Small Office Setup

ve

I have two small offices locally and a 3rd in a remote location. By small I mean 4 users max at each location. Only one office locally and the other office remotely need to be networked together (I'm thinking VPN). At each location I will not use wireless networks, and all locations will be connected via broadband to the Internet. At each location I want to be able to print to a single local network printer. I also want to have a decent hardware firewall and VOIP capabilities at each location.

At each location there will also be a single server to store/test data for that location. I would need some sort of backup solution for these servers as it would be chaos they were to go down or if we lost data. Again these servers are independent of each other. I would also like to be able to create critical image backups (OS & Configurations, etc) that I can restore in minimal time in the event of things going pear shaped.

Because I am not employing wireless networks, I want to secure the local network gateway to the Internet as best I can. Along with enforcing a strict user end policy at each location. Only mission critical applications need access to the network.

From the above list of requirements what hardware would you recommend for the offices (we already have the workstations so that's not a concern), but the network/security/VOIP/backup equipment, etc we need to get.

What would you recommend? (baring in mind, we don't need overkill, but security, reliability are top priorities)

Thank you for any help you can offer

vir7ual

whats your budget? I'm asking this because if you're going for reliability this is one area which will hit your pocket. The less downtime an item causes the more expensive they are, generally.

how much data have you to back up? I'm asking this as this will determine the type of backup solution that you'll have to get. Taking into account you'd have to back up the server, user accounts, configurations and mission critical data.

Also are you setting up the server as domain controllers with each user loggin onto the server or does each user have a local login and can access the server as a shared drive.

If you're only using the server as file storage and not holding policies, the power of the server wont have to be huge, storage and redundancy is key here. If you want users to access into a domain then the server would have to be that bit more powerful if its serving files as well as policies.

ve

vir7ual wrote: »

whats your budget?

Office 1: €2k Max.
Office 2 & 3: Connected via VPN: €5k approx.

vir7ual wrote: »

how much data have you to back up? I'm asking this as this will determine the type of backup solution that you'll have to get. Taking into account you'd have to back up the server, user accounts, configurations and mission critical data.

Also are you setting up the server as domain controllers with each user loggin onto the server or does each user have a local login and can access the server as a shared drive.

If you're only using the server as file storage and not holding policies, the power of the server wont have to be huge, storage and redundancy is key here. If you want users to access into a domain then the server would have to be that bit more powerful if its serving files as well as policies.

The server that needs to be backed up will be:

Office 1: A simple LAMP box & SAMBA fileshare
Office 2: Database server with remote desktop capabilities
Office 3: Same as office 1

What kind of server hardware would you suggest for each and where would you purchase. Again in the above the LAMP servers are alpha-test machines and will not be used as "always-on" hosts.

Some friends recommended Sonicwall/Cisco products for the firewall/VOIP stuff. Any particular products spring to mind? or would you take your business elsewhere?

As regards purchasing site licenses for sofware (operating systems, MS Office, databases, etc) for a small business, are there any decent places to go for this, and are there any grant schemes available to assist businesses with their software costs.

I mentioned already that we intend on having a strict user policy. Having said that there is still a chance that our workstations/servers could get infected with viruses/spy/malware, etc. For a mission critical I.T. infrastructure what sort of protection would you recommend in terms of software/hardware. For example if we did get a virus, we couldn't take machines offline, or spend half a day trying to ger rid of the bloody thing.

joePC

Depending on your BB providers, locations in the country, application usuage and a number of other factors I would recommend VPN from all sites back to your main site (Closest to your home)

If you only have 1 BB connection per site then a Cisco 877 would be perfect

2 Central servers in main location running terminal services with application publishing e.g. 2X

All sites running XP thin clients connecting back to head office for the main applications e.g. Mail, office suite, IE explorer (This is dependent on the applications)

All web traffic going through a proxy server e.g. Web marshal / Censornet

This would be quite easy to setup, extremely secure and easily managed but it is heavily dependent on your BB providers.

One of many options...

