Network help large system

gary996

gary996

gary996

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24 Aug 2003
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Location
Gillingham Kent
Need to install about 90 points some are boys bedrooms some are staff bedrooms and some are offices. Heres what I have so far

2 x 48 port patch panels

2 x 48 port Linksys 48-Port 10/100 + 4-Port Gigabit Switch with WebView and SNMP

server 2.66Ghz Quad core 2Gb RAM 2 x 500gb SATA drives configured RAID 1

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition.

Now the server is for the office use only. Due to the boys being young (under 16) we don't want them looking at porn etc in their rooms so will need another server running an operating system as before (or is Microsoft OEM Windows Server Standard 2008 better). Will need something like Marshal Secure Web Gateway for policing.

How is all this sounding?
 
what type of organisation is it your doing this for? for your perimeter security and content filtering i would recommend you check out a linux distro called untangle, it's really good - and it comes in either a community flavour for 'free', or if you need support then that is available too, chargeable of course. runs on standard x86 hardware - doesn't need to be overly powerfull either. is the server literally only going to be used for staff? if so, i would be looking to split the networks up between staff and non-staff using vlans.

edit: also, since ram is so cheap, i would probably suggest adding in an extra two gigs. similarly, hard drives aren't overly pricy either so you might want to add an additional smaller array...install the first cd of sbs to the smaller array, and then during the installation process shift everything else (exchange, clientapps, users home directories, shared areas etc) over to the larger array. this way you split the i/o up to improve performance. i suppose all of this, however, depends how many members of staff you are catering for now and then how much growth you might project.
 
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If you want some web content filtering, I've experimented (a little) with Untangle which is a free Linux based Firewall and web content filtering solution. Obviously you would need a dedicated box to run this from - I'm sure a high spec PC would be ideal for your site.

Also, SmoothWall is also very highly recommended, and free. I've not experimented with this, but it was used in my school for around 18 months before we got Websense from our Council.

Hope this helps.
 
How many clients will be accessing SBS at the same time?

One thing to consider is that SBS 2003 has a current connection limit of 75 clients.

(Reading again you said it's for staff use so probably well under this, but I'll leave the above in just in case).
 
What services are you running on the server?

I'd say 4Gbit ports per switch is a tad overkill unless you are running some serious oracle databases or something.

If they're managed swtiches they'll support load balancing so you can have the server on gigabit and the staff on the same switch as the server. Everyone else on 100mbit and trunk 2 or 3 100meg FDX ports between them. (I'm assuming they're in the same rack?) That'll give you 300meg each way between switches which should be more than enough under most cases.

Switches with several gigabit uplinks usually cost quite a lot more than flat 10/100 ones.
 
This is for a childs home. Approx 18 boys below the age of 16.
What I want is:

The office side of the business to have access to the web and its own server for storage etc.

The school office to have access to the web and its own server use.

The school classrooms to have access to the web + networked printer.

Boys bedrooms, communial area and staff bedrooms. access to web only but with strict policing (content wise)

Can I use the one server for the school office and the web policing etc and the other one for the office only?
 
in that case switches with gigabit uplinks arn't needed. You need the server on gigabit and that's it. Connect the people that use the server to the same switch as the server, flat 100meg is fine for all else. If it's just storage arguably gigabit isn't needed unless the files are huge. But for future proofing i'd put the server on gbit.

you can have as muh or as little access to the server as you want, if boys rooms don't need server access you can VLAN it off on the beefier switch. who has access to what is more a logical addressing thing than a physical switching thing.
 
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