Setting up Network for Office, need help!?!?!

[tbogstad]

I have been building computers for about 10 years, no formal network training.

I have a client who wants:
3 new workstations
ability to access the same files and do the same work on all 3 computers.

I figured i would just build a server? and share out the files for all his Docs.

Win 7 premiun on each workstation, then a server with raid and back up drive too, and back to the net with Mozy or the like too, he wants much back-up.

I have to get office 2007 for each computer.

So basiaclly the local computers will not have a Documant stored locally, everything will be on the server with gigabit network, and any Doc can be accessed and modded from any computer, then saved back on the server which has multiple back-up's.

Is there any better way to do this????

 

[RadiclDreamer]

If you have the money for a server (which may be overkill for something this small, maybe sharing folders and external hard drives may be better) you would be best off just redirecting the desktop/my documents folders to a network share so they could be picked up by the server backup routine.

 

[JackMDS]

If there is No specific reason for Real DC server Windows Home Server would be the best choice.

 

[tbogstad]

yeah i figured i would back everything up weekly, and all to the server, just run windows back up to the extra drive in the server, so it would have a backup of the server and 3 backup, 1 from each computer, on that drive.

I figured even though ther not sposed to be useing the local drive for storage, inevidibly they will end up with local stuff on that single computer, and i want to protect all data no matter what.

But they all need to access the the same docs so any doc can be modded from any computer at anytime.

I thought about not doing a server, but he also want expandability for when the company grows, so i wanted to make it very expandable.

 

[tbogstad]

If there is No specific reason for Real DC server Windows Home Server would be the best choice.

this what i thought, all they want is to share the same files, so just a Win7 computer with all the docs shared would good and fast enough on a gigabit network, as a server for everything.


What different about win Home server compared to a win7 premiun box with file shareing turned on????

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Desktop OS with MS can support 10 clients connected at any one time. You are well below this

 

[Zargon]

this what i thought, all they want is to share the same files, so just a Win7 computer with all the docs shared would good and fast enough on a gigabit network, as a server for everything.


What different about win Home server compared to a win7 premiun box with file shareing turned on????

WHS would also handle automated backups of the office computers

 

[skyking]

Do you reasonably expect it to grow beyond 10 workstations in the next 5 years?
If not, put the company files on one of the computers and share that.
Use synctoy or something similar on a scheduled task to back that folder up to one of the other computers.
Now you have the data in two places without any human action. (humans fail to change tapes, swap external drives, run backup jobs manually)
Is it perfect or ideal? No.
Does it require any more money or hardware or complexity? No.

 

[robmurphy]

As far as I'm aware the home editions of XP/Vista/Win 7 will only alow 5 other machines to connect to its shared drives. The business/pro versions allow 10. Win7 Pro also has better backup options.

Some people may not be happy with other users using their desktop as the server, so a seperate machine running an MS server build, or a linux one with samba may make sense.

At my last clients site they had a long battle ridding their IT of a virus. It was spreading using the XP Pro desktop's shared drive. The shares were disabled on the network, and within a day all the viruses on the networked machines had been removed.

Rob.

 

[RebateMonger]

What I do in cases like this is put all the shared files on one of the PCs (usually the "boss'"), and then install a Windows Home Server to back up ALL of the PCs automatically. This automates the process of backing up the shared files, as well as all the other PCs. If any of the PCs is hit by a disk failure or malware, we can bring that PC back up in an hour or so.

On top of this, I'll either set up Carbonite to back up the shared files on the boss' PC, or have him/her make weekly backups to a USB stick or to a USB hard drive and get it offsite.

I put the shares on the boss' PC rather than on the WHS because:

a) I want to be SURE that we are getting backups of the data shares. WHS is very good about notification if there's a backup problem.
b) There's no issues getting Carbonite or other online backup to run on a desktop OS, while there may be issues running them on the Server.
c) The current configuration of WHS doesn't provide for VSS shadow copies of shares, so an accidentally deleted or overwritten file on the WHS can be lost. If WHS is just making backups of another PC, we have these protections for the shared files:
1 - VSS Previous Versions on the "boss' PC" and other PCs (assuming Vista or Win7 business versions)
2 - Daily automated backups to WHS, including archives of all file changes, going back several months.

 

[Zargon]

some nice points there rebatemonger

 

[RebateMonger]

some nice points there rebatemonger

Thanks. I've spent a fair amount of time agonizing over the best way to use WHS in an office. Talking with others who've used WHS in offices, I'm not alone in mostly limiting its use to backups, which it does very well. Unlike homes, most offices don't have multi-Terabytes of data to share.

 

[amheck]

I've always wondered this.....if I have WHS and have the shared folders mapped as drives on my PC, will Carbonite pick those up for backup?

 

[Zargon]

Thanks. I've spent a fair amount of time agonizing over the best way to use WHS in an office. Talking with others who've used WHS in offices, I'm not alone in mostly limiting its use to backups, which it does very well. Unlike homes, most offices don't have multi-Terabytes of data to share.

yeah one of my offices has about 4 gigs of shared data between like 15 employees. almost a waste of the raid 1 and backup to tape

 

[RebateMonger]

I've always wondered this.....if I have WHS and have the shared folders mapped as drives on my PC, will Carbonite pick those up for backup?

Last time I checked, neither Mozy nor Carbonite would pick up mapped drives. They only handle local disks.

If you are using WHS and Mozy/Carbonite on a desktop PC, beware. Both use VSS and I saw some very weird behavior when Mozy Pro was making backups at the same time as Windows NTBackup. Making an NTBackup (which uses VSS also) while Mozy Pro was running filled up a Windows Server 2003's c: drive in a matter of minutes with shadow copies. Free space went from 60 GB to 1.5 GB and was still going down when I stopped the backups. A repeat run did the same thing.

As a precaution, I program desktops running Carbonite so that Carbonite will NOT make a backup during the time that WHS might be making backups. That's easy to do with Carbonite and, unfortunately, impossible to do with Mozy. You can program "Start times" with Mozy, but not "Stop times". Programming Carbonite this way has worked fine with no conflicts with WHS.

I don't KNOW that running Mozy/Carbonite at the same time as a WHS backup is running is hazardous, but I'd rather not find out the hard way.

 

[eli2k]

Maybe Windows Live Mesh combined with a backup would work. Assuming the client is not working on all three systems at the same time (do they need that ability), Live Mesh would sync all files into the 'cloud' and onto all the systems. So he's working on the file on Computer 1, saves it, it syncs to the cloud, then the cloud syncs to the other two computers, then he moves to Computer 2, and will have local access to the file. Then to be safe, you can either sync to a fourth computer, or you can run backups on all three computers, so you have three extra copies =/ But then if these documents are huge files, then it might be better to go the routes suggested above; if they're small documents, <10MB, I think this works fine.

 

[Emulex]

make sure you use a reasonable 32+ password AES-256 if you are uploading your images anywhere chinese might get hold of them i'm part chinese so i can say that lol

 

[tbogstad]

Thanks for all the help.

all the PC's will be new so all will be win7 premiun or higher.

lets say i do the 3 works station with win7 prem and a server with win7 premium.

I shared the docs on the server so all system can see 500gb raid and use them.

i will have a raid 1 array on the server, so thats 1 back-up, the a extra 1tb HD to just put the win7 weekly back up runs on. and then use carbonite and back up once a week, 3 days from the win7 back up so they should never overlap. were talking about like maybe 5gb of stuff max and probably not even that, so should not take very long.

If i run win7 back-ups on all the work stations, can i put the back-ups of each workstation on the extra drive on the server threw the network mapped drive.

Does this sound right???

i will have 2 x 500gb in raid 1 , and a 1tb drive just for all the back-ups on the "server"

i guess i would need to the workstaion back-ups on different days, just so the i was not writeing to the same drive from 3 computers at the same time.

 

[RebateMonger]

Do yourself a favor and get Win7 Professional (or Ultimate) on all the PCs. You'll need to buy those from Dell or HP or such since they don't normally carry business PCs at BestBuy.

Win7 Pro and Ultimate have built-in remote access, better backup options, Previous Versions recovery (I'm not sure which editions of Win7 have that, but Pro and Ultimate do for sure), the ability to join them to a Domain at a later time, and other things that make common IT tasks a lot easier.

MS called Win7 Professional's Vista equivalent, "Vista Business" for a reason. I wish they hadn't changed the name. XP had the same problem. Microsoft called the business version, "XP Professional", so folks bought lots of XP Home computers for their offices and made it ten times tougher to institute things like security, sharing, remote access, and other business needs.

No matter what backup solution you end up, be sure to monitor it and test it. Backups across a network can fail for lots of reasons and they do. The backup failures usually go undetected until the backups are needed and then it's too late. That's one of the reasons I like Windows Home Server as a backup solution. If any PC in the office goes without backups for several days, a warning popup appears on EVERY PC in the office. But no matter what kind of warning is available, somebody needs to be RESPONSBILE for checking and testing backups. I do a server file restoration test once a month for my clients and get email warnings if a server backup fails.

 

[ebaycj]

I have been building computers for about 10 years, no formal network training.

I have a client who wants:
3 new workstations
ability to access the same files and do the same work on all 3 computers.

I figured i would just build a server? and share out the files for all his Docs.

Win 7 premiun on each workstation, then a server with raid and back up drive too, and back to the net with Mozy or the like too, he wants much back-up.

I have to get office 2007 for each computer.

So basiaclly the local computers will not have a Documant stored locally, everything will be on the server with gigabit network, and any Doc can be accessed and modded from any computer, then saved back on the server which has multiple back-up's.

Is there any better way to do this????

Windows 2008 Small Business Server / Small Business Server Premium.
Add 3 dell workstations with win7 business / premium + office 2007.
Do it.

 

[JackMDS]

Win7 Pro and Ultimate have built-in remote access, better backup options, Previous Versions recovery (I'm not sure which editions of Win7 have that, but Pro and Ultimate do for sure), the ability to join them to a Domain at a later time, and other things that make common IT tasks a lot easier.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/compare/default.aspx

Windows 7 Enterprise is the same as Ultimate but has capcitiy for Volume Activation.

AS mentioned above the Ulti./Pro/Enterprise together with Windows 2008 has Direct Access Capacity which makes a secure connection through the Internet very easy. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd572177.aspx


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[Emulex]

yah SBS or EBS 2008 is designed to run your office - at a reasonable price.

between SBS and Essential business server you can find your level of reliability for sure.