- Aug 24, 2012
- 1,854
- 12
- 81
The place I work isnt really big enough to have a professional IT person so that pretty much means that duty falls upon me because I'm by far the most technically proficient employee they have when it comes to this stuff. In a nutshell, I recently started work for this company of 25 employees which primarily does in research and development and therefore deals with sensitive information. The current network they have now is a hodge podge of consumer end equipment which isn't really up to the task which it is performing, so once I get a full scope (which I will be looking into Friday) of what they need and want of their computer system.
But as of right now, here the things I know I will need and hence some of the questions I have right now:
Needs:
Network Cables:
Installed network cables plenty of times, some (though very little) of this will be through drywall which Implies that plenum cables will be needed. But I don't know if the building codes are different in commercial/industrial buildings and whether shielded is desired or necessary. Generally speaking Cat5e would suffice as I plan to install a gigabit lan, but I'm considering Cat6/6a as I would expect that prices on 1gbps+ networking equipment to come down as Wireless devices have now reached gigabit speeds.
Network Switch:
A single 24 port gigabit switch should suffice as they have about 10 total PCs and several additional network capable devices that may get network access someday, but my experience with this stuff is in the consumer end.
Router:
I've been running DD-WRT for many years and I'm quite used to it. I know it's rather robust compared to typical consumer router firmware, but I dont know how comprable it is to a professional end router. I've also tinkered with Open WRT x86 for a month or so. I really liked it and found it easy to work with. Only reason I stopped using it was because I had a problem dedicating a PC as a home use router. Not sure if it's an appropriate solution for this, but I thought that I'd mention it.
Firewall/Security:
I personally have never resorted to anything fancy in regards to this beyond high end consumer routers. My solution is that I just don't do stupid things and back my computer up regularly. I don't even run anti-virus. If things start going awry, I just reload the most recent image and carry on. So in that sense, I have no clue as to what is appropriate for a small business.
Backup/Imaging Solutions for Client PCs:
This is important and needs to be done yesterday. Some PCs perform very critical functions and if they went down it would be a disaster. Therefore I need something that can get one up and running quickly in the event of failure. Personally, I use Clonezilla to install from images hosted on my Nas4Free server. It's easy and works great. Never used Norton Ghost or any other paid program. I know that some can re-image PCs remotely which could be nice, but I have no clue how that is setup. The closest thing I have done in regards to that is that I once had a PXE server hosting Windows XP installation files back when I fixed PCs all the time. But that wasn't a system image and it was kind of a pain to setup as I recall, but it was a long time ago so that may have improved since. Ideally it would be nice to have a solution which is intergated with a server and naively supports imaging to different size drives without having to resize partitions later (if that exists).
Backup/Imaging Solutions for Server Files:
This is also very important as there is alot of important data that they can't afford to lose. I personally use raid 1 on my server, and the last HDD failure that I've encountered was on a 10GB Maxtor in 1999. Didn't know shit back then because if I did, I would't have bought a Maxtor. In any case, I would like a robust solution that would involve an offline backup of some kind in case of a massive failure to the server itself. Perhaps raid 1 in conjuntion with an offline backup via an external drive, unless there is an affordable/reliable tape solution. Another thing is that I'm not sure how much storage space is really needed here. Roughly speaking I'd guesstimate about 10TB, but there could be more depending on how much space the HDD images for each would take.
Server/File Shares:
This is the most pressing need at this time, they claim to have a 'server', but my suspicion is that it's just a Windows PC with shared folders because they don't use it as a server and file transfer speeds are horrendously slow, so they transfer most things with flash drives which is time consuming as hell for them. In my home, I've used Nas4free/FreeNAS for years and based on my personal experience; I would expect it to work well for simple file sharing. However Nas4free/FreeNAS is limited, though you can expand it's functionality running apps in a jail. However, my personal experience with FreeNAS is that it works well when you perform the tasks which it was intended to perform, and the further you stray away from those tasks, the more problems you will encounter.
So basically we don't have alot of room for growth so to speak and I try to think forward when I'm setting things up because the need to host a few thin clients could come up in the near future. To put it another way, I'll pave a road because it's what I need today, but I like to have the foresight to leave room for extra lanes and traffic lights when the time comes.
Having said that I'm looking at Windows Server Essentials. I'd look at Ubuntu Server, but I'm not well versed enough with Linux to ever work on a system like that beyond just tinkering with it on my own time. I need things to work and I can't spend all day getting it to work when something goes wrong as IT is not my primary duty with this company.
