Hard disk failure. What replacement? Do we need a server?

wolfman

krishna wrote:

We have someone (an ex trustee) who hosts our website and also manages our email. We each connect directly (via our ADSL modem/router) and collect email via POP3. This is fine except that there is one email account we would all like to access which is not easily managed since there is no IMAP option. It also means that any emails we send or receive "internally" in fact need to be delivered via the internet rather then just within the office. Not ideal, but not a huge problem.

Hmmm, most decent hosts (at least from my experience) will offer IMAP. Might be worth considering changing host as IMAP does make things a lot easier by keeping your mail in one place.

Your web and email are hosted seperately though, so this is something less your server would need to do.

krishna wrote:

Any thoughts on spec?

From the sound of things you don't need anything overly powerful. I'd go a generation back, and get something like a Intel Pentium 4 2.4Ghz pc. Maybe with 1-2gb Ram. RAID (as mentioned above) is a good idea. You should be able to pick such a pc for around £300. I wouldn't know where though, you'd need to look about.

krishna wrote:

If we are sharing access databases, can we do that with XP Pro, or do we need to get Windows 2003 server? I'd be happy to consider Linux, but I don't have any linux knowledge myself at present. Is it difficult? Once set up is there much ongoing maintenance? With databases at the moment, if one person is creating a new record this locks everyone else out. Not sure if this is just how the Access DB has been set up or if this is a limitation if not using server software?

Windows XP Pro should be fine. 2003 Server is a bit overkill for what you need. And Linux is time consuming if you have no experience with it.

With regards to locking the database when in use, it sounds like you're going about the wrong way of using a database. Ideally you should have a frontend, or piece of software that accesses the database. That way you'd all be able to use it simultaneously.

westie666

Cheapest and least hassle for new 'server.

Dell Dimention 1100 - £269

I have done work for charity based companies and found that the simplist options are always the best. Take HDD out of old computer and set into a caddy drive...

http://www.ebuyer.co.uk/UK/product/72253

Format the drive and use the old drive as a networked drive, and backup all details to this.

This way you wont end up losing data from your primary HDD as any virus' for system corruption would occur with the system HDD

Lob_Rockster

most HDD manufacturers have disk clone programs so you need a new HDD and their program. If you look, for example, at MaxBlast! then if one of the disks is a Maxtor, this will clone the old -> new - no need for Ghost.

I'd recommend Acronis True Image over Ghost btw.

Also MaxBlast! and other utilities are on the very useful www.ultimatebootcd.com

wolfman

Ideally you'd use RAID rather than ghosting software. You'd need two hard drives, and a computer with hardware that'll support RAID (most modern ones will in some form).

You just set it up so that one drive mirrors the other. That way if your main drive goes down, you have a direct copy.

Acronis TrueImage is another good option though. You can pickup version 8 for around £15.

And finally for version control, have a look at Subversion (SVN). It's very good (and free), you can combine it with TortioseSVN so that it integrates into the Windows shell.

hendersonb

Are you planning on expanding any? If in the next year or so you plan on adding more machines to the network you may want to think about moving to a client/server setup rather than a peer to peer. Microsoft Small Business Server is in fact a very good system for small companies, it comes in two variations premium and standard, if you don't use SQL server then i'd suggest standard edition will suffice. It comes complete with Microsoft Exchange (E-mail server). This can be very powerful and has some really nice features such as OWA (Outlook web access). It also comes with Microsoft Outllok 2003 which you can install on all the workstations (Assuming you have enough licences - SBS2003 comes with a minum of 5 Client Access Licences which should be suitable). Microsoft Outlook/Exchange can be used much more in the way as a groupware system, it will look after calanders for staff members, you can e-mail through appointment requests etc and the software will take care of entering the details in to the calanders of the people if required.
For backup I would stick to using tape (for offsite backups). They also tend to be very reliable over time (depending on the model you go for). I personally would fit a DAT drive, probably either a 12/24Gb or a 20/40gb dependant on the amount of data you have. SBS also comes with its own backup program (A cut down version of Veritas Backup Exec). This is very easy to configure and gives you peace of mind over your data. I can't stress enough the need for offsite backups for companies, if your premises gets flooded/burnt to the ground etc and you only have a slave drive in the machine then say good bye to all your data.
Personally I might have a go at doing everything myself in the way of the installation (its very straight forward). I would however probably go for a Dell server (you want at least 1Gb RAM for running SBS at a decent speed). They will pre-install SBS for you if you purchase it from them (you may find this a bit cheaper).
With SBS everything is wizard driven so to configure new users etc its a walk in the park.
Also with using SBS if you do have any problems most computer support companies will have plenty of experience using this rather than a linux system or the like. before I get flamed for this I actually use linux in the house, I just don't believe it is quite ready for use in companies just yet unless you go for the likes of Suse or Red Hat enterprise. If you run in to trouble you will have to rely on the community as most companies will not offer you linux support and the ones that do will charge you through the nose.

