serialtoon

Ok, great results and recommendations fellas. The ghosting thing sounds like an excellent plan, but it IS overkill. I very much so agree. Like i stated in the OP, these people are morons...they are the kind of people that think by taking a shortcut home, it will give them access to the file from work....yea....that stupid. The software we use here is Quickbooks 2007 Premium for Manufacturing, UPS Worldship 9.0.43, Stamps.com, ShipGear 3.2.2, Word, Excel,Outlook and about 4 printers. Mainly, i want a seamless setup of a file server (which is easy to build) where i can connect all the printers and no one machine *NEEDS* to be on but the server itself. So far we have been having issues with people shutting of thier machine thus not allowing others to print from it. Its a horrible setup as it stands, but thats why im here. To clean it up and make it seamless and easy. Im going to the Windows Server 2008 seminar in Los Angeles,so i should be able to get ahold of a copy of that. As for the tape drive backups, we have one here, but its 20GB tapes and they are slower than my grandma running from a dragon with her panties down.

HatesFury

What type of printers are we talking about here??? Serial printers??? Cause those are dinosaurs lol....

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serialtoon

NO! And if they did have those, i would have quit long ago. Just your regular run in the mill HP Deskjet and inkjets as well as some Brother Multifunction.

HatesFury

Well if they will run from Ethernet then just put a 2nd NIC into your file server, and run all 4 printers from a hub to that NIC. This will allow the file server to control all printer sharing, and while hub's do generate unnecessary traffic the printers shouldnt' be getting enough traffic to cause problems.

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e_dogg

Check out "roaming profiles" for #1. Files in "my documents" and such will be stored on the servers and accessable from any machine that the user logs into. I'm not sure exactly how to force the user to store things in "my documents" but it's worth looking into.

Note that this can be dangerous if the user has a bunch of crap in the "my documents" folders since it will copy down to the client machine and back to the server.

HatesFury

To make them save in my documents you simply restrict access to C:\ .... While my documents is technically in C:\, windows allows you to back door into it using the built in shortcuts in the desktop. Also most programs now days default to my documents as their save location.

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serialtoon

This is very true, and about the printers...they all connect to the PC by USB and only one actually has a NIC built in. I think i would have to connect them all to the server thru USB...unless im not reading what you are saying correctly. Also btw, thx for the awesome help, you know your way around this stuff for sure.

HatesFury

Well that's simple enough. Your file server should ahve 4 USB's by default, and even if it doesn't a USB PCI card is super cheap.

I know my way around a home\small office network. If you wanted help with that enterprise level stuff i was going to ahve to go chat with friends lol....

We use the scheme i outlined in my building at work.... we have a 9 bladed server, 1 MDF and 2 IDFs, and 600 work stations..... NOT fun to play with lol.... And we're a "satellite" location... The actual server for my company is a "farm" style server (1 controller server with sub controllers, and multiple slaves) with about 20 different bladed servers working together... that thing is a whale and you need 3 different keys to get into the fireproof room it's housed in.

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serialtoon

Seriously, after reading your post, i got.....excited. LOL! I love the whole networking field, im working on my degree on this exact thing. Im just too "noob" to do it all. :-) Thx again man.

HatesFury

rofl.... I was standing next to my buddy (network admin for this building) when he was setting up the Riverbed (google if you want to know what it is). Got it all setup, loaded up the config for it into the server, and flipped the switch..... 600 workstations all died...... not a good day to be a good IT Guy.






luckily he's a smart guy, and only applied the settings to the server (didn't save), so 5 minutes later when the server reboot all was well... minus the 5000 automatically generated alert emails that tried to crash the email server....

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The harshest insult ever given on the OCN forum:
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