Setup required for small business

A[L]C · 28 Sep 2011 at 19:24

Hi all,

I am looking for some recommendations please. My sister and brother in law have a small welding business. There are 3 users, 2 of which are laptop users.

Currently they use a livedrive briefcase, but I would like to get something a bit more reliable and maybe just livedrive from the server.

They need to be able to have remote access to the files from home as well as in the office.

I have been recommended WHS and a HP ProLiant Athlon II Neo N36L MicroServer.

Does this sound about right?

Thanks
Paul

_-J-_ · 30 Sep 2011 at 04:23

Is there a budget in mind?

A[L]C · 30 Sep 2011 at 08:16

I havent been given one but as little as possible

Liquidfox · 30 Sep 2011 at 10:29

Does WHS support VPNs? Could always do that, cheap and cheerful. Two removable external HDDs on site that are swapped over every day for redundancy.

16-bit · 30 Sep 2011 at 14:59

WHS doesn't need to support VPN's unless it's using radius. only problem with VPN is that it's slow on domestic lines and if your router can actually do it, I always prefer RDP as it only uses the session but the two laptop users don't have anything to remote on.

TBH unless they are planning to grow microserver or ML110 is fine, OS doesn't particulary matter as they will be basically using it as a NAS is WHS should be fine.

Bascially
x1 Microserver(with more RAM)
x2 1TB Sata's (raided 0,1)
x1 WHS 2011
x1 Router with VPN capability (Cisco,Draytek can be easy to configure but I find them a bit iffy latley)
2x Ext HDD's for backups (as Liquidfox said) or one and backing up to a cloud storage solution(automated to the cloud can be better as people can be lazy or just forget).

Probably looking at around £400-500 Ex VAT which excludes the £100 cashback on the microserver which I think is on again atm.

kefkef · 30 Sep 2011 at 15:38

Dont forget to add in your consultancy for building it and also the support for when it breaks and it's "your" setup so its your problem......

J.B · 30 Sep 2011 at 16:41

If you are brining storage and things in house then dont forget to consider backup and things.

Sometimes cloud solutions are the easiest for small businesses for that reason.

What sort of benefits would you like to see from the project?

A[L]C · 30 Sep 2011 at 17:36

The main issue is they don't trust livedrive. It has been down with some issues for them for a few days, and they panicked when they couldn't reach their data. I intend to continue with cloud storage, but not to solely rely on it.

The issue I have is with version control and save conflicts. They are not technically minded, and my efforts to get them to change revisions via file naming have failed

A[L]C · 3 Oct 2011 at 16:45

Any ideas about the versioning?

Teledude · 3 Oct 2011 at 18:16

Office365 and share point sounds right up the street they need?!

A[L]C · 3 Oct 2011 at 18:50

Oh really. How does that work then? (will google myself too obviously

)

Teledude · 3 Oct 2011 at 19:43

£4per month per user. 25gb hosted exchange 2010 and 10gb sharepoint for document storage and control

SiriusB · 4 Oct 2011 at 21:12

The versioning is all handled seamlessly, plus it should block files being edited by more than one person. You will also get access to previous versions etc.