Looking for some small business networking ideas

[Fiveohhh]

I'm currently working on helping my parents move their small office to a different location. Originally we had SBS 2003 with my brothers help, but he doesn't have the time to help us setup a new server. We were using active directory for authentication, but that is overkill for what we need, or I want to manage.

Are there any alternatives to AD that will allow us have centralized authentication and some sort of a roaming profile? The network will have 7-12 workstations and a NAS and whatever sort of server would be required for authentication. For email we will migrate the old exchange to google apps.

I think we will need the workstations to be windows, but I'm looking to see if they really do or if linux is an option, most of their work is done with webapps, so it may be an option. The only thing authentication would be required for is file access and ideally a way to sync cookies/browser history.

 

[kevnich2]

What's wrong with your existing SBS 2003 server that you used for authentication? Just move the server to the new location?

 

[Fiveohhh]

We're planning on upgrading HW and if something breaks I don't feel like trying to learn how to fix it. I'm hoping there is a simpler solution... unless setting up AD on sbs2k3 is not too difficult, than I will just learn how to set that up. We will likely migrate exchange to google apps either way.

 

[DrGreen2007]

if your using SBS2003, AD is already setup...thats what the usernames your currently using for 'authentication' are verifying against

 

[Fiveohhh]

Originally posted by: DrGreen2007
if your using SBS2003, AD is already setup...thats what the usernames your currently using for 'authentication' are verifying against

When we switch to a new server it will not be setup anymore I may just look into learning how to get AD setup as I can't seem to find any decent alternative.

 

[DrGreen2007]

there are documents to migrate from SBS2003 to 2003, better yet, you can migrate from SBS2003 to 2008 (why go with a 6yr old OS?)

The whole instruction kit can be had cheaply (~250 I think) from sbsmigration.com
Basically you add the new server to the SBS domain, move all the roles to it, then seize the last role using the cmd prompt.

 

[sonoma1993]

Originally posted by: Fiveohhh

Originally posted by: DrGreen2007
if your using SBS2003, AD is already setup...thats what the usernames your currently using for 'authentication' are verifying against

When we switch to a new server it will not be setup anymore I may just look into learning how to get AD setup as I can't seem to find any decent alternative.

on SBS2003 it setups active directory for you. Once you install server 2003 disc 1 for the sbs2003 installation, once it into server, it'll ask you pop in disc 2 and continue the install for the rest of the sbs components.

Alot of the configurations in sbs2003 and sbs2008 are all menu driven that walks you through various simple question to configure the server. Answer some questions and it does the rest for you. For example There an add user button, that'lll ask you what the user name is, password for the user and stuff then it creates the user for you in active directory and if i recall correctly it'll automatically setup the user mailbox and email address automatically in exchange as well. Or if you want folder redirection enable, there an option that enable that automatically for you.

 

[Fiveohhh]

Thanks for the help, once we get the new hardware I may setup a test network and see if I can figure it out. There are only going to be 7-10 employees so I figured it was overkill, but seems like there is not much to setting it up anyway.

 

[Emulex]

setup is easy migration is a bitch. in best practive you have 2 AD servers and want to keep that isht as far away as possible from any other service. its a real drag to depromote and clean up a server with other roles

 

[drebo]

Originally posted by: Emulex
setup is easy migration is a bitch. in best practive you have 2 AD servers and want to keep that isht as far away as possible from any other service. its a real drag to depromote and clean up a server with other roles

Transfering FSMO roles is way easy. It's like 6 mouse clicks. Transfering all of the services takes a bit of work, but isn't terribly difficult either.

The main thing I'm seeing here is that 7-10 users. That's too many for a workgroup network. Centralized DNS and authentication, while more difficult to set up, will be much easier to maintain. Spend the $700-1000 now for a new server license and skip all the headache later.

Also, Linux has no place in the business world, except as an appliance operating system (set it up once and don't touch it again).

 

[JackMDS]

You can use the Acronis Enterprise Echo with Universal Restore for the HW Migration and reduce the need for setting every thing from the scratch.

http://www.acronis.com/enterpr...universal-restore.html

 

[sonoma1993]

Also Microsoft offers a trial edition of Small Business Server 2008 if you want to give that a try.

 

[imagoon]

Originally posted by: Fiveohhh
Thanks for the help, once we get the new hardware I may setup a test network and see if I can figure it out. There are only going to be 7-10 employees so I figured it was overkill, but seems like there is not much to setting it up anyway.

