Multiple Remote Connections with SBS and Access Database

projects14a

projects14a

projects14a

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16 Jun 2008
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312
Evening folks,

Ive recently taken on a project for a good friend to build an Access database which will be used by all employees of their small company. Being that they are all feild sales, they dont have an office as such, they are dotted over the country and effectively work from home.
The solution that im currently working on will be an Access database hosted on a small server which will be located in their 'office'. They will then be able use the remote connection to access the database from their own computers.

Being a small company, they are keeping their budget as small as possible so firstly i'm looking for a entry level server thats £300 or under with OS included. Obviously it doesnt leave me many options, but would like any recommendations of good sources.

At a later date i'll be asking some more technical questions about setting it up, ive worked with servers before, but not set one up from scratch, so know basic admin, but not the more involved tasks such as setting up remote connections.

So firstly, could anyone point me in the right direction for a decent server for sub £300 with SBS 2003?

Many thanks in advance!
 
Yikes, didnt think it was still that expensive since the release of 2008. My friend thinks he can get it from the states for around £100 not entirely sure where from. Ive suggested XP Pro as for our requirements its adaquate (no plans for exchange server at this stage).
He's also found *Oi no competitors!* again, it should meet our requirements with ease for the time being, although alittle worried the power supply as its only 260 watt, not sure how well they cope being on 24/7. Otherwise spec looks fine.
 
I'm sure the HP ML110/115 are not much over 100 quid (108 rings a bell for some reason). Make sure you add an extra disk for RAID1, it may pay for itself at some point :)

How are you planning on getting the remote workers access to the database? SBS will give you two TS sessions but they are meant for administrative purposes really. RWW might help but that assumes each worker has a PC in the office.
 
Either of those two methods would work, although i would probably want to use RWW to allow for more connections. I was hoping to set up SBS so that each employee has their own user account, but without individual PC's in the office is RWW still possible? What i thought would be a get around for this is if they just logged into the server as a user as apposed to an administrator.
 
Just had a scout around and found the HP ML115 looks very suitable for our needs, thanks for the heads up ;)

Found one on ebay for a very good price with Windows Server 2003, will i be able to use RWW with this OS?
 
Ok, found out Windows Server 2003 doesnt have RWW (for anyone else interested) But have found the ML115 with SBS for alittle bit more, but still within budget :D Thanks again sOck!
 
Ahh i think ive seen the ML115 you are talking about. Looks like a really good deal if you ask me. Though i would strongly recommend you add another hard drive so you have have RAID1 (even software RAID is better than nothing).
 
Yeah, think i will do. Ive not implemented a RAID before, so will need to do abit of reading first. Are software RAID's configured within windows or DOS based? i.e. Needs to be done before windows is installed.
 
projects14a said:
Yeah, think i will do. Ive not implemented a RAID before, so will need to do abit of reading first. Are software RAID's configured within windows or DOS based? i.e. Needs to be done before windows is installed.
Click to expand...

Often you can request the OS pre-installed and the RAID already set up.
 
There are are few ways you can do it.

Software. Hybrid (AKA FakeRAID), and Hardware.

Software (which you will probably be using), is really easy to set up. Shove in the drives. boot up Server 2003. Disk Management, and its a really easy, short wizard from there. Only problem is, all the RAID calculations are done by the processor in Windows, so there is a performance hit.

Hybrid is where you use a chipset on the motherboard to do the RAID (which could be applicable to you).

Hardware is where you have a RAID controller card (which its own processor and memory). It is all configured in the controller's BIOS, and so the OS doesnt "know" there is a RAID there, and just sees one basic disk.

With software RAID (i think) you have to convert the disks to dynamic (again easy to do).
 
Thanks for the info, i will ask the seller whether he is able to set it up, though being an Ebay seller, not sure he'll want the bother.

I understand there are different methods of implementing a RAID, i.e hardware and software, but are there also ways of saving the data? I'm under the impression you can have a mirrored drive or one where the data is saved accross the 2 drives and if one fails it uses a check sum on the other drive to restore. Any suggestions as to which would be most appropriate?
It will probably depend on which method i use for implementation, the OS is preinstalled on these servers so i guess the software option is probably the easiest to implement. How would i know if i could use the chipset on the motherboard to minimise the performance hit? Guess its a bios setting? Also assuming it would need to be set up prior to installing the OS?

Thanks again for everyones help, its greatly appreciated!
 
Yes, there are different types of RAID, (called "levels").

The common ones are RAID0, RAID1 and RAID5. Ill try my best to explain them. Lets pretend you have some 250GB drives.

RAID0: Minimum 2 drives. Data is "stripped" across both drives. This offers good performance benefits, but there is no redundancy (if one of the drives in the RAID array dies, then you loose ALL your data). Obviously not good in a production environment! Two 250GB drives in RAID0 would show in Windows as one 500GB drive.

RAID1: Minimum 2 drives. Data is "mirrored" across both drives. This offers good redundancy, as you have two copies of your data. If one drive fails, you have the other one with a full working copy. However, there is a small performance decrease (and everything in effect is saved twice). Two 250GB drives in RAID0 would show in Windows as one 250GB drive.

