Small Office Networking ,

[greggpb]

Following on from the previous thread about small office networking

We have a SBS 2003 server which we have been keeping our data on.
its is used for exchange/sqlserver/and file server

We are thinking of building a dedicated fileserver(openfiler/freenas)

how would you connect the 2 ? just via gigabit network cable ???

we have approc 15 clients pc's

 

[Kroks]

OK, this depends on the usage. I will explain my setup at work, maby it will help.
Lets focus on the 2 servers in question, Windows server and Openfiler (I have used FreeNAS, but I really like Openfiler, it is not the easiest to set up, but works very well).

The windows server has 2 x 1 GIG network cards, and the Openfiler has 4 X 1 GIG cards.
The 1 port on the win server is plugged directly into the network, and the 2nd port goes to one of the ports on the Openfiler box.
The openfiler is set up with 3 of the cards bonded and plugged into the switch and the 1 card (where the win server is plugged into) is used as a iSCSI target, mounted on the Windows server.
The 3 card bonding on the network is very nice and fast, but relies on the switch being able to do this, I have a ZyXEL GS-2024, it's link aggregation works nicely.

So in essence you have a 1 gig link between the server and the Openfiler box, that I use to backup the windows server iSCSI, and there is 3 GIG bandwidth available for all the network client into the Openfiler server.

With Openfiler you can join it to your domain. It will read all the users and create a share for each user automatically.
I have done this and mounted a home directory on the Openfiler server.
What makes it easy is that you don't have to create a new share for each user, the system will do it for you.
Openfiler is not as well documented as FreeNAS, but once you get the hang of it it works great.
Just a little note about link aggregation, if you plan on doing it try and use the same cards, as I have had some crashes when using diffrent manufacturers, and they must all run at the same speed.

 

[ITCynic]

Openfiler is not bad although I found a few bugs in it so I moved onto ClarkConnect and is my server of choice.

This is what I supply to my clients who want a decent server without paying Microsoft Prices (SBS Server is a dog in my opinion and hate it with a passion)

 

[Conradl]

Why would you need a dedicated file server for 15 users?

But to answer your question, you would just plug the file server (assuming OpenFiler) into the current network and then connect to the NAS/SAN using a file share (from the client).

If you go iSCSI you require one connection between the SAN and SBS server (either cross over or using a switch), and one connection between the client and the current network. Bonding will be useful for redundancy, but will not increase performance unless you have the disks to supply the throughput necessary to stress a single GB card.

 

[greggpb]

We generate loads of documents(more than 2 trucks loads a year) in hard copy and then we have to keep 5 years copies(which cost us for storage), none of these documents are originals. so we are looking at scanning the documents for archival puposes hence the need for a dedicated files server.

 

[greggpb]

Openfiler is not bad although I found a few bugs in it so I moved onto ClarkConnect and is my server of choice.

This is what I supply to my clients who want a decent server without paying Microsoft Prices (SBS Server is a dog in my opinion and hate it with a passion)

We need sql server for most of our operational software and express or msde will not cut it so SBS prem is the best option

 

[gregmcc]

Why not use MySQL?

 

[greggpb]

would involve getting vendors for our operational software and accounting packages to implement mysql support.. what are the chances