization.

Cost analysis
Costly for both of them, but Exchange is an once off purchase (it looks better on the plan for the CFO person as a spike, rather than a continuous line, aka dead heart line on hospital monitor)

TCO
Costly both, no difference, you'll need someone to manage both, choosing a temporarily staff doing shared job description in the office or outsourced externally (proper IT Support / Consultant OR Cloud provider partner / support helldesk).I'll prefer proper guidance, support, assistance if I want to be in business...tomorrow !

Easy to switch / move around and/or back
Cloud, locked-in, is like been a tenant where landlord keeps changing tenancy rules every so often with little or no input from occupier.
Exchange, different lifestyle, open, more acceptable, life span of around 8-10 years, but still affected by Microsoft Support life cycles / end of support timeframe

Pressure from external sources

Providers
Cloud, after investing a huge amount of money in the IT bubble, now they have huge DCs and needs something to make/keep shareholders happy. They will push ,advise, force you in the Cloud based solution as they are getting monthly commission or revenue based on the volume (hardware, software, users, licences,bandwidth) you are "leasing". At the end of the day, you haven't paid a huge amount but you haven't own nothing either.
Exchange, they wont touch it as there is no continuous repetitive revenues in here, is a once off ISP type of domain setup (DNS and hosting) and you're on your own.

Support / Consultants Staff
Very mixed feelings here, i guesstimate can be described as it could be age (older vs younger),more skills vs less skills, working company environment (pressure to adapt a technology against another, money/budgets, politics, profile of the business, locked-in mistake) applied to staff skills. Cloud is newer so it could be that younger generation will embrace it more than older guys with Exchange ?

Governments / Authorities / Lobby groups
Here, i can be wrong and i hope i am, but i can see some pushing towards the cloud (they wants my data) but very careful and well played with the regulations. Is like i would like to find a bag of money on the street but not sure if i can have it and spend it without been marked or traced for doing it. AND, how do I hide my traces ...

Other users
Some of the other users are tending to recommend the cloud as the best option as that fitted their interest, due to financial or due to IT environment .Not same applies to a big huge corporate company versus a 5-10 users office. You an get a smaller and broad range of options to a smaller business than for a bigger one, SAP vs smaller CRMs application running locally on the server, desktop, laptop.

That's all, T Time...

Small office setup

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