DC replacement for small business

[Howell]

What solutions have you found for replacing the domain controller when small companies get rid of their SBS boxes and migrate toward web hosted email? Particularly when they need some locally shared storage.The idea being to have as few server type machines as possible.

 

[ddrueding]

For companies below 6 users with little turnover, I've gotten rid of centrally managed anything. NAS usernames and passwords are managed independently of workstations. More complex solutions simply aren't worth it if they only have one or two staff changes a year.

 

[Mercutio]

One of my customers has an Avaya phone system that depends on Exchange for functionality. The owner doesn't want to pay for new Windows Server stuff, so I migrated his SBS 2003 installation to Xen on a fairly modest Linux box (i7 2600 w/ 16GB RAM) that handles file access with Samba. The process took me about a week but by the time I was done they had no idea that anything had even changed.

 

[Chewy509]

I guess the only couple of question are: do you want SSO (Single Sign On) with the hosted email? eg Google authentication, OpenID, etc... Number of desktops, OS of the desktops...

For centrally managed setups, you can either run a single Windows Server acting as a DC, DNS and DHCP server and have it perform file sharing. (single box doing it all). Also remember Windows 2012R2 Data Center edition can run unlimited number of Win2012R2 VMs as part of the license if you want separation of concern, you just need a box beefy enough

You can look at Windows 2012R2 Essentials, which IIRC is the replacement for SBS and provides direct integration with Office365...

Alternately, SAMBA4 can act as a single DC (IIRC, it emulates a Win2008 DC), but you don't get GPO support, and there are limitations on sharing and authentication functionality. (It's all the samba docs).

Or as dd mentions, run a NAS for central file serving, and run network printers so you don't have to worry about permissions between clients...

 

[Mercutio]

2012r2 Essentials is... lacking compared to SBS2011. Specifically, it lacks Exchange, Sharepoint and MSSQL (i.e. all the things that justified SBS). Exchange won't even install on r2 Essentials. The only nifty feature it does have is deduplicating client backups, something that must've been picked up from the WHS feature set.

 

[Chewy509]

2012r2 Essentials is... lacking compared to SBS2011. Specifically, it lacks Exchange, Sharepoint and MSSQL (i.e. all the things that justified SBS). Exchange won't even install on r2 Essentials. The only nifty feature it does have is deduplicating client backups, something that must've been picked up from the WHS feature set.

I can only assume MS did that to force people onto their hosted solutions instead of relying on local installations...

I know SBS was very very big here in Australia. Even the last company I worked for, installed SBS instead of regular server editions, as it was the cheapest way to get MSSQL where MSSQL allowed unlimited connections...

 

[Howell]

Thanks for the help guys. I'm doing this as a favor so it'd like to keep the time investment down. And if I do have to invest a bunch of time I'd like to learn something.

So, another SBS server its out due to expense but centrally managed is a near requirement because all of the people use all of the workstations as backups. SSO is not necessary and we have settled on O365.

6 workstations x 8 people=48 accounts to setup initially. If they follow good password procedures like I recommend I'll be back easy too soon.

I need to look into the possible limitations of samba 4 in my application, thanks Chewy. My ideal would be a samba 4 app for the synology nas but I might have to setup a vm on a workstation instead. I'm also looking into pgina.