Maintaining Confidential Information on Client PCs/Server Shares/etc:
Very important this is done right because HR and Operations both deal with confidential information so I would like to know the best way to ensure that lower lever users can only access what they need to access and nothing more. One of my former employers had professional IT and they were HORRIBLE at doing this. HR is the main concern and my plan is to let that be it's own world and not have any HR related info shared on the server including the system images of that client. However HR does perform some tasks for operations so they would need access to the server. I would like every PC that deals with sensitive information to be able to see the network, but not to allow any of the other PCs to see them. I'm guessing this is the best way to make sure these clients won't be compromised via LAN.
WiFi
The plan for this is to only have it for internet access. That being said, I suppose the best solution is to establish a separate LAN just for this. However, the place as a rather large footprint (about the size of a large convenience store) and I seriously doubt that even a high end consumer wireless router would provide adequate coverage. That being said, would the better solution be a good conumer router a few repeaters, or would a professional solution be order?
Some things that I'm looking at:
Printers/Scanners:
Right, they have a couple of (higher end) inkjet printers for everything, but I know this is costing them a fortune in ink. Generally speaking, one color and one black and white printer should suffice along with two scanners that would handle the workload of a small business.
Email Services:
Don't really have a clue in regards to this, but they have had to switch email providers a few times because certain customers don't like certain providers (i.e. yahoo) for obvious reasons. Either way, I feel that something uniform even if it's just for several people would be a good idea going forward. Don't know what exchange services cost, but I know that google provides a similar alternative service tailored to small business. There is also the possibility of hosting your own email, but I've never done that and I know that it's not as simple as hosting a website.
Other Stuff:
Printers/Scanners:
Right, they have a couple of (higher end) inkjet printers for everything, but I know this is costing them a fortune in ink. Generally speaking, one color and one black and white printer should suffice along with two scanners that would handle the workload of a small business.
Helpful Tips:
I'm not a networking/IT professional, I'm just a long time enthusiast who cares about things being right even if I'm not sue what I'm getting into. I'm not dealing with the most computer savvy people here so It's important that things are simple and easy for the end user, but secure and functional under the hood (think iOS). So all that being said, I would like to some tips regarding good practices to keep things running smoothly without it taking an excessive amount of time. If a PC goes down, I would like to be able to have it or a replacement running within an hour or so.
But as of right now, here the things I know I will need and hence some of the questions I have right now:
Needs:
Network Cables:
Installed network cables plenty of times, some (though very little) of this will be through drywall which Implies that plenum cables will be needed. But I don't know if the building codes are different in commercial/industrial buildings and whether shielded is desired or necessary. Generally speaking Cat5e would suffice as I plan to install a gigabit lan, but I'm considering Cat6/6a as I would expect that prices on 1gbps+ networking equipment to come down as Wireless devices have now reached gigabit speeds.
Network Switch:
A single 24 port gigabit switch should suffice as they have about 10 total PCs and several additional network capable devices that may get network access someday, but my experience with this stuff is in the consumer end.
Router:
I've been running DD-WRT for many years and I'm quite used to it. I know it's rather robust compared to typical consumer router firmware, but I dont know how comprable it is to a professional end router. I've also tinkered with Open WRT x86 for a month or so. I really liked it and found it easy to work with. Only reason I stopped using it was because I had a problem dedicating a PC as a home use router. Not sure if it's an appropriate solution for this, but I thought that I'd mention it.
Firewall/Security:
I personally have never resorted to anything fancy in regards to this beyond high end consumer routers. My solution is that I just don't do stupid things and back my computer up regularly. I don't even run anti-virus. If things start going awry, I just reload the most recent image and carry on. So in that sense, I have no clue as to what is appropriate for a small business.
Backup/Imaging Solutions for Client PCs:
This is important and needs to be done yesterday. Some PCs perform very critical functions and if they went down it would be a disaster. Therefore I need something that can get one up and running quickly in the event of failure. Personally, I use Clonezilla to install from images hosted on my Nas4Free server. It's easy and works great. Never used Norton Ghost or any other paid program. I know that some can re-image PCs remotely which could be nice, but I have no clue how that is setup. The closest thing I have done in regards to that is that I once had a PXE server hosting Windows XP installation files back when I fixed PCs all the time. But that wasn't a system image and it was kind of a pain to setup as I recall, but it was a long time ago so that may have improved since. Ideally it would be nice to have a solution which is intergated with a server and naively supports imaging to different size drives without having to resize partitions later (if that exists).
