Small office setup

[jaymed]

Hi Guys, I saw few posts on here on small office servers but none of them were just what i was looking for so maybe you can help me with my setup. Let me start with whats there and than i'll go to whats needed.
This is 3 person office that does charity work so the costs need to be on the low end. As of now they use 2 desktops and one laptop, 2 printers (1 color one b/w), external usb drive that they use as storage which is connected to 1 desktop and shared with others. Outlook calendar on main desktop synced with iphone.
What they are looking for is:
storage device that does not depends on main pc to be on (maybe NAS) that will store and share data between all 3 pc's, speed is not that important. access to each printer from all 3 pc's, share 1 Outlook account on all 3 machines and iphone (they need to update calendar/events from each pc).

Thanks in andvance!!!
Jay

 

[noidea_77]

You are on the right way for sharing the storage and the printers with a NAS connected to the network. Most NAS boxes can share USB printers connected to them. To keep the cost low, i would recommend a 2-bay model and set it up with raid1 (mirroring). The current external drive can be used as the backup drive for the NAS. A bit more difficult will be the sharing of one Outlook Account. I need to think about that. Maybe someone else here has an idea.

 

[jaymed]

should i build my own NAS box with freeNAS or just go with something off the shelf with pre installed software? i have to say i dont have much experience with small office storage hardware.

 

[noidea_77]

qnap, synology or thecus have all you need. It's easy to configure and comes with support.

 

[jaymed]

thank you noidea , still trying to find opt best way to sync outlook..