Personally I think not setting up AD is asking for far more work than setting it up. AD is excellent for what it does.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: imagoon
Personally I think not setting up AD is asking for far more work than setting it up. AD is excellent for what it does.

Yeah, I HATE working on workgroups. It takes many times more work than an AD network.

If you drop SBS, I'd strongly suggest you set up some kind of health monitoring system that will warn you when problems exist. SBS has automatic daily reports and alerts built in, but some folks aren't aware of that and never enable the reporting.

If your currrent SBS server is relatively error free, then the fastest and cheapest solution is to clone it to the new hardware. Acronis' TrueImage Echo Server Backup will do it, as will StorageCraft's ShadowProtect Server. ShadowProtect has dissimilar-hardware restoration as a standard feature that works well. Their SBS version is $500. You could have your new server up and running in less than a day and won't have to reconfigure anything. This assumes you don't have an OEM version. You can't "legally" migrate an OEM version to a new box unless you have Software Assurance.

If you are happy with the features of SBS 2003, I wouldn't switch to SBS 2008. My colleagues pretty much agree that a migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 takes 30 to 40 labor hours, and that's if you know what you are doing.

 

[Fiveohhh]

Currently the server is running error-free, but I know absolutely nothing about exchange, so I'm going to try and offload that before something decides to break. Thanks for the tip about licensing I wouldn't have remembered that myself. They're planning on undertaking the project in a month so I will likely be back for questions than

Thanks again for your help, it's most appreciated.

 

[RebateMonger]

Exchange is actually pretty trouble-free. Especially now that Standard Exchange has a 75 GB storage limit versus 16 GB a few years ago. Other than making sure that you aren't sending SPAM from your server, there isn't much to do. I spend near-zero time maintaining my various Exchange Servers.

They are also quite a bit more reliable then, say, GMail, which has been down two or three times this year. I haven't had an Exchange Server down in years (crossing my fingers when I state this....).

 

[Fiveohhh]

What would one have to do to ensure you're not spamming out through exchange? Also what about spam filtering? Right now I think they pay x dollars a month for some spam filtering service.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Fiveohhh
What would one have to do to ensure you're not spamming out through exchange? Also what about spam filtering? Right now I think they pay x dollars a month for some spam filtering service.

The two actions are:
1) Use an outgoing email scanner (provided by the spam filtering service.
2) Block outgoing communication on TCP Port 25 (except from the Exchange Server itself).

Actually, it's very uncommon for the clients to send SPAM through Outlook/Exchange. SPAM is usually sent by a rogue mail server installed on the client PC. Make sure that nobody gets contaminated by mail worms and if they do, get them off the network until it's fixed. Most AV software will catch mail worms.

 

[Emulex]

hard to spam with symantec small business (aka SEP). it forks a process in your pc that eats up so much cpu per email out.

MX logic is not a bad inbound mail scanner service if you can't roll your own open-source machine.

Exchange is trouble free as long as you make backups, design within the guidelines of the system, and pray you dont have a catastrophic failure or two.

AD is a real BEOTCH to migrate if it is attached to other services.

Honestly if i had to do anything i'd probably tell folks to virtualize everything for ease of management (migration) and backup. Hyper-v R2 and vsphere essentials is so cheap it will pay off.

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: drebo

Originally posted by: Emulex
setup is easy migration is a bitch. in best practive you have 2 AD servers and want to keep that isht as far away as possible from any other service. its a real drag to depromote and clean up a server with other roles

Transfering FSMO roles is way easy. It's like 6 mouse clicks. Transfering all of the services takes a bit of work, but isn't terribly difficult either.

The main thing I'm seeing here is that 7-10 users. That's too many for a workgroup network. Centralized DNS and authentication, while more difficult to set up, will be much easier to maintain. Spend the $700-1000 now for a new server license and skip all the headache later.

Also, Linux has no place in the business world, except as an appliance operating system (set it up once and don't touch it again).

What are you talking about? Linuc sounds like a perfect fit for a small office where nobody knows how it works

You know how many times I get calls from a small company their "server" isnt working right? I show up and there it is, a desktop running some flavor of linux and windows XP home workstations trying to authenticate against it to gain access to file shares. I just shake my head thinking about the genius who sold this 12 person outfit on this idea. I know the sales pitch "It is soooooo cheap, it is free!". Except when it doesnt work and nobody knows how to even log into the thing and business is stalled waiting for somebody to call a 100\hour contractor to come out and tell them to spend 1200 bucks and get a windows server. So even an idiot can be trained to turn it on and log in because it is at the very least a familiar look.