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Would love some help building a small network

S

smeigs231

Junior Member
First off- thanks for taking the time to try and help out!

Now to the point:

I'm fairly tech-savy (built 4 gaming computers for myself, jailbroke iPhone and SSH into it etc etc) but I have never tried to tackle a server before.
I love challenges/learning new things and wouldn't mind saving some money on outsourcing this task so here I am. So here is what I am planning:
I plan to run a small office with 5 clients and a server. I'd offer free (though very limited) wifi to patients as well. I'd like to setup a simple Raid 1 server for data backup in what I am assuming would be a peer to peer setup for the clients (maybe?).

I've tried doing a bit of research on the topic but there aren't many results for "build a small network from scratch" on google that are truly helpful.
All I really would like is a mildly detailed outline of the steps I would need to take so I can google those processes individually. For instance some of the things I have been looking up involve setting up DHCP/DNS, WINS, GPO, troubleshooting with ipconfig etc.

Of course I would welcome any additional help on the topic but I am more than willing to help myself if someone could point me in the right direction 🙂

Thanks again!
 
what are your clients, who is backing up to the server? are your employees just dumping there or is there a nightly backup proccess that will be run? what device will be your internet connection and what speed? what do you mean by "limited" free wifi?

give me more information about the day to day of your business please and what you have now? this is new or an upgrade?
 
I'd strongly recommend avoiding a "peer to peer" network and "invest" in Windows Server 2012 Foundation or Essentials. The centralized authentication that an Active Directory domain gets you is worth every penny, especially when you're doing any sort of file sharing.
 
Cross WINS off your list of things you need to learn and set up. Just forget about running it. It's an unnecessary piece of crap unless you have very old clients.

Like drebo said, run Server 2012 Foundation at a minimum.

You referred to setting up some free wifi for "patients". I don't know what your business is, but patients makes me think healthcare, and if you're in the U.S. and need HIPAA compliance (or a similar regulation in another country), then you're going to need to make sure the guest wifi network is completely segregated from your business network.

If you're serious about this, I recommend downloading a trial of VMware Workstation and Server 2012 to install on your PC so that you can get your feet wet with setting up Active Directory and configuring DHCP, DNS, Files Shares, NTFS permissions, User accounts, Security Groups, group policy, etc.

This can be a long and tedious process if you don't have a mentor to learn from or access to an environment that's already set up so you can look around at how things were set up by someone that knew how to do it.
 
Think you might be ok with Small Business Server, less expensive and all. After that its just switches and cables or WAP's.
 
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