Sme Network/server

[Moonfruit]

Hi all,

I cuurently have three staff in the office, and we are all using our computers happily, however, i now have a problem.

I need to be able to store all the files in one location, so that they are accessible and changeable by everybody, rather than hunting around on each others hard drives.

Im not sure how to do this, but im sure its very simple to anyone with half a tech-brain.

What hardware do i need, software etc etc.

Plus, to complicate matters a little, i am a Mac user, and the rest of the office uses PC.

This system would also need to be easily expandable as within 3 months, we will have another 4 or 5 terminals involved.

Help please!!!

[Tywais]

It's actually rather straight forward if you look through these articles. The biggest issue will be security, that is protecting the users from themselves (accidental deleting, etc). You will have to decide which computer you want to be the file server and set file sharing (read/write) on a folder on it. Also understand if there is a lot of traffic to that computer it will slow it down for the user if it is not dedicated to serving only.

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.a...qNum=2&rl=1

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/11/19/mac_pc.html

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.a...qNum=2&rl=1

[Simmo]

You will need a dedicated file / print server as you grow.

Lots of options you could go for here depending on your level of computing skills / how much you want to learn and spend.

* A NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. Cheap and simple to setup for a small office. Article here

* A rack mount or tower server running Windows 2003 Server. List here. More expensive and a bit harder to setup , though not to difficult these days. More upgrade options available to you and you can run additional services (Email, Web, Databases, Business Applications) from the server.

Mac's can coexist with a windows network pretty easily these days, so that won't be to much of a problem.

Also keep in mind what data you need to centrally store, does it need to be backed up regularly? .. How important is security for the data? Do you need redundancy or is some downtime acceptable in case of hardware failure?

[Firefoxx]

If your needs are simple, and just need shared files available online 24/7, then a simple NAS would do. I've seen external boxes that accept desktop harddrives going for about 2k baht at IT Mall. They're simple to setup, but they're limited in features. If you need security, or logins, or anything more, you'd need a full server. However, you'd also need at the very least a computer consultant, if not a fulltime IT guy, since it's not easy to setup or maintain.

Same goes for print servers. You can buy a little box that you can put anywhere, or get a full server.

[johng]

You could try this. " SME server "

http://contribs.org/modules/news/

You could turn off the bits you don't need and just use the file and printer sharing.

Free..you just need a low spec PC to nstall it on.

[PMK]

I think the key here is in the last sentence. Once you get up to 10 workstations or so, things start to get unwieldy peer-to-peer. You will have reached a point where email in particular should be hosted on a server or when Jane sends a copy of an email to John who is in the same office, it has to go all the way out to where ever the email is hosted and back again. It's inefficient and if there are large attachments things may start to break down.

Staff will come and go. Will the email be archived? If not, what happens if they delete all their email as well as all their documents on the last day? Joe replaces Jane. You want Joe to get Jane's incoming email but when he sends a reply, he sends as Joe. This kind of thing is so much easier to control on your own email server. Security will become an issue. Not only for backups, but to ensure (as much as possible) that data is not stolen. Even small tasks like ensuring that the anti-virus software is up and running and up to date on all the workstations get to be time consuming and inconvenient (you got to kick someone off their computer or do it after hours) unless the software is server based.

I disagree that Windows Server is something that you should set up yourself unless you really don't need to spend your time supervising the 10 staff and running your business. Server operating systems have countless bugs and oddities that can only be learned from experience (probably like your own business) and given Murphy's Law, things tend to go awry at the worst possible times. You should get an I.T. professional. I would say that even if I did not find out today I will probably be available Oct 1. ;-)

In the meantime though, just set up a shared folder as is explained in one of the links the other guys posted.

Peter

Hi all,

I cuurently have three staff in the office, and we are all using our computers happily, however, i now have a problem.

I need to be able to store all the files in one location, so that they are accessible and changeable by everybody, rather than hunting around on each others hard drives.

Im not sure how to do this, but im sure its very simple to anyone with half a tech-brain.

What hardware do i need, software etc etc.

Plus, to complicate matters a little, i am a Mac user, and the rest of the office uses PC.

This system would also need to be easily expandable as within 3 months, we will have another 4 or 5 terminals involved.

Help please!!!