Help with setting up a File & email & printer Server

[3rivers]

Hello I just singed up and have a few questions to ask.

Current I’m the business admin / Computer admin for a company. As of right now the company is fairly small about 15 employees only 3 to 4 actually work in the office. The problem that we are running into is that everybody has different files on there system.

There are 3 computers and 2 printers, about 6 outlook email accounts going to all the different computers. Everybody can print from there machine but most of the time we are having trouble staying organized with all the files. Everybody needs the same address book, everybody is using the same file for Quick books and two users have palm devices.

What I would like to accomplish is have a fileserver, and email server but also have the ability to run a few programs on one computer and have everybody just work off the server for this. Three of the 4 computers are wireless, and going to stay that way. The ISP is verizon DSL and the router is a belkin G router nothing to special.

Backup needs to be performance nightly to save all data. Also I would like to have it so the users log into there computer as soon as its started up and not have to rely on just one computer because they only have all there files stored there.

More then likely I will be buying a server from dell spending around $1200 plus what ever licensing might be. I would like to have this figured out by tomorrow as I’m already a week behind from getting everything organized here.

So the server I can pretty much figure out what needs to be does long as I know what direction I will be going in. I know what I’m doing with computers, but networking is not my strong ability and currently I’m just learning. I will be the person setting everything up but would like to find out the best ways to accomplish this.

Thanks,

Dan

 

[micheljq]

What operating system licenses do you currently have? I mean what operating system on workstations. Do you have a file server operating system like Windows server or Novell Netware? You could install a Windows domain server and have the users save their files on it, then you backup the data on tape everyday.
About having an email server do not bother having one it is a highly complex matter.
About the printers, do they have an ethernet connection or local (like USB or lpt1)?

 

[3rivers]

Micheljq

Thanks for getting back to me on this Micheljq. Currently there are 4 computers three are wireless. All the computers are running windows XP pro. I was going to buy SBS2003 R2 with 5 cals. I was looking at tape backup, but wouldn’t it be easier to have all the users store the main files on the server and then have a HD in the server dedicated to backup every night?

Another reason for getting the server was to have it do email. How complicated is it setting something like that up? There is one main printer that is connected though Ethernet that’s currently being shared wirelessly. The router that I was going to use is the TZ 180 Wireless TotalSecure 10 not sure if this is going to be overkill but I think will suite the needs of a small growing business.

The goal is to have the whole office organized; everybody has a username and login when they start the computer with user profiles stored on the server. The most important factor would be to have email server and file server so everybody has access to all the same files. There are a lot of things being share between all the users, such has editing photos, updating websites, QuickBooks files. The reason behind the email server was so that is if somebody updated a contact in outlook it would update the main contact so everybody would have access to all the customers and not have to jump through somebody else to find information.

Let me know what you think, I don’t want to make things to complicated as I would be setting everything up and have never done anything like this before, but I’m not worried as long as I know what direction to take and learning not a problem at all.

 

[micheljq]

I was going to buy SBS2003 R2 with 5 cals => What is SBS2003? Small Business Suite 2003 I guess. It means Windows Server 2003 with additional options. With Windows Server 2003 you can setup a domain, so users will log in Active Directory with a user name and password. You can setup login scripts to map a common drive and a drive where the user will keep his personal files. The ethernet printer can also be added as an object within active directory, it allows more administration options.

I think SBS2003 comes with MS-Exchange, though not 100% sure, with Exchange you can setup an email server, but this is all I know on Exchange, I do not have experience with it.

I was looking at tape backup, but wouldn’t it be easier to have all the users store the main files on the server and then have a HD in the server dedicated to backup every night? => The idea with tapes is that if your company have another office, you can send backups every week to the other office so you have a backup on remote in case of disaster/fire/flood etc. Backing up data from one HD to another is not a bad idea, be sure to have all the data backup on another support each day, do not keep it only on one HD, if it fails and data is lost, the managers will have your head.

I am a Novell Netware's administrator, but I have experience administering Windows 2000 Server domains.

I hope it answers some of your questions.