Small Office Network

J

jocu9901

New Member
I'm looking at implementing a small office network for a family memebers law firm. There are about 20 personal computers, a fax machine, and 6 printers. Also they will need about 6 to 10 network drives. Is anyone willing to help me set up this network? I recently graduated from SCSU and have taken general classes about networking but it appears this is going to be over my head. What will I all need to set this up? Server/router/switch? Also they are needing everything to be backed up, what would be the best way to accomplish this? And lastly any general suggestions on firewalls or any other security features that would help portect the firms information would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you to anyone who is able to help,

Curt Johnson:confused:
 
All you really need to do is put all the computers on the same workgroup and share the drives and printers. Assuming you already have all the hardware to do it...
 
It doesnt sound like he has the hardware yet, and he also needs a server to backup all of the data
 
You wouldnt really need a server, just a computer that no one uses with some extra hard drives. That would cut back on costs.
 
So essentially I just need to connect the computers to a switch, and connect the switch to a modem? As far as backing up the files I can take one of the computers and use that? Would anyone know how to set that up in reference to automatically backing up the firms files?
 
I cant help you as far as what to use to back them up. What OS are you going to be using for all of them. For only 20 computers, a full blown server seems like a little overkill, so just set up one computer as your backup computer and pop in a few extra drives.
 
We will be using Windows XP for the OS... Thanks for your help and ideas. It is greatly appreciated, I have quite the project ahead of me.
 
You really want a dedicated "server" computer, even if it isnt actually like a dell server or w/e. you want the "server" computer to be one that is only used for backing up data, otherwise there is a much greater chance of your data being lost. I would also advise usin a tape to back up you server ever night or week so that in the event of harddrives going bad you dont just lose all of your data.

We had a small office settup with only about 8 - 10 computers and we had a full blown server.
 
GSAV55 said:
You really want a dedicated "server" computer, even if it isnt actually like a dell server or w/e. you want the "server" computer to be one that is only used for backing up data, otherwise there is a much greater chance of your data being lost. I would also advise usin a tape to back up you server ever night or week so that in the event of harddrives going bad you dont just lose all of your data.

We had a small office settup with only about 8 - 10 computers and we had a full blown server.
Click to expand...

^^^ Thats what I meant, having a 'server computer' but not an actual 'server'

I guess it depends on your application whether or not a full blown server is a good idea or not.
 
and as far as the os for the server, I would reccomend either windows server 2000 or a free linux server os. The windows server os has all the programs to autmatically back up your data on a fixed, automated schedule
 
Any thoughts on outsourcing the backup? To a company like Mytech, I believe they charge 600.00 a month, but the firm wants to be absolutely sure the files will be safe. Is dedicating a computer or "server" for backup going to ensure the files will still be there if there is a systems crash?
 
That is why I would reccomend backing up the server daily with a magnetic tape. Because that way you have two failsafes. If a computer crashes it is backed up by the server, and if the server crashes it is backed up by a magnetic tape. That is what we did in our small office, and we never had a problem with it. We had the server set to back itself up at like midnight, and when it was done it would pop out the tape. Then in the morning we would come in, put the tape in a case and pop in a new one for it to back up that night.

Once you set it up, you really dont have to do anything with it besides swap tapes, and it is much more cost efficient than outsourcing your data. What happens if the internet goes down while your trying to upload your data to the outsourced agency, or the outsourced agency goes out of business, you know? With a local server you dont even need the internet to back up your data, and you have all of your data instantly available locally.
 
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