Cheers, Joe

Ghost Train

Since it's only 8 client pcs, should be easy enough to ghost/clone the hard drives, so if you ever need to, you can wipe the hard drives and restore the pcs

ve

joePC wrote: »

This would be quite easy to setup, extremely secure and easily managed but it is heavily dependent on your BB providers.

Cheers Joe. Two offices are here and the other is in the Netherlands. The remote office can take care of themselves once we know what we're doing over here. We are in a reasonably well broadband covered area (have our choice in providers), having said that though I have had great trouble as a home BB customer having to reset routers and re-init modem-to-ISP connections every now and again. This just won't fly in business. Sure the different between a cheap home router and a reliable box would probably mean everything, but I'm sick and tired of segments of my home network disappearing depending on how the network is being actively used. Proabably due to Max socket Connections being reached, but the cheap boxes give you little control without changing stock firmware, etc.

I'm also not a fan of running applications and profiles remotely, can't see the real benefits of doing so. If the network goes down I don't want to lose everything, I don't want to have to stop working. I appreciate I am probably being ignorant here :rolleyes:

@ eolhc: Yeah Norton Ghost is probably where I would go for the XP workstations, but can I use that on Linux. Also what about doing automated nightly backups? Any software/hardware for this, or is it a simple cp -R chron job on Linux to another disk?. Tape disks I don't think are necessary.

Any hardware firewall/VPN/VOIP product recommendations?

thebyrnie

hi sorry to but in i know all the systems ye are reccomending are fantastic but from a cost effective perpestive i use a hamachi its free and no need for equipment i have used it in many businesses to create stable and relaible vpn's for sage, quickbooks, file sharing and so on read up on it its very good o ya we use it for creating vpn's for games me and my friends we once got a 8v8 c+c 3 out of it well impressed

vir7ual

joePC wrote: »

All sites running XP thin clients connecting back to head office for the main applications e.g. Mail, office suite, IE explorer (This is dependent on the applications)

Cheers, Joe

You said already you had the desktop machines purchased so the need for thin clients is not necessary. A very good option but one you can budget out seeming you already have them sorted.

If the server is only a LAMP server, power is not a major issue. I'm using alpha here on 2 linux servers and they're old desktops i rebuilt to do the job. Other than power cuts havent had an issue with them.

Remote desktop capabilities is only a service within windows so when the server is ghosted this option will also be saved. This also applies to your other computer users. One backup software i use and have no problems with it is SyncBack for everyday backups, backs up 5pc's and 2 servers. (both windows servers), the linux servers are not backed up.

Norton Ghost images the hard drive so independant of the operating system it doesnt matter whether its linux or windows, ghost boots from floppy is catches the drive just after bios. It images the partition so its not dependant on the operating system booting. Comes in handy when you need to restore. Another option which is worth looking into for ghosting is Acronis Trueimage client and server.

In regards to the licenses, if you purchase a server it will have a license already. (you said you already have the workstations, you wont need licenses for these)

With your database i dont know exactly what you're doing but you mentioned Alpha, presuming thats Alpha 5 databases, you might already have a desktop license for each work station. Their Server license is pretty cheap. But as i said i dont fully understand or know what database programming you're doing so cant comment on the software requirements you'll need.

With the infections of computers, the only thing that i have used in offices i support is if one does get infected, plug it out, plug in a spare, ghost image and back up and running in 30mins, then take pc to away and fix it. this is all down to whether you want to run with a maintenance contract or support the computers yourself. As you said you dont want to spend half a day trying to fix an infected computer while an employee cant work.

If the network goes down the thin clients will stop working, so you're right in saying you dont want to run remote apps. there's for and against both setups. One major advantage of the thin clients is software installations and you can control what they have on the computers but if you trust the employees this shouldnt be an issue.

Eircom business bb is on top of my list. I have never had an issue with it in any of the sites set up with it. I have it myself and had small issues but that was down to the general telephone line rather than just me. Some people might have other experiences with eircom but thats just mine.

With backups, another thing which came to mine, when you said you dont want tapes. If they are mission critical backups, you should have 2copies of the backups, one on site, the other off site, ftp sites are grand but with tapes you know you have the backups somewhere safe. Protects against fire, theft etc.