Small office server

[Sam334]

First time installing and configuring a server. MS server 2003. I reconstituted an old (not THAT old) pc with a single nic and installed a usb nic. I've ordered Mark Minasi's book, and it's on its way. In the meantime, I thought I'd ask a few questions on here .


Small office with, at one time, no more than 8 PCs connected to the server. Here's what I had in mind:

modem>router>server(nic1) /// server(USB nic2)>switch>PCs

Is there anything fundamentally wrong with my theoretical setup? Do I need to sign up for a static IP address from my ISP? Can I just have the router give it a static IP, say 192.168.2? Then I'll set the pool from 192.168.1.200-220 (and reserve one for a networked printer).

From what I've read, I should have the server handle DHCP. I'm just not sure what to input as the DNS, and parent domain within the DHCP settings wizard.

Ultimately, I'd like the server to have shared (backed up) storage for the office, and have a VPN for everyone access the storage from outside the office. But that's a little farther down the road from where I'm at currently. Any help, or reading suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[drebo]

It's pointless. The only reason to do that would be if you were using ISA Server in a specific installation. Just use the single NIC on the server and attach the router to the switch directly.

Yes, the server should handle DHCP and DNS. For VPN, you can use RRAS on the server and just punch holes through. If you intend to do VPN, you'll want a static IP from ISP.

And, whatever you do, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT!!!! give your Active Directory domain a real domain name. If your company's website is whatever.com, name the domain whatever.local. You'll save yourself a hell of a lot of trouble down the road.

 

[RebateMonger]

Before you get too far, you may not have considered these other options, all of which have their particular values:

1) Buy a $100 copy of Windows Home Server. This can handle up to ten named users, can act as a file server with folder duplication on multiple disks if you use more than one disk, can act as a remote access server, and will back up all your PCs automatically each night. But Windows Home Server isn't supposed to function as an Active Directory controller. While it'll run in an Active Directory environment, it runs as a standalone server.

2) Buy a $800 Dell with RAID 1 enabled, 4 GB of memory, and Server 2008 R2 Foundation pre-installed. This gives you licenses for up to fifteen users and will mostly do everything a full copy of Server 2008 R2 will do. You'd have new hardware with ECC memory running the latest OS. Server 2008 has a nice image backup feature and some other improvements over Server 2003.

3) Buy and install SBS 2008, Standard Edition (about $900). This will automatically set up your DHCP, DNS, and other key settings and will offer automated full server backups to external USB disks. It also offers remote access management, document management, and other unique SBS features. If you follow the SBS Wizards, it's fairly tough to mess up the server configuration.

Note, though, that SBS 2008 requires a 64-bit processor and a minimum of 4 GB of memory. Many foks recommend more like 8 GB of memory, minimum. Also, it only comes with five built-in User licenses. Like your Server 2003 license, you'll want additional CALs to be legal if there's more than five Users.

There's nothing "wrong" with Server 2003. In fact, that's about all I deal with. But before you spend much time (money) on implementing a Server 2003 solution, it might pay to be aware of other, not very expensive, options.

Also, no matter what server solution you choose, as soon as you start putting data on it besure you've implemented some sort of backups (and I don't mean RAID). Server 2003 has the built-in NTBackup, which is usable but you need to test the results periodically to be sure the backups are working and your data is recoverable. NTBackup (except as part of SBS 2003) doesn't have a built-in warning system to tell you whether the backups are working or not.

 

[Sam334]

Thank you both for your insight. Unfortunately, the person here before me advised them to get Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. It's a shame for it to be sitting unused. They currently have a domain hosted and registered elsewhere, as well as an exchange email account hosted by a separate company. My long(er) term goal is to have everything done via this server.

I set it up as drebo described above. modem>router, then router to server and router switch just using 1 nic on the server. Even though I set up a file server and shared it on the network, I can't seem to connect to it. Says I don't have have permission to use this network resource even though I gave users read and write privileges. I've looked into that problem online, and some people say to turn on anonymous connections, but I'm wary of doing that. Is that the solution? I'm unable to ping the server from any of the office PCs and can't access the router from the server's browser. I'm still a bit confused about the DHCP settings, too.

My current backup solutions are Carbonite on my networked drive and Syncback to a usb nightly. I'll use the built-in backup you mentioned, RebateM.

Thanks again for any info.

 

[kevnich2]

Ok first of all, do you have the server acting as DHCP, DNS? If so, make sure you also turned off DHCP function on the router itself and also make sure that on the server DHCP, you entered the router's address as the gateway to give out. Secondly, you don't need or want anonymous connections. Make sure you setup the list of user's in their correct groups on the server along with their passwords. This can take some time to do but do it right the first time. Second, these usernames and passwords you setup have to match those that the user's are using on their computers. If one person is logging into his computer as bthompson and password of bob1, then on the server, his username needs to be bthompson and current password of bob1 and so on for each user. Make sure your groups are setup correctly. If you have 2 people in accounting, setup an accounting group and put these user's in it. Then if accounting department has a folder for themselves, you can give the accounting group full access to it and lock everyone else out for security. Ideally you would want to have a folder for each department along with a public company folder for public items that every person in the company would have access to. Again - a business server like this does take some planning to do it.

Secondly, it doesn't sound like you've done any server setups before for businesses. If this is so, you may want to consider hiring a business consultant in your area to come in and either set everything up or check things over. This isn't something you can simply read a book on and know. If you don't get it setup correctly and secure, when something gets screwed up down the road, you'll be held responsible for it since it is after all YOUR job.

 

[RebateMonger]

Thank you both for your insight. Unfortunately, the person here before me advised them to get Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition. It's a shame for it to be sitting unused.

If it's a full, legitimate Retail copy of Server 2003 Enterprise, you might be able to sell it for enough to buy a whole new Dell Server with Server 2008 R2 Foundation installed. The eBay cheap copies are Not-For-Resale. The "legal" ones are selling for around $1000.