SETTING UP SERVERS

Office servers can be a major asset in any workplace. Copying files between desktop PCs is possible, though a dedicated server makes things much easier for several reasons.

First, all of your files are stored in one place, no more hunting around different PCs trying to find a certain spreadsheet or word processing file. Having all your files on just one machine can seem like a security risk, but this can be mitigated by the ease with which you can back all your files up every night, either to a writeable CD or a second server.

You can have several "shared drives" on the server, so different people can be given access to different files depending on their needs. As well as being a disk server for Windows or Apple OSX desktops, the machine can also be used as a print server, sharing a single printer between the office.

The servers we provide use the FreeBSD operating system (we can also use Linux) and run the SAMBA file and print sharing system. These unix derived systems are very reliable and very secure. We have personally run FreeBSD servers which only go down when there's a powercut or hardware failure. Otherwise they just go on and on and on....!

The first question people normally ask is "What's the cost of all of this?". There can be as little as one component to this cost - our technician's time. Both FreeBSD and SAMBA are free to download off the internet, hence reducing your costs considerably.

The only other possible cost is for the hardware. Obviously the more users who want to use the server, the more powerful the server hardware needs to be. For a small installation, a Pentium 200MHz machine can be absolutely fine. Of course, you may want to use a new machine for added hardware reliability. Many hardware suppliers now sell machines with no operating system pre-installed for just this purpose.

So, before you go and spend all that money on a new server preloaded with a proprietry, buggy, insecure operating system think of the potential of that old P2 500MHz machine thats lurking, