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Voicy
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2007
- Messages
- 11,565
Hi friends,
In December I want to take some time to implement a proper office environment at my company. We are a small company with about 7-8 staff. The 'system' is completely wrong and since I joined the company I've never been given the freedom to rectify it.
I have very little to no working knowledge of linux seeing as I'm not in the I.T. field. I've just been made the "computer expert" at work since everyone else is grossly incompetent and it's easier for them to just ask me to do something than to learn to do it themselves. From speaking to mates of mine on here who are rather clued up I've been informed that a linux box is the way to go.
The current setup:
File Server: We have a shared drive on an XP machine acting as the File 'server' where all our company files we work on are stored. It falls over about twice a week.
Backups: Backups are poor. I pretty much copy the files across onto a portable drive once a month. I tried a windows based incremental option, but my boss couldn't decypher it so it was scrapped.
Email: We have 7 hosted email accounts with a local company. Each account pulls mail from the mail server off site instead of it coming in to a central point at our office. Ergo, even internal mail chows bandwidth because it's sent out then back in.
Antivirus: I have a 10-license Trend package installed on my pc, which acts as the host for the other pc's in the office. Hence my pc is slow as all hell.
Internet: We have a 384kb (dynamic IP address) uncapped adsl connection. The only form of content filtering is via the netgear ADSL modem/router, which I use to block all the usual sites, but there's no way of monitoring who uses how much or frequents which sites.
Desired Setup:
File Server: Something that is reliable and still accessible to all. Would getting 2x320GB drives in a RAID1 formation be the way forward?
Backups: I'd like something that makes incremental backups where I can see older versions of changed files on either a daily or weekly basis. Accessing these files must not be a huge process.
Email: With the present incoming mail server still off-site, would it be possible to somehow pull all the mail to a linux box which then distributes it to the rest of the addresses? I.e. making it possible to view all mail coming in despite going to specific accounts. Thereby allowing to search for a mail item from one location instead of asking everyone to check their accounts for it.
Antivirus: With a linux box as our gateway, would it block viruses coming in via mail/web? Do I then just put AVG/Avast on each pc for flashdrive viruses or which route do I go?
Internet: Since we have a dynamic IP address, I can't have a dedicated server here with everything on it. However I assume my connection would be like so:
LAN <-> 24port switch <-> Linux Box <-> ADSL Modem <-> Phone line
Hardware:
Normal Dual Core intel box, with 2x SATA drives in Raid array. I assume Raid1 = where one fails, I can plug another one in and it rebuilds the database. This would then rebuild the OS too if it fails. Correct? Perhaps I should order an extra drive of the same make/model for incase. I'll get a KVM switch to put the server down next to a part-time used PC near the dsl modem. 1x Extra NIC since I'd need 2 NICs on the box. How much ram would I need?
For everything above, will a version of ClearOS/CentOS be my solution or do I need to look for an alternate route?
In December I want to take some time to implement a proper office environment at my company. We are a small company with about 7-8 staff. The 'system' is completely wrong and since I joined the company I've never been given the freedom to rectify it.
I have very little to no working knowledge of linux seeing as I'm not in the I.T. field. I've just been made the "computer expert" at work since everyone else is grossly incompetent and it's easier for them to just ask me to do something than to learn to do it themselves. From speaking to mates of mine on here who are rather clued up I've been informed that a linux box is the way to go.
The current setup:
File Server: We have a shared drive on an XP machine acting as the File 'server' where all our company files we work on are stored. It falls over about twice a week.
Backups: Backups are poor. I pretty much copy the files across onto a portable drive once a month. I tried a windows based incremental option, but my boss couldn't decypher it so it was scrapped.
Email: We have 7 hosted email accounts with a local company. Each account pulls mail from the mail server off site instead of it coming in to a central point at our office. Ergo, even internal mail chows bandwidth because it's sent out then back in.
Antivirus: I have a 10-license Trend package installed on my pc, which acts as the host for the other pc's in the office. Hence my pc is slow as all hell.
Internet: We have a 384kb (dynamic IP address) uncapped adsl connection. The only form of content filtering is via the netgear ADSL modem/router, which I use to block all the usual sites, but there's no way of monitoring who uses how much or frequents which sites.
Desired Setup:
File Server: Something that is reliable and still accessible to all. Would getting 2x320GB drives in a RAID1 formation be the way forward?
Backups: I'd like something that makes incremental backups where I can see older versions of changed files on either a daily or weekly basis. Accessing these files must not be a huge process.
Email: With the present incoming mail server still off-site, would it be possible to somehow pull all the mail to a linux box which then distributes it to the rest of the addresses? I.e. making it possible to view all mail coming in despite going to specific accounts. Thereby allowing to search for a mail item from one location instead of asking everyone to check their accounts for it.
Antivirus: With a linux box as our gateway, would it block viruses coming in via mail/web? Do I then just put AVG/Avast on each pc for flashdrive viruses or which route do I go?
Internet: Since we have a dynamic IP address, I can't have a dedicated server here with everything on it. However I assume my connection would be like so:
LAN <-> 24port switch <-> Linux Box <-> ADSL Modem <-> Phone line
Hardware:
Normal Dual Core intel box, with 2x SATA drives in Raid array. I assume Raid1 = where one fails, I can plug another one in and it rebuilds the database. This would then rebuild the OS too if it fails. Correct? Perhaps I should order an extra drive of the same make/model for incase. I'll get a KVM switch to put the server down next to a part-time used PC near the dsl modem. 1x Extra NIC since I'd need 2 NICs on the box. How much ram would I need?
For everything above, will a version of ClearOS/CentOS be my solution or do I need to look for an alternate route?
