Requiping office - any suggestions

[Garreg]

Not sure what category this fits under – ‘Chit Chat’ looked the best shot (apols if it’s wrong please move to it where ever you think best)

Looking for some help and guidance, if you’ve got any tips or experience on best equipment, spec, installation etc … for the refurbishment of an office, I’d appreciate your advice.
Briefly I Need:

Internal network (16 x port hub / router ect…) 1 x UPS (battery only), Fire wall, 4 x Servers (SCSI hot swappable / raid – around min 36 GIG each), 10 workstations, 2 standalone (Also networked), 1 x networked printer (colour).
Windows network, though may require additional UNIX server (1 x prefer FreeBSB) to be used for development projects only

If you know of any good hands free (prefer headset) telephone systems for 6 of the workstations then all the better.
Basically I need to get 3 x workstations connected to the net 24/7/365, all workstations are to be net networked internally for projects / software / development etc… all will have broadband connectivity (unsure if shared yet). Location has it’s own back up power supply (generators etc.. ) I just want a reasonable UPS to be ‘double sure’.
Please note none of this is required to operate hosting etc…. it’s a simply ‘work’ environment that will be linked 24/7 to the net.

Sorry it’s a bit garbled…

[admin]

ebay...

[Garreg]

Yeh I've been looking on there and there are some pretty good set-ups really cheap.

Guess I didn't word the post right - looking more for recomendations ... anyone got anything they think is a 'must' and just as important - what's rubbish....

[stelo]

The networking stuff for the internet connection is easy as pie. All you need is a basic computer (doens't need to be anything fancy) to act as the "host" and all your workstations act as clients. I recommend a switch over a hub for distribution because a switch distributes the connection speed evenly (you can also use longer cables with switches). A hub "shares" it. Linksys makes good switches. As for the connection sharing software, try sygate (http://www.sygate.com). The standard microsoft sharing wizard is a hastle to set up and sucks.

MOST IMPORTANT! Protect ALL the computers and host computer with firewalls and anti virus software. Symantec makes a nice little package called Internet Security 2003. Works nice and should be fine most small workgroups but if you want added protection, you'll need a hardware firewall as well to mask IP addy's, etc.

If you need a file server to back up and share projects, etc. I like Microsoft Visual Source Safe. You'll need a network admin to make sure it's set up properly. It allows you to check files in and out of the file server to work on them locally and makes backups in case someone screwed a file up. Really nice. There certainly may be better uptions out there but this is the easiest one I have found to use and setup.

All these things you can probably set up yourself. If you need anything more complex, like a UNIX file server or NT or whatever, you're probably better off hiring a network admin to work it out for you.

Now for your phone issue. Depends on how much you want to spend. You can buy 20 line distribution hardware for around $1000 (I've seen them on ebay) that has multiple extensions and message centers or you can call someone like Meridian to take care of it for you. However, they charge a lot! We had our first office phone system set up by them and it cost over $10K for 15 lines, phones, etc. + monthly fees.

Hope that helps!

Best,
Angelo

Silly me. I didn't even take the time to read what you needed. I just read share internet and need phones LOL. None of the above probably applies to you...Sounds like you need a good network admin.

[Garreg]

Angelo:

Thanks for taking the time to reply - its appreciated.

It helps hearing what others have done - good ideas / mistakes / tips etc...

Actually Microsoft Visual Source Safe is something I'd forgotten to add to my list, thanks for reminding me.

As far as sharing the internet, there are solutions that are even better than anything windows based. I have used IPCop in the past, http://ipcop.org it is a breeze to set up, and VERY reliable (like one location I have using it now as a dial-up "router" is over 140 days uptime!). It also acts as a firewall, tunnel, logger, and still maintains good reliabity and can be used on older computers. The above mentioned 140+ days uptime server is a p75mhz with 16Mb ram, and a small 512mb hard drive.

[somereseller]

Ipcop is a fork from smoothwall.org (they might even have "stolen" part of their work). Smoothwall is working on version 2 and it looks good.

If you need a specific box for your router/firewall, I suggest that you take a look at openbrick.org, they can setup a leaf firewall on a flash card.

Well seeing how I'm a cisco guy I'm partial, but I would just buy a broadband connection, buy a cheap linksys cable dsl router with a four port switch built-in. And as stylo said go for a switch as the benefit is 4 to 1 whereas a hub shares bandwidth and a switch uses full duplex in both directions. Hense everyone would have a decent web-surfing speed until you start moving large files. As far as a terminal solution I would use the free terminal client with xp or 2000 and then just setup port forwarding in the linksys I believe port 3398 and forward to one machine and setup a dfs root on that machine with ntfs permissions although you might have a problem as unix and ntfs don't always co-operate.

Broadband connection- $50
Linksys cable/dsl router- $50-60
Cheap 10/100 switch- ? look on ebay
Terminal Client-Free
Printer Hp-less than $50
Backup-Raid 5 $$$$$$$
Backup-Raid Mirror. Price of 2 ide hard drives, No scuzzy no raid controller. W2k,XP runs this out of the box.
No idea of the headphones though.
And a good ups for all 10 workstations would be $$

This is for us on a tight budget. LOL