serialtoon

Hello everyone. I currently work for my father in a small business of about 6 office people and 10 plant employees. The 6 people in the office all use PCs (me included) and they are all connected thru a router to a basic DSL service and we are all networked with all basic networking schemes. We all share files the same way any normal network might work. There is a few problems we have been having. 1st of all, there are 3 people who cant seem to understand that downloading music and running applications that harm the PC (viruses and spy ware) is something we cannot afford to keep on fixing. Im pretty much the only person here who maintains and fixes all the PC's as well as keeps them optimized. Frankly, im getting annoyed by their stupidity. So i decided to build and configure a server where all of this wont happen without me letting it. I have been given the green light to get this all done, but with minimal expertise in the networking aspect of it, ive come to you guys for help. Heres what i want out of this network and configuration.

1. I want everybody to logon to some kind of virtual OS that loads all of thier personalized setting upon logon where nothing is physically stored on thier machine, only on the server itself.

2. Access is limited by me and me only. I'm the one who decides who gets to run what and who gets access to use certain apps or even have the apps installed at all.

3. Easy backing up solution where i can run a backup and take it home with me everyday, while still leaving the machine at work. So if anything ever happens (fire,theft, etc etc) it would only set me back one days worth of information.

4. Windows Operating Software a MUST.

5. If possible, be able to access this from different locations... i.e. PC Anywhere type of thing.

Anyone care to help me? Ive been reading some information on Active Directory and it looks like that might be a solution, but ive never tried it. Also, what kind of hardware and storage space would i be looking at. We recently upgraded our machines to something newer, so i wanna catch this before these people start filling them drives with crap they deem "NEEDED".

serialtoon

Bueller?.....Bueller?.....Bueller?.... :-)

The Duke

Patience young grasshopper, help will come

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stanrc

well one partial answer to your questions is to use group policy to enforce certain things or lock them down. also make one admin account on each computer (yours) and any other account just a normal user. you could set up roaming profiles from a server, but i don't know how to do that. if you want to run a server you can try windows home server (but it only allows 10 to be connected to it, so that is imporatant) or just use xp pro and set it up like a server if you don't want to buy server 2003.

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serialtoon

I own server 2000, thats why i decided to do this, and even then, i could buy whatever OS i would need anyway. I just lack some of the skills to pull it off. But im going to be practicing it on a machine i have at home...just for fun.

HatesFury

1-4 are all accomplished with a ghosting setup. The basic way that it works is that each machine has Windows installed, however they have no profiles on them. When a user logs in all of the data is pulled from the server and loaded into the windows installed on their machine. This also loads their "permissions". All of the configuration for the profiles is done from the server (so and so can do X, but not X, or X, or X) and are applied the instant the user logs into the PC. This is a VERY complicated setup normally only utilized by companies with 1000's of workstations.

5) VNC. Very secure, very easy to use, full "admin" control if you set it up this way.


My Advice:
The above is OVERKILL for your network. My advice would be a 2 box setup. Box 1 is purely an Internet server. Setup an Internet Filter and use HTML tags to keep the other employees out of 90% of the stuff you don't want them in. Also setup your firewall on this server to keep anything from coming in, but it shouldn't interfere with internal apps (unless they're trying to get out). This box then hooks into your file server. Now to keep your file server protected i'd simply go with a tight set of permissions. For isntance anyone in the office can write to the file server, however none of them can modify existing files or delete existing files. This prevents them from bunking your server. Your router would be between your file server and the workstations isolating any virus breakouts that did occur and hopefully keeping them off the file server.

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K092084

For backup purposes, I would suggest just maybe using some tape drives.
We use those here at work and change the tape drive monday, wednesday, and friday, and my boss takes the tapes home with him or leaves them in his car. Not sure what sizes tape drives are exactly but the ones we use are 200gb normal and 400gb compressed.
Just a though, although not sure how much the equipment would cost.

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trueg50

You can use Citrix to handle their desktops. It is a desktop on the server, they get what ever apps you want to give them, all work is saved on the server. Won't replace a desktop, but they can work all on the server.

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HatesFury

On an additional note, here is some "maintainence" advice.

1) get ghosting software asap and make a "general burn" that has all of the apps the people in the office would need.
2) make sure the user profile in the ghost is set to restricted user (ie they can't install files on their own).
3) anytime the software you office uses you just simply update your ghost and re-ghost all of the office PC's.
4) if a single user needs something you just login as admin, install it, then let them log back in as themself.

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stanrc

i think tape drives are overkill for sure. just set up a raid 5 for your file server

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