Server for a Small Business

[swinnie]

Hi All,

What sort of specification/model from a major vendor - HP, Dell, Lenovo etc would you guys look at for the following use:

• 4 Users across two offices, 2 in each
• Sage would need to be accessible from both offices, concurrently
• Exchange email is already hosted elsewhere (not O365)

How would you guys manage the remote users? Would you essentially have them VPN in to use the internal resources, or would you even go down the route of VDI or Terminal Services?

Many Thanks

 

[swinnie]

All of the clients are running Windows 7, I suspect that two of the machines are Home Premium as they pre-existed me taking over their IT Equipment. So they will require an upgrade to Professional.

I'm not familiar with DirectAccess - what are the common pitfalls of it?

 

[swinnie]

Why have you decided you need a server for 4 users? What resources do they need access to?

If it's just Sage then move all of that to a web-based accounting package and enjoy your new easy life.

Talking to the Owner, he wants to grow the business quite rapidly over the next two years. At the moment the requirements are quite low, in terms of simple file sharing, Sage and remote access from anywhere.

We had some customers try Sage Drive on Accounts v21. They ended up turning it all off as it just didn't work properly. Accounts v21 got 7 service packs in one year!

Would +1 for Caged's option of a looking at hosted account packages, though lots of companies stick with Sage despite the dismal quality of code they churn out. If you must stick with Sage, it's either RDS or having a couple of cheap PCs for remote users to connect to (yuk).

Yeah, that's where I had got to really. I don't know how they would feel about moving to another accounts package, it was bad enough getting them to upgrade from Office 2007 to 2013, so that I could deploy a hosted exchange solution!

Or use one of several providers offering hosted desktops. Amazon WorkSpaces for example. This combined with a small Windows Server VM and a bit of storage would be perfect and also cover off any remote access requirements.

I've signed up for a AWS trial, so I'll have to check that out.

Second this, you can move to Xero for free, and they'll migrate you for free from sage (have to check if offer is still going).

If you didn't also know, you can use Xero payroll too, but would wait until April for that to migrate over clean.

I'm pretty sure they use a Sage PayRoll solution, so any change as you say is best completed at the start of the new tax year.

I echo the above advice. Switch them to Xero, Ive got about 60 clients using it and its fantastic. I dont like Xero payroll though, there are better solutions out there or outsource it to their accountant/bookkeeper.

Xero has been pretty well received, and I know of a few people using it and not heard anything bad about it either, which is obviously backed up by the posts above!

 

[swinnie]

Build your own FreeNAS box with CIFS share & previous versions enabled...

I would rather stick with Windows solutions, as I am away from their office I need to remote in largely trouble free!