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Building a server for my dad, need advice
TheSonicRetard
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My father owns his own business and asked me recently to build him a server so he can keep all of his business files in one spot. He has a laptop, and 2 desktops where he does most of his work. His laptop follows him around, and he has a desktop at his home in south houston, and a desktop in downtown houston inside his office. Currently, he just backs up all his data across all 3 computers every single day. However, this is turning into a multi-hour process. He mainly deals with stuff like microsoft office documents, and he uses thunderbird for his email.
What he'd like to have is a central server where all his documents are stored. For example, he'd like to store a document on a 4th computer, so that he could access it from one desktop, make a change, then go to the other desktop and access it again, and have that change already applied. Also He downloads his email through the thunderbird client on his business desktop, but if he does so he can't access them from his laptop or desktop at home, so he'd like to download his emails to this central sever so he can access them from wherever he is.
He's got a business account, so he's more than ok with buying some sort of professional server software/os. He runs vista on all 3 of his computers. I'm not really sure what I should be looking for. Any advice or ideas as to where to begin? What sort of technologies or software should I be looking for?
What he'd like to have is a central server where all his documents are stored. For example, he'd like to store a document on a 4th computer, so that he could access it from one desktop, make a change, then go to the other desktop and access it again, and have that change already applied. Also He downloads his email through the thunderbird client on his business desktop, but if he does so he can't access them from his laptop or desktop at home, so he'd like to download his emails to this central sever so he can access them from wherever he is.
He's got a business account, so he's more than ok with buying some sort of professional server software/os. He runs vista on all 3 of his computers. I'm not really sure what I should be looking for. Any advice or ideas as to where to begin? What sort of technologies or software should I be looking for?
TheSonicRetard on
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Here is Microsoftpage and HP sells some nice complete solutions.
He'd just store all his data on the share from WHS and you'd just have to open/edit the documents from there (I just put a link to the shares on the quick start for the wife).
"Was cursing, in broken english at his team, and at our team. made fun of dead family members and mentioned he had sex with a dog."
"Hope he dies tbh but a ban would do."
This is... difficult, to say the least. You won't easily be able to pull this off without some fancy software and internet connectivity. He could use network shares to access the files remotely always, but this would be slow and cumbersome. At the very least he would need an always-available VPN connection to the office where the server resides. Hamachi is useful for doing that in an easy way.
Setup Thunerbird as IMAP on all computers and you won't have the problem of mail only appearing at one computer (assuming the mail server supports this). Or change the setting that deletes mail from the server (set it to something like 7 days). This way all the computers can download it, although with IMAP it will sync and he won't have to re-read all the read mail that is now unread on his other computer.
So basically what he needs is not really a server, but a central file and e-mail store. He could use an external drive (can get cumbersome and risks data loss/theft) or a server/desktop using a network share with some extra backup solution (like burning important files to CD/DVD once a week).
Network share is going to be the easiest way to keep all his files in sync across all computers. You should also be able to do offline files.
SC2 NA: exoplasm.519 | PA SC2 Mumble Server | My Website | My Stream
This sounds perfect! Any ideas on the thunderbird server?
As exoplasm suggested, I'd turn IMAP that way they dont download. To stop it from filling up, back it up periodically (will depend on how much you mail is recieved and how much space is allowed, could probably get away with monthly).
"Was cursing, in broken english at his team, and at our team. made fun of dead family members and mentioned he had sex with a dog."
"Hope he dies tbh but a ban would do."
This really sounds like the ideal situation for software like dropbox, as opposed to a custom server solution.
http://www.getdropbox.com/ is the link. 2gb plans are free (you can build them up to 3 or 5gb or something 250 megs at a time using referrals if you're determined to get a lot of free storage), 50gb plans are $100 a year and 100gb plans are $200 per year. Disclaimer: I don't work for dropbox and I'm not asking you for a referral.
The software makes a folder on each PC (where dropbox is installed) with the files in it, so the files are safe even if the service were to go down at some indeterminate date in the future. When someone adds or modifies a file in one folder, the file automatically uploads from that machine to the dropbox server, then downloads / modifies in the other folders. Old versions of files are kept and accessed through the dropbox page.
You can also create shared folders between different accounts. So a buddy and I who both use dropbox have a shared folder that we just dump things into if we think the other person might be interested.
You can even use truecrypt in conjunction with dropbox.
Really sounds ideal for your fathers use unless he has more than 100 gigs of data he needs shared.
He really needs to do incremental/change only backups then. There is no reason you should rewrite 2TB of data every time you back up if only 100 MB of it actually changed.
SC2 NA: exoplasm.519 | PA SC2 Mumble Server | My Website | My Stream
The reason I suggested WHS was because its for a business. Some businesses have data they dont want to share, and when using dropbox/live mesh the data is no longer solely in your hands.
"Was cursing, in broken english at his team, and at our team. made fun of dead family members and mentioned he had sex with a dog."
"Hope he dies tbh but a ban would do."
Yep, no arguments there. And 2 TB of data means dropbox is out of the question altogether.
Two terabytes of documents. That's a lot of documents, goodness.
You might want to look into something like amandabackup and a linux server. I'm quite certain that'll do backups of only the things that change, which as already mentioned is more or less a pre-requisite for backing up large amounts of data. I don't know what you'd need to do to get things working so that changes were instantly updated to the server, though.
2 TB of data! Mostly documents!
Two terabytes!
Sorry, I'm just still integrating that information. That's impressive.
If it wasn't, I'd be looking at a managed hosting solution perhaps; hugely customisable, with what amounts to an unlimited pipe for the sorts of transfers you're thinking of.
Rackspace do nice ones, though their Dallas datacentre has been having some power issue lately.
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DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
He does a lot of architectural work for hundreds of clients. So he's got complete plans for thousands of buildings at one time. And usually each building is several stories. So one building might have 20 floors, and each floor has plumbing, electrical, etc. These are stored as massive pngs.
Takes up a LOT of space.
Dont worry, WHS does incrementals and is you can leave out files folders (stuff like hibernate/pagefile are left out automatically). You can also tell it how long to keep it. I have one backup a month long, one for the week, and the previous 3 days, but its even though I have 5 days of backups, its barely over one days size.
"Was cursing, in broken english at his team, and at our team. made fun of dead family members and mentioned he had sex with a dog."
"Hope he dies tbh but a ban would do."
Dropbox basically adds a folder to your PC like My Documents that automatically syncs with their server while Dropbox is running on the PC. You can even access the files from another machine without installing Dropbox via the web interface. Starts at 2GB of storage for free, and you can get up to 5GB by referring friends. They also offer like 40 or 100 GB or something for an annual fee.
I have my PC configured with uTorrent monitoring the Dropbox folder for torrent files so I can add them while on the go and come back to already downloaded torrents 8-)
edit: I see Dropbox has been suggested already, and you're way out of the storage range.
https://www.mesh.com/welcome/default.aspx
https://www.mesh.com/Welcome/howto/sync.aspx
If you have WHS, why use Live Mesh? Just setup Webfolders on the WHS and its your own live mesh/drop box.
"Was cursing, in broken english at his team, and at our team. made fun of dead family members and mentioned he had sex with a dog."
"Hope he dies tbh but a ban would do."