Backup/Imaging Solutions for Server Files:
This is also very important as there is alot of important data that they can't afford to lose. I personally use raid 1 on my server, and the last HDD failure that I've encountered was on a 10GB Maxtor in 1999. Didn't know shit back then because if I did, I would't have bought a Maxtor. In any case, I would like a robust solution that would involve an offline backup of some kind in case of a massive failure to the server itself. Perhaps raid 1 in conjuntion with an offline backup via an external drive, unless there is an affordable/reliable tape solution. Another thing is that I'm not sure how much storage space is really needed here. Roughly speaking I'd guesstimate about 10TB, but there could be more depending on how much space the HDD images for each would take.
Server/File Shares:
This is the most pressing need at this time, they claim to have a 'server', but my suspicion is that it's just a Windows PC with shared folders because they don't use it as a server and file transfer speeds are horrendously slow, so they transfer most things with flash drives which is time consuming as hell for them. In my home, I've used Nas4free/FreeNAS for years and based on my personal experience; I would expect it to work well for simple file sharing. However Nas4free/FreeNAS is limited, though you can expand it's functionality running apps in a jail. However, my personal experience with FreeNAS is that it works well when you perform the tasks which it was intended to perform, and the further you stray away from those tasks, the more problems you will encounter.
So basically we don't have alot of room for growth so to speak and I try to think forward when I'm setting things up because the need to host a few thin clients could come up in the near future. To put it another way, I'll pave a road because it's what I need today, but I like to have the foresight to leave room for extra lanes and traffic lights when the time comes.
Having said that I'm looking at Windows Server Essentials. I'd look at Ubuntu Server, but I'm not well versed enough with Linux to ever work on a system like that beyond just tinkering with it on my own time. I need things to work and I can't spend all day getting it to work when something goes wrong as IT is not my primary duty with this company.
Maintaining Confidential Information on Client PCs/Server Shares/etc:
Very important this is done right because HR and Operations both deal with confidential information so I would like to know the best way to ensure that lower lever users can only access what they need to access and nothing more. One of my former employers had professional IT and they were HORRIBLE at doing this. HR is the main concern and my plan is to let that be it's own world and not have any HR related info shared on the server including the system images of that client. However HR does perform some tasks for operations so they would need access to the server. I would like every PC that deals with sensitive information to be able to see the network, but not to allow any of the other PCs to see them. I'm guessing this is the best way to make sure these clients won't be compromised via LAN.
WiFi
The plan for this is to only have it for internet access. That being said, I suppose the best solution is to establish a separate LAN just for this. However, the place as a rather large footprint (about the size of a large convenience store) and I seriously doubt that even a high end consumer wireless router would provide adequate coverage. That being said, would the better solution be a good conumer router a few repeaters, or would a professional solution be order?
Some things that I'm looking at:
Printers/Scanners:
Right, they have a couple of (higher end) inkjet printers for everything, but I know this is costing them a fortune in ink. Generally speaking, one color and one black and white printer should suffice along with two scanners that would handle the workload of a small business.
Email Services:
Don't really have a clue in regards to this, but they have had to switch email providers a few times because certain customers don't like certain providers (i.e. yahoo) for obvious reasons. Either way, I feel that something uniform even if it's just for several people would be a good idea going forward. Don't know what exchange services cost, but I know that google provides a similar alternative service tailored to small business. There is also the possibility of hosting your own email, but I've never done that and I know that it's not as simple as hosting a website.
Other Stuff:
Printers/Scanners:
Right, they have a couple of (higher end) inkjet printers for everything, but I know this is costing them a fortune in ink. Generally speaking, one color and one black and white printer should suffice along with two scanners that would handle the workload of a small business.
Helpful Tips:
I'm not a networking/IT professional, I'm just a long time enthusiast who cares about things being right even if I'm not sue what I'm getting into. I'm not dealing with the most computer savvy people here so It's important that things are simple and easy for the end user, but secure and functional under the hood (think iOS). So all that being said, I would like to some tips regarding good practices to keep things running smoothly without it taking an excessive amount of time. If a PC goes down, I would like to be able to have it or a replacement running within an hour or so.
Last edited:
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