RAID5: Minimum 3 drives. A kinda compromise between RAID0 and RAID1. Harder to explain without a diagram, but basically, you can sustain one drive failure and still continue to have your data intact. 3 250GB drives in RAID5 would show as 500GB in Windows (im pretty sure!).

Have a look here for an explanation with diagrams:
http://www.acnc.com/04_00.html and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

Im pretty sure you'll be wanting RAID1.

To know whether you can use a motherboard chipset, you need to know what motherboard you've got. But yeah, it will not so much be a BIOS setting per say, but more like when booting you'll get "Pretty CTRL+G to enter RAID configuration" (not exact wording, but you get what i mean).

Hope that helps
 
i've only very quickly scanned through this post, but are you using sbs on this server? and are you intending to use remote web workplace? and then having people come into the use the server as a 'workstation' in order to use this access database? how many concurrent users are you expecting?!

Edit:

Either of those two methods would work, although i would probably want to use RWW to allow for more connections. I was hoping to set up SBS so that each employee has their own user account, but without individual PC's in the office is RWW still possible? What i thought would be a get around for this is if they just logged into the server as a user as apposed to an administrator.
Click to expand...

This has bad news written all over it. RWW is reliant upon people having workstations in the office for them to connect to - well it is if you are using it for more than OWA and remote access to SharePoint... It works very well, but obviously isn't a match for your environment. Using the server as a 'workstation' is a seriously bad idea. And on top of that, the version of terminal services it uses will only sustain two incoming connection, one 'console' session, and one auxilliary session as it is 'Remote Administration' mode, and not 'Application Sharing' mode. I think you've been given too big a task to do, with not enough budget. IIRC, Access databases are really nasty over a 'WAN' style connection? What sort of connectivity is at the central office?
 
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I think you really needed to plan this a bit better before spending any money. I also think that £300 is a very low figure.

Have you considered using a web based database?
 
The company only has approximately 10 employee's, and they wont all be accessing the database at the same time, hence we expect it to be adequate. Not using a web based database as it would increase cost and development time, also i think they prefer to keep it in house.
The only real function of this server at the moment is going to be to host this database and allow remote access to it, in an ideal world and with a larger budget, we would have looked at something which is specific to this type of task, but to meet their budget and requirements, i cant think of a better solution.
What other options do i have? What will allow them to access the database? I was under the impression they could using terminal services as a friend has implemented using XP Pro.
 
my opinion is that further down the road this is going to come back and bite you.

xp will only sustain a single remote connection via terminal services, not multiple concurrent ones. if a new user were to come online then it would simply kick the other one off.

terminal services built into sbs is for remote administration of the server, and nothing more. not really sure you have many options left, as you've already spent some of the budget on the server. sure you can run a seperate dedicated terminal services server in application sharing mode, but i wont even go there because it's way over budget.

the only other thing i could think of is to try and snag some cheap desktops to run alongside the server, so that people can run remote web workplace sessions as it is intended to be run. with your budget, however, your probably going to have to go second hand.

what sort of connectivity to the internet do they have at the main office? i'm going to assume here that it's some form of adsl connection? do they have a static ip? are you going to get dns setup? if no static ip exists, then it would be an idea to get one...or if this isn't possible then there are ways around it - such as dynamic dns.

also, have you thought about licensing? all these remote sessions are going to require at least an access license, is that factored into the budget? as well as stuff like proper anti-virus etc.

another thing to think about - backup...how are you going to take care of this? is the office where this is going to be hosted manned on a regular basis? how large is the database going to be? may want to consider backing up just the database to one of the many online-storage companies.

considering this is for a business, when you were given a budget of £300 you would have been better off telling them they were being too stingy...rather than try to cobble something together.

i know this sounds really negative, but i'm just being honest...and i do a bit of consultancy for small businesses on the side, and i see this time and time again - it ends up costing more in the long run to sort these things out as businesses quickly become to rely on these sorts of systems.
 
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I understand everything your saying, I've worked in support and consultancy myself, although never got very involved with the server side of things (dispite requesting training while employeed), just performed day to day administration for the various clients we had.

I know in the long run this isnt the best solution, the database will be very simple and shouldnt grow to huge sizes. Its simply to track the status of dealings with clients etc, so each employee will probably update either once a day or once a week their designated status's. Its just a way for them to centralise their information as they currently pass around excel spread sheets i believe on a weekly or monthly basis.

For back up purposes, my friend has said he will ftp a copy to his web host so atleast it will be off site, but this will obviously not be automated as many of the online back up are these days (have used some in the past)

I believe they have a business ADSL line at their office, which would lead me to assume they have a static ip. Ive not set a server up before so im probably going to need some pointers :o

They already have a copy of access, so that shouldnt be a problem. With the antivirus, i dont think they will be able to afford it which i know is not ideal, but theres only so much i can do. I may try to factor this in once they become more dependant on the database, when it becomes more of a business critical application.

Thanks for your help, I'm trying to deliver the best solution i can (within budget) for my friend, so really appreciate the advice.
 
obviously sbs comes with ad, dns, dhcp, exchange, outlook web access, sharepoint, file, print, vpn, remote web workplace etc... and your literally going to be using just the remote web workplace and vpn functionality (if all goes to plan)...sbs likes ram and preferably a quick disk subsystem... would be interested to see what the spec of the server is you've ordered...
 
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