What server software? (n/a)

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At work, we currently have a server (Windows Server 2000) and around 9 PCs, most running XP with a couple still on W2K. It’s time to replace the server hardware again, and I could do with some advice on suitable server software.

The server (currently) runs our mail and fax servers – MDaemon and RelayFax respectively – and otherwise is simply a store for the several thousand shared files we all need access to. There are two groups of users, one who have unrestricted access, the other have read-only access, and only to certain folders. Security with my staff is not really an issue, read-only access is mainly to prevent ‘accidents’.

In the old days of NT4 server, I was quite happy setting up the domain, but some aspects of 2000 I find a bit tedious – I’ve never had the time to read up on it enough to understand it fully.

I’m assuming a life of at least 3-4 years and guess that 2000 may not be supported for much longer, so what would folk suggest as suitable server software to be looking at?

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For our next main File Server I will be looking at something hunky to run Windows Server 2008, possibly ‘virtualised’ – but I haven’t read up enough on the ‘all eggs in one basket’ problem (do we combine in our Terminal Server, for example?).

I always find the main snag is with backup – can we yet abandon tape backup and go for a stonking great NAS/SAN disk solution? I’m currently backing up the servers’ data to ten or so ‘spare’ 100 GB partitions on ten PCs, giving (coincidentally) ten day’s worth of backup, as well as the usual monthly/weekly/daily backup DDS-5 tapes. A server imaging solution covering ‘just’ the operating system/C: drive should be in there somewhere, but for the cost! Currently I’m using ASRBackup of each server to disk, but I have no way of being able to test these backups for their stand-alone-restore-ability…

If you don’t have Exchange, you can probably cope with setting up the new server yourself – or why not contract that bit out to a Technical Support firm to build it the way you want it, and then hand it over to you?

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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I’d say Server 2008; it’s going to have the most support (both now, and in the future), and it’s really not that difficult to set up. Not sure with only 9 PCs if you’d even want to set up a domain, but it’s really not hard, and gives you much more administrative control over your machines.

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Thanks Jeremy, after 6 days I’ll go for the suggestion with 100% of the votes

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Probably I should have also said “64-bit”! And wait for SP1…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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I take it that Linux is out of the question.

StuartR

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Yep – our mail server won’t run on it that I know of.

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I’d have suggested it if virtualization would have seemed advantageous, but with that few users, I can’t see the trouble.

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