New distrubuted office setup

G

greggpb

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Ok So as a small company we have decides to setup an office, this will be a our central point for all our servers and the like..

I was just wanting some advice on how you guy would so this...

The office will have adsl (with Dynamic dns). in the office we will have
* database Server
* Exchange Server
* Web Server

I would like 5 - 10 users to be able to vpn into the office from thier home adsl lines(the all have different adsl routers)


What kind of setup would you guys recommend ?
What ADSL Router should i get for the office ?
Should i be running OpenVPn or windows 2003 Vpn ?
Would i need a proper Domain controller or could i get away with samba ?
 
My suggestion,

A Linksys WRT54GL router with dd-wrt firmware. Read up on it. Or if you have the money, get an real VPN router.

You can get a business level DSL with a fixed IP, no need for DynDns

Before you waste money on Exchange Server, consider somethign like Zimbra (http://www.zimbra.com/) , open source and just as good.

Samba just does file sharing (AFAIK), but if it's just 10 of you a domain controller would be overkill.
 
Yeah, linksys WRT54GL router. With the dd-wrt firmware for the vpn.
 
R899 at Incredible corruption, can't seem to find them online anymore.

like w1z4rd says, Just make sure it says GL at the end.
 
It's just a router, you'll need to add an ethernet ADSL modem, usually a good idea because lightning strikes won't take out your router, only the modem.
 
Whne you say the router handles VPn.. you dont mean like a cisco router where it does all the autentication and user names you mean its just cats as a pass throught ot the VPN server you are running on your internal network ?
 
Hey there,

We use SME Server for all our clients.

Its completely free and blows microsoft small business server out of the water
when you compare the cost versus value.

Features and Benefits

* 2.1 Ease of Administration
* 2.2 File and Print Sharing
* 2.3 Internet Connection
* 2.4 Email
* 2.5 Firewall
* 2.6 Remote Access
* 2.7 Directory Services
* 2.8 Web Hosting
* 2.9 Raid and Backup
* 2.10 Automatic Updates
* 2.11 Extensible

check it out at http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:About
 
pass throught to the VPN server you are running on your internal network
Click to expand...

Um, not sure. I think I the router is running as the VPN server, I have it setup to connect to my home PC (running XP) and all I have to do is enter my Windows username and password to connect to my machine (using built in Windows VPN client). I am then able to connect using the 192.168.x.x internal IP address of my home machine. haven't installed any VPN software on the XP machine, only enabled the VPN server on the router.


This wiki entry might help:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/OpenVPN_-_Site-to-Site_Bridged_VPN_Between_Two_Routers
 
greggpb said:
Whne you say the router handles VPn.. you dont mean like a cisco router where it does all the autentication and user names you mean its just cats as a pass throught ot the VPN server you are running on your internal network ?
Click to expand...

Confirmed! The router runs as a VPN server, OpenVPN is supported as well as the Windows VPN protocols (LL2TP, PPTP, I know those are wrong, but I can't bothered to look them up ;-))
 
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