Omertron

Firstly, if you are not happy with your current IT company, why not ring around and get quotes from a couple of others?

I think your current IT company may just be taking the easy option by offering to add a server to the network (although this is the best option overall, it may be overkill for what you need).

Regardless of whether you get a new server or not, the problem with your PC needs sorting out. Worst case would mean a new PC (circa £500-£600), but it may be as simple as doing a software based repair on the hard-drive using something like check-disk in windows, this is perfectly adequate to diagnose and fix problems (given your limited budget). Otherwise, if the hard-drive is failing, it may be worth investing in a new one and using the back-up facility you already have to restore the machine back to it's current state. Any IT company worth it's salt will be able to sort this problem out.

Stick to DAT/tapes and ignore the RAID advocates as you will need to take the tapes off site for security.

wolfman

Omertron wrote:

Stick to DAT/tapes and ignore the RAID advocates as you will need to take the tapes off site for security.

??? Or use both? Tapes are so slow for backing up, it's the kind of thing you do out of hours, or during the weekend. Tapes and RAID achieve the same goal but very differently, I wouldn't compare them or run one over the other.

RAID will provide a much more up to the second backup. Plus if one drive dies, you quite literally unplug it and run off the other drive. There's barely any down time having to recover files from tapes, redo work since the last backup etc...

Off-site backup to a server online is also another consideration. It could be used to backup odd files that change on a daily basis.

hendersonb

Usually with tapes you set them to run overnight (takes around 4 hours using a DAT for 20Gb backup - assuming SCSI) You then take that tape off site the next night, so you will probably want around 5 DAT tapes (assuming you work mon-fri). And a cleaning tape which should be used around once per month

Omertron

wolfman wrote:

??? Or use both? Tapes are so slow for backing up, it's the kind of thing you do out of hours, or during the weekend. Tapes and RAID achieve the same goal but very differently, I wouldn't compare them or run one over the other.

The OP works for a charity and has a limited budget. They already have a tape drive and are comfortable with backing up using tapes. They have older computers that are unlikely to support RAID. Why would they spend more money than necessary?

The main difference, in this case IMO, is that RAID is for redundancy and reslience and the tape backup is for disaster recovery. RAID does not perform the same function as it doesn't help having 2 copies of the data on the server / computer if the office burns down or the computer is stolen.

I know it's a little OT

wolfman

Omertron wrote:

The OP works for a charity and has a limited budget. They already have a tape drive and are comfortable with backing up using tapes. They have older computers that are unlikely to support RAID. Why would they spend more money than necessary?

The main difference, in this case IMO, is that RAID is for redundancy and reslience and the tape backup is for disaster recovery. RAID does not perform the same function as it doesn't help having 2 copies of the data on the server / computer if the office burns down or the computer is stolen.

I can see your point, but from the sounds of things the OP may possibly be buying a new computer (most new computers will have some form of RAID support). And you only need it on the one machine, not on all of them. It's just a case of getting a second matching hard drive. Given that a 250gb hard drive is around £60, I wouldn't say it's a huge expense for the added backup.

RAID just offers another form of backup. Strength in depth, it's always worth having more than one than one backup, and a different type of backup at that. Where RAID helps is that if one drive goes down you can still run off the other while getting the broken one fixed. It also provides a more up to date backup. Say for example, the tapes backups are run at the end of the day. If the hard drive crashes before then, you've lost a whole days work, whereas with RAID it'd be mirrored. You just plug the other drive in and continue as normal.

And if something happens to your tapes, or the backup to the tapes isn't configured properly, you still have everything on the mirrored drive.

I guess it depends how valuable downtime is to the OP, and how much they rely on the shared data as to whether RAID is worth having.