Simple server for the office

champ222

champ222

champ222

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Joined
19 Aug 2005
Posts
1,469
Location
Beds, UK
Hi All

I work for a small UK sales office for a larger company in Slovenia.

For years the company was two guys working from home, and now its me and one of the guys, and we have an office. We currently just use individual PCs (well my boss has a Mac) and we manage pretty well.

We've been discussing getting a server of some sort, which would have very basic duties:

  • Storage of files used by both of us: Our product is data acquisition hardware and software, so customers send us files to help us solve their problems etc. these can be quite big.
  • Storage of backups from the various PCs and laptops in the office.
  • uploading some files to remote site or cloud based for further backups, this would need to be scheduled and done at night ideally as our internet is a bit rubbish.

I have an old PC that i'm happy to donate for this task It also has a windows 10 licence.

So whats the best option here?

Years ago i setup a freenas server at home, and its been running ever since, ive not even upgraded it (mainly, because the newer versions dont support UFS, and disk performance seems better than with ZFS and i cant be arsed to change it). i like the set it and forget it nature of the freenas.

Ive long since forgotten how to do this, but i'm sure i can figure it out.

i could also just use windows 10, it does a reasonable job of keeping itself up to date, and i can keep it in order via VNC etc. i like the fact that i can just remove the drive and connect it to a PC to get the files off, should the PC go wrong.

i cant see the future requirements changing much, as the finance stuff is done on quickbooks online, and the CRM system (when headoffice decides on one) is likely to be online too.

So what would you do? any other suggestions?

Thanks
 
As it it is literally for a tiny office, I'd keep it as absolutely simple as possible - just get a cheap HP micro/ mini server and bung a few disks in.

It's all good and well saying bang FreeNAS, or something similar on, but what benefit would it bring? On the flip side, if you leave, you're making the assumption that whoever is left has the full knowledge of how it's been configured (or the ability to figure it out).

For backup, there are some decent and simple tools you can use such as SyncBackLite (or pro for a few quid), or nextcloud / owncloud for file sync.
 
If it was me I'd leave it as Windows 10, setup a shared folder and then map that shared folder to your devices. Then like others have said, just install some backup sync software on there and tell it to backup to whichever provider you want at night.

Can't really get much simpler.
 
QNAP NAS, grab a four bay unit and install some WD Red NAS drives. It supports OSX TimeMachine backups plus your windows machines, you could also later add some CCTV if that way inclined and has loads of other features easily administered through the interface.
 
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