Need help setting up basic domain enviroment for 5 PCs

[bluesky787]

Hello,

Can anyone please explain in quick terms, or point to a tutorial or guide link where I can
get help on setting up a domain environment for a very small companies office?

There are a total of only 5 PCs, but instead of workgroup we like to have the
domain option and have a dedicated PC running Windows Server 2003.
Active Directory is not a requirement, we just want all the PC's to be networking
and accesssing network files off of one secure, central server PC instead of everyone
working off of everyone else's network shared folders and it getting all confused and
messy.

Please, any links would be great ! Thanks


PS

SO I just need to purchase a new PC and also a copy of Windows Server 2003 and that should be it right? Nothing else?? All PC's are running Windows XP PRO

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Microsofts website has tons of information. I'm not completely sure but I think Active Directory is used by default for Server 2003. I'm not sure if there is a way not to use it.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

If this is for a server environment you should seriously consider Raid5 for reliability reasons but at the VERY lease a raid 1 solution. Yes, you just need to load up server 2003 and it will bring you up to a wizard for creating your domain, from that point you just assign roles such as dns server, dhcp server etc and create the AD accounts so you can have per file and per user security

 

[bluesky787]

Thanks for the help!


Can I use a software RAID solution since its cheaper? Also, if I just do full backups
of the server once a week then the most I'll be put back is one weeks time right??


Can you point me to a website link at Microsoft that gives more info on installing and setting up an domain server workplace? Thanks

 

[montag451]

Isn't sw RAID a bit hefty on the cpu.
Will slow down your access time quite a lot.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: montag451
Isn't sw RAID a bit hefty on the cpu.
Will slow down your access time quite a lot.

Yes software RAID does have overhead, but when it comes to reliability on a server it is well worth it. Besides, the overhead for modern processors is very low and since he only has 5 users on the box cpu will not be much of a factor at all.

 

[bluesky787]

Can how I do the roaming profile thing where everyone can long on anyone'se
comptuer and have tyheir own deskotp settings retained? Basically can
I do the network logon where it doesn't matter who uses who's physically computer?

Is this automatically setup when I setup on Windows Server on the new PC to be the server
or does I need to learn it to configure as special option?

Thanks

 

[RadiclDreamer]

When you create a user account in active directory you can right click the account and go to properties and then I believe the profile tab there is a place for profile just use the unc path where you want to store the profile and when that user logs on they will pull the profile, ex \\servername\sharename\userprofile

Oh, make sure you add the computer to the domain as well or they wont be able to use the accounts you created in AD