Thoughts on how to do this?

[Craiglc1]

I currently am running 4 Pcs on a home network through a linsys wired and wireless router to a DSL connection. All the machines are actually using the wired ports and two machines have printers attached to them which are shared over the network. Two machines are XP Pro and two machines are 2000 professional. On one of my XP machines I have a secondary hard drive which I have a shared folder on. This shared folder is used by everyone in my office. It has group documents, customer info etc.

We have outgrown our home office and are moving very shortly to an office space a few miles away. I dont want to spend a tremendous amount of money on new machines but the one I use as my "file server" is also my personal machine. hence I have my games on it...as well as a few websites which are not work appropriate.

My new space allows for two connections to a cable modem so to start I am considerring moving the two 2000 machines over and hooking them into a slightly older hub I have which is not wireless but is also a linsys. My problem comes in how do I make a stand alone file server machine? is there a cheap option? I was always a programmer so hardware comes a little more difficult for me. In addition to the 2000 machines I have a lap top with a docking station I could use which would allow me three work stations all wired into the web and to each other. Thoughts on an inexpensive option for a file server?

 

[ddrueding]

Very cheap 500GB File Server

Very cheap 2TB file server

 

[P5-133XL]

The cheap solution is to install a second HD on one of the machines you already have at the office and use it as a multi purpose machine, one of which will be as a "file server". Then transfer the appropiate files from your home machine to the new office file server and share them. Finally, since that machine will be used for other work, make sure the employee that uses it regularly knows not to shut it off.

That is not an ideal solution, for many reasons but security being the primary. It is better to have a secure dedicated machine, so users won't directly access it except through its network shares. That prevents, workers from installing software like spyware or viruses, or doing things that may compromise the files. It is easier to deal with limiting administrator rights, and control access if all access is through network shares. Workers are not nearly as likely to turn off a 24x7 dedicated machine that simply sits in a closet always on, then their local machine.

 

[Sol]

A cheap, older machine running any flavor of Linux, probably just at the command line and sharing the files with samba is the option I prefer for this sort of job. It's contingent on you having someone with the Linux skills to set it up but really that's not all that difficult and there are plenty of tutorials online. Also once you have it sorted you usually don't need to worry about again until you need to add more drive space.

There are several advantages to this approach; you get to use really cheap hardware but still get an OS with updated security. I've found samba to be generally faster than windows networking for pretty much everything but especially when you have multiple people accessing the same share. There are no imposed limits on how many people can access the system at the same time, and Linux tends to survive better than windows in terms of up time.

 

[Handruin]

I've done exactly as Sol suggested in my own house. I ordered a cheap Dell PowerEdge SC420 ($250) and installed Open SuSe on it and configured Samba. The machine was rock solid 24x7 for almost 300 days without a reboot (I had to shut it down because I thought I was moving). It was basically a set and forget machine and I accessed my files through the network.

One way you could beef it up is to use a gigabit network if you think you'll have more machines accessing it in the future. It may be overkill now, but if you plan the base wiring with the right cables, it may cost you less in the long run when you don't have to have down time to swap out cables, switches etc to improve your file sharing abilities.

As always a good backup is important. Offload to some type of external device and make a proper rotation for your data. You should keep an off-site backup in case of fire/burglary...etc.

 

[Craiglc1]

So.... I have the innards to a P2 350 Mhz and I would only need to have a new hard drive and a new case to make a working machine which could hook to my network. Would this be sufficient to run some sort of Linux? I have been out of the programming game for awhile but was always a microsoft programmer so I have no experience with Linux. I also dont have weeks to figure it out. I like the idea of having it on a seperate machine but I may have to just use an extra hard drive.

 

[Sol]

without a GUI it should run even modern distro's without any problems, ubuntu server or something is probably the simplest solution. I would expect a lot of large file transfers to bog it down fairly easily, but then I wouldn't expect you to be doing a lot of large file transfers in a small office environment anyway...

If you went through and removed things you didn't need it'd run even better but unless it's very short on memory you probably wouldn't notice for what you want.