Heya guys, I volunteer my time to help my church with thier network setup. But I think we've finally run into some problems that are bigger then my meager skills and amount of time I have to invest.
They are currently using an off the shelf Compaq computer to share files and act as a server for a membership database program. The connections are very poor and they are always D/C'ing. And because it's WinXP they have that dreaded 10 user limitation. Not that we have 10 people connecting at once, it just seems to be not renewing the list when someone drops and reconnects, therefore reaching the limit of 10 unnecessarily.
So, i've told them that it's probably time to upgrade to something serious. And perhaps bring in someone who reallys knows what they are doing. I've called several local IT companies which were supposed to come out and give me quotes, But one just doesn't return my calls, another has missed two appointments and a third has been promising a quote for over a month...
I've told them all that we have a budget for about $5000 dollars for this year, with another $5000 that we might be able to get at the begining of next year. The last guy I talked to said something to the effect of
"when you start adding all the things you need like CAS certs for each device, a backup system, etc., the best price we could get you is 10k. Now you may be able to qualify for a lower price somewhere else...but not for less than 7k"
Seems...steep.
All I need is to have about 8 users connect to a file server to share files, and for it to host this database that the other computers can access.
I've also been doing a little reading about NAS. Although I don't know if that's right for me, as I have to install this program on the server (in server mode) a NAS device doesn't have a typical OS...right?
Any advice towards how to go about this is greatly apreciated. Thank you
They are currently using an off the shelf Compaq computer to share files and act as a server for a membership database program. The connections are very poor and they are always D/C'ing. And because it's WinXP they have that dreaded 10 user limitation. Not that we have 10 people connecting at once, it just seems to be not renewing the list when someone drops and reconnects, therefore reaching the limit of 10 unnecessarily.
So, i've told them that it's probably time to upgrade to something serious. And perhaps bring in someone who reallys knows what they are doing. I've called several local IT companies which were supposed to come out and give me quotes, But one just doesn't return my calls, another has missed two appointments and a third has been promising a quote for over a month...
I've told them all that we have a budget for about $5000 dollars for this year, with another $5000 that we might be able to get at the begining of next year. The last guy I talked to said something to the effect of
"when you start adding all the things you need like CAS certs for each device, a backup system, etc., the best price we could get you is 10k. Now you may be able to qualify for a lower price somewhere else...but not for less than 7k"
Seems...steep.
All I need is to have about 8 users connect to a file server to share files, and for it to host this database that the other computers can access.
I've also been doing a little reading about NAS. Although I don't know if that's right for me, as I have to install this program on the server (in server mode) a NAS device doesn't have a typical OS...right?
Any advice towards how to go about this is greatly apreciated. Thank you