First time posting here, always been a lurker but I thought I would put this out there..
Currently I maintain my sisters computer network for her business.. Long story short it turned into a matter of who she could trust and be reliable..
She has 2 offices hours away from each other and does have people working for her in both offices.. the 'Home' office does most of the work with the satellite office doing approx 20% with her also going there one day a week..
Currently she has her own office computer hosting/sharing a couple of folders on the network for other computers to access.. She uses Carbonite for backup and that is working fine.. I set up a VPN for the other office and wrote a quick script to maintain connection between that office and have her home router running dd-wrt with vpn setup.. Everything works fine.. basically her computer is the server for everything.. Her applications include quick-books and Drake tax software.. multiple others as well.. They are configured to access her computer as a mapped drive and read/write to the files as needed.. The applications are configured and set up as multiple user and work well together..
Issue is now it's time for an upgrade.. I kind of stepped into this and kept it the way it was for simplicity and cost but think it's time to step up.. Her own computer is going crazy trying to act as a server and allow her to work on it, all from a single hard drive.. It is a dual core,4 gig ram, 64 bit windows 7 professional, so the computer is ok, but it is now the oldest one of the bunch.. some of the larger files take a while to load on the other computers(50-60MB files), the non-megabit network and her computer being the bottleneck at this point.. Wireless is something of an issue, still running WRT54G units, they run great, but time to upgrade.. Only the laptops are wireless and they're not as important as the wired desktops.. The satellite office uses some of the same files with a major exception of the larger quickbook files, Just doesn't do that type of work at the other office..
I am upgrading to a megabit network with wireless, any suggestions on a megabit router that will
allow a dd-wrt install and run smoothly without breaking the bank? As for the server I am researching Carbonite and finding out that they don't allow server backups?? Anyone have any ideas or personal knowledge of this?? the Synology units look pretty good but I am thinking I am going to have to go with a windows based server in order to be able to run carbonite nightly.. Is a computer running home server seen as a server?? or just a windows computer with Carbonite??
My other option is to run my own Raid on the server and swap out drives annually and get rid of carbonite.. I am planning on running a Raid 1 just to protect myself but she still wants to have carbonite as a backup of server.. If I can't get the server to run carbonite, I'll have to set up a large weekly backup and carbonite upload instead of nightly..
Thanks for any input, hopefully I didn't type too much.. Ttek
Currently I maintain my sisters computer network for her business.. Long story short it turned into a matter of who she could trust and be reliable..
She has 2 offices hours away from each other and does have people working for her in both offices.. the 'Home' office does most of the work with the satellite office doing approx 20% with her also going there one day a week..
Currently she has her own office computer hosting/sharing a couple of folders on the network for other computers to access.. She uses Carbonite for backup and that is working fine.. I set up a VPN for the other office and wrote a quick script to maintain connection between that office and have her home router running dd-wrt with vpn setup.. Everything works fine.. basically her computer is the server for everything.. Her applications include quick-books and Drake tax software.. multiple others as well.. They are configured to access her computer as a mapped drive and read/write to the files as needed.. The applications are configured and set up as multiple user and work well together..
Issue is now it's time for an upgrade.. I kind of stepped into this and kept it the way it was for simplicity and cost but think it's time to step up.. Her own computer is going crazy trying to act as a server and allow her to work on it, all from a single hard drive.. It is a dual core,4 gig ram, 64 bit windows 7 professional, so the computer is ok, but it is now the oldest one of the bunch.. some of the larger files take a while to load on the other computers(50-60MB files), the non-megabit network and her computer being the bottleneck at this point.. Wireless is something of an issue, still running WRT54G units, they run great, but time to upgrade.. Only the laptops are wireless and they're not as important as the wired desktops.. The satellite office uses some of the same files with a major exception of the larger quickbook files, Just doesn't do that type of work at the other office..
I am upgrading to a megabit network with wireless, any suggestions on a megabit router that will
allow a dd-wrt install and run smoothly without breaking the bank? As for the server I am researching Carbonite and finding out that they don't allow server backups?? Anyone have any ideas or personal knowledge of this?? the Synology units look pretty good but I am thinking I am going to have to go with a windows based server in order to be able to run carbonite nightly.. Is a computer running home server seen as a server?? or just a windows computer with Carbonite??
My other option is to run my own Raid on the server and swap out drives annually and get rid of carbonite.. I am planning on running a Raid 1 just to protect myself but she still wants to have carbonite as a backup of server.. If I can't get the server to run carbonite, I'll have to set up a large weekly backup and carbonite upload instead of nightly..
Thanks for any input, hopefully I didn't type too much.. Ttek