File Server

The file server role is probably the easiest to setup on most of today’s modern operating systems. Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and UNIX all support file sharing. The hardest part is really finding a box with the amount of space you need.

On my home network, I have a PIII with around 400GB of storage on it handling all my remote file storage needs. It's running W2K3EE but you don't necessarily need a server operating system to run a file server, XP Pro will suffice. If you want to run a Linux file server and intend on having Windows hosts connect to it, you will have a little bit more configuring to do on the Linux box before it will work correctly. Samba is probably the most well known software package for accomplishing this. If you want to run a file server in a business environment, I recommend running at least Windows 2000 Advanced Server so you have more manageability over the file sharing permissions and such.
 
It's for home use, XP pro will work for storage and remote access? Could i access it over the net?

Sorry, I'm a server newbie, thanks for your help
 
If you would like remote access to your files over the internet, I recommend setting up a VPN server on the XP Pro machine so that you have a secure connection when ever you connect remotely. OpenVPN is probably the best solution since it's free :D. I know a lot of my IT compadres would be telling you "Oh no!!! You need a VPN router and firewall plus a server operating system to accomplish this task", but in reality there is more than one way to do things.

Once you have the XP machine setup as a VPN server and has file sharing enabled, you can go ahead and configure the necessary ports on your router to allow the VPN connection to pass through the NAT/PAT to the XP machine. You also probably want to setup a dynamic DNS name for your network from somebody like no-ip.com so you don't have to remember your public IP every time it changes.
 
all good advice, also if your moving large file it may be a good idea to use gigabit (im just saying this as im about to move upto 10/100/1000Mbps myself :) )
 
Gb would be a must in this situation if most of us had Gb WAN links :D. You can get away with 802.3u in this case and in many cases in the US for remote home file storage via the Internet. Now if we were in Japan or somewhere else where they offered Gb links, then I'd have to say it would be stupid not to upgrade.
 
I have something like this, i use an ftp server. running on fedora core 5(should be 6), with pure-ftpd. its quite easy to set up. and you can get and put files through a web browser, by typing ftp://<ip address or hostname of server> in the address bar.

if you are looking into the realm of roaming use profiles(like everyone has an account, that can be accessed from any of the computers on the network), im not going to talk about that, as it is quite a lengthy task, but if you are doing this, use samba.
 
Gb would be a must in this situation if most of us had Gb WAN links . You can get away with 802.3u in this case and in many cases in the US for remote home file storage via the Internet. Now if we were in Japan or somewhere else where they offered Gb links, then I'd have to say it would be stupid not to upgrade.
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I meant for internal network access, most of my file server traffic is internal to my network, i dont keep my file server on anypart of my network that has outside access (dont need to access files off-site :) )
I just assume most people use there file severs in the same way I do, hence the 1000BASE-X suggestion :)
 
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