To me a cloud solution would seem like a good direction rather than investing in new Server/NAS plus backup technologies.
Do you have good internet connectivity options there?
You can get Office 365, Exchange (25GB mailbox per user), Lync, SharePoint Team Site (10GB + 500mb x no of users), SkyDrive Pro (with 7GB per user) and a Public Website.
Plus, full versions of the Office software suite (outlook, word, excel, etc)
For around $20 per user, per month. Includes online and telephone support too.
Regs: To me a cloud solution would seem like a good direction rather than investing in new Server/NAS plus backup technologies.
Do you have good internet connectivity options there?
You can get Office 365, Exchange (25GB mailbox per user), Lync, SharePoint Team Site (10GB + 500mb x no of users), SkyDrive Pro (with 7GB per user) and a Public Website.
Plus, full versions of the Office software suite (outlook, word, excel, etc)
For around $20 per user, per month. Includes online and telephone support too.
Cloud solution is out of the question for now. 6Mb/s ADSL2+ line is not enough. As mentioned before, fibre is available, but not installed to the premises and currently the system in place works. It would be a big hassle and potentially impact on productivity in a big way. Maybe when Christmas comes and there is a 3 week gap to sort that out properly.
The area is capable of 15Mb/s plus, but I think the jack-point or master splitter is faulty. That is another thread though!
Regs: You can get Office 365, Exchange (25GB mailbox per user), Lync, SharePoint Team Site (10GB + 500mb x no of users), SkyDrive Pro (with 7GB per user) and a Public Website.
Use of cloud or hosted services doesn't preclude the need for local network storage or regular backups of workstations.
In this case:
1: Their email is probably already being hosted externally by a provider, he didn't say but he didn't any mention internal emails servers.
2: A Sharepoint team site is fine for general docs/files but it sounds like this place is some kind of printer/print house. They would be dealing with lots of large files that would need to be stored locally (accessible at gigabit speed), files which are currently residing only on individual workstations (single point of failure).
3: Also sounds like they have lots of workstations with specific non web applications that should be backed up and/or image'd, office 365 doesn't solve that at all.
Regs: You can get Office 365, Exchange (25GB mailbox per user), Lync, SharePoint Team Site (10GB + 500mb x no of users), SkyDrive Pro (with 7GB per user) and a Public Website.
Use of cloud or hosted services doesn't preclude the need for local network storage or regular backups of workstations.
In this case:
1: Their email is probably already being hosted externally by a provider, he didn't say but he didn't any mention internal emails servers.
2: A Sharepoint team site is fine for general docs/files but it sounds like this place is some kind of printer/print house. They would be dealing with lots of large files that would need to be stored locally (accessible at gigabit speed), files which are currently residing only on individual workstations (single point of failure).
3: Also sounds like they have lots of workstations with specific non web applications that should be backed up and/or image'd, office 365 doesn't solve that at all.
Wow, you hit the nail on the head!
There is no email server. It is all in the cloud. They use a paid GMail account and create users on their paid account for new employees as required. It works really well so that is something I'm not going to change. I have no idea what SharePoint is but yes our files can be huge. Illustrator, Photoshop, RAW format photos can be 10s of gigabytes in size.
The workstations have applications for cutting media and cleaning printers...etc. If I had to go through all that and set it up, it would take a solid day and a half. If I had an image of the drive and something went wrong, I could get that workstation back on the job within the hour.
Regs: You can get Office 365, Exchange (25GB mailbox per user), Lync, SharePoint Team Site (10GB + 500mb x no of users), SkyDrive Pro (with 7GB per user) and a Public Website.
Use of cloud or hosted services doesn't preclude the need for local network storage or regular backups of workstations.
In this case:
1: Their email is probably already being hosted externally by a provider, he didn't say but he didn't any mention internal emails servers.
2: A Sharepoint team site is fine for general docs/files but it sounds like this place is some kind of printer/print house. They would be dealing with lots of large files that would need to be stored locally (accessible at gigabit speed), files which are currently residing only on individual workstations (single point of failure).
3: Also sounds like they have lots of workstations with specific non web applications that should be backed up and/or image'd, office 365 doesn't solve that at all.
Wow, you hit the nail on the head!
There is no email server. It is all in the cloud. They use a paid GMail account and create users on their paid account for new employees as required. It works really well so that is something I'm not going to change. I have no idea what SharePoint is but yes our files can be huge. Illustrator, Photoshop, RAW format photos can be 10s of gigabytes in size.
The workstations have applications for cutting media and cleaning printers...etc. If I had to go through all that and set it up, it would take a solid day and a half. If I had an image of the drive and something went wrong, I could get that workstation back on the job within the hour.
thats why shadow protect is so good. Can restore your pc to different hardware!
So if you have all your users with redirected profiles to the proposed server, and that is RAID 1 or 5, that is your first level of security, Additionally, you schedule Shadowprotect backups to a NAS, perfereably in a different part of the building, preferably using a dedicated cross over cable between the server and NAS, so the backups dont choke the network during business hours. A final layer of protection is to use some external HDDs for offsite backups, from shadowprotect which would be your responsibility to cycle out. Shadow protect is flawless for recovering data I find. Part of my morning route is to monitor backups for 60 servers. NTbackup is the worst, Windows Backup is okay, Backup exec is average, but SPBackup never fails if configured properly.
DravidDavid: Remote access I have sorted. I have VNC installed on all machines, Remote Desktop is also there in case something happens to VNC Server on one of the machines.
How are you securing this? VNC is horribly insecure when exposed to the public Internet.
DravidDavid: Remote access I have sorted. I have VNC installed on all machines, Remote Desktop is also there in case something happens to VNC Server on one of the machines.
How are you securing this? VNC is horribly insecure when exposed to the public Internet.
Yeah VNC not the best. Use Openvpn server on synology nas with certificates.
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