Network setup/server 2003

[rims]

hi ppl

i need all someones help, well i am going to set up a network by useing this method, plz say if this is good for secuirty purposes. Am thinking of setting up like this:


Laptop
XP Pro -----------------> 6 port switch <-----adsl --->www
modem router
Static IP


Server 2003
Active Directory
File Server
Web Server
Exchange 2003

and the switch is connected to the server, is there a need for a switch, and can i have my server runing all applications under server 2003.

 

[bilbus]

check the other forum i just commented on there ....

 

[Byteman]

for those who haven't seen me around for a while.. I pop in, every once in a while.

Rims,
A couple points to make:

How many people on your network? (Any more than 10 or 15, and I would ditch the dsl, Exchange is an upload hog, and dsl is higher on the download and lower on the upload... not good for exchange, especially when someone in you Exchange organisation emails a 5MB video to 10 people, then for the next 30minutes to an hour no one in your network will be accessing your dsl for anything. That said,... if more then 10-15 people in a business environment go with a T1)

Yes you need a switch, if a small network, you can take your pick of whatever. When you network gets bigger and you can afford it, a layer 2 switch can handle things better. Cheap switches handle traffic as it comes into the switch one at a time. Layer 2 switches handle all ports seperately and simultaneous, and usually have more memory... much more efficient, but much more expensive.

Yes your server can run apps, you just have to watch that they all play nice with each other, and you don't overload it with too many (you'll notice performance degradation when that happens). Generally speaking, you'll want to look at your server hardware as to what apps you want to run and the load (amount of people accessing them). Exhcange=lots of RAM, File/print=fast and large HD's, databases=RAM, RAM, RAM..

Hope this helps a little.

 

[priteshvarsani]

This is best:

If you have less than 20 users there is no point in having exchange on your server, unless your server is powerful (4GB Ram at least with a dual core Xeon, just for minimum) as exchange is a lot like SQL, it hogs all of the memory and every cpu
(i have 5 exchange backend servers with about 200 users and 30 of them on at all times and the servers have 64GB Ram each, with 8 brand new intel Xeons each and they have constantly got about 40%cpu on each of the xeons and most of the ram is gone to the information store)

if your server is low specs and is behind a slow upload connection you had may aswell have hosted website and hosted exchange from someone else.

active directory and file server will be fine on any server, and is always useful to have it

all apps that will work in windows xp will work in windows 2003, and windows 2003 can be used a terminal server, which means you can have multiple users logged on (maximum 3 if you have not got a license and are using remote administraton mode)