New Office- server required????

almoststew1990 · 10 Oct 2015 at 00:05

I know next to nothing about networks and servers (not even sure if this is the right subforum!) so simple language please if you do take the time to respond!

The company I work for is to open a second office in Oxford, 40 miles away. I have been tasked with organising the IT behind this. We had an "IT Support" man in today as this is well above my type of IT knowledge and I was wondering if you chaps could confirm or otherwise that what was suggested is a sensible approach?

Current situation:

20 employees
All our 'work' saved on a NAS (300GB of stuff)
All our software installed on our bog-standard PCs (office and AutoCAD)
Emails via 123-reg using IMAP. Calenders on local PCs.
Network managed by Arena whom we rent from.

We want

10 new employees in Oxford
Oxford to be able to access the NAS in the Fareham office
Oxford to be able to view calendars of Fareham staff
instant messenger of some kind?
Less crap email provider

IT Man suggested:

Office 365 for 'better' emails and calendars that can be shared easily between offices
2x "VPN Boxes" to allow Oxford to connect to the Fareham network and access the NAS. New NAS required as ours can't connect over the internet (can't remember what is- some kind of Netgear Duosomething but undoubtably basic)

Finally, my director is the kind of man who might drag his heels a bit with technology for short term gain, resulting in long term pain (i.e we now have about 4 different version of CAD some of which can't open newer files, some of which don't work with our plug ins we need instead of the up-to-date subscription service). IT Man suggested a long term plan would be to switch to an Microsoft Exchange Server on our own server if we open a third or fourth office...

Should we be doing this now instead?

Caged · 10 Oct 2015 at 00:34

If you're running on Office 365 then there's no circumstance that I can think of where you would "grow into" an on-premise Exchange setup. Email is a pain when it goes wrong, let someone else handle it. It comes with Lync/Skype for Business which ticks off the instant messaging requirement, gives you presence information right next to the contact names in Outlook, and can be expanded easily with relatively low-cost Polycom hardware to provide quality video conferencing abilities - I imagine this would be helpful if you are split across two sites for collaboration reasons.

It's hard to say what to do about file server access in both locations - 30 staff though isn't small business any more. I would think Windows servers at each location running DFSR across a VPN would do you well. What sort of links are going to be available at each office?

the-evaluator · 10 Oct 2015 at 07:44

SMB over WAN, irrespective of bandwidth is pretty nasty. Over a VPN with a reduced MTU it is even less fun. DFSR is what you need here.

Your IT chaps plan of moving from O365 to on prem is crazy. I would say the more sites you have the more interesting and beneficial O365 becomes.

Steveocee · 10 Oct 2015 at 09:55

With respect;
You know not a lot about networks and servers yet you are gong to try and deploy a business system?

I'd be advising the director to get a few quotes from IT companies to do it for you. It's one thing asking for some recommendations and following them, then muddling your way through the setup but what when it goes wrong? You deployed it so the ball will be in your court to fix it (and even when you do there won't be any thanks). This would be a lot safer in the hands of people who know what they are doing.

nightmare99 · 10 Oct 2015 at 10:33

As above get another couple of IT companies in to spec a solution.

teaboy5 · 10 Oct 2015 at 15:26

Office365 for emails/lync is the way forward here.

What type of NAS is it? Is the second site going to need a similar amount of storage space?

As suggested already I would go for a server on each site with a vpn connecting both to allow access via each site. and maybe have a backup going to the cloud?

krozor · 10 Oct 2015 at 19:34

Ok, here's my view...

Office 365 is a good move, imap is horrible for this many users. Have you thought about Google drive? This would allow you to store data/share as you don't have AD at the moment ao the move should be fairly easy. If you need more control server both locations as others have said.

In regards to office 365 and outgrowing, yes this does happen and there are a few reasons why you would want to host your own mail server. For small businesses of course it's mostly a no. I have seen bigger companies more from 365 to in-house once your talking 1000+ users

Little_Crow · 12 Oct 2015 at 09:27

I think a hosted solution for E-Mail is really your best bet - whether it be O365, Gmail for business or something else entirely is for you to decide - but I think your company is a long way off needing a locally hosted E-Mail solution.

Though you could put some of your business data in the cloud, opening potentially huge CAD drawings from there might be problematic.
the-evaluator mentioned using DFSR, and this could be a good shout - having a NAS at both sites that replicates the data automagically would give you some level of disaster recovery, and the ability for a site to continue working even if their internet connection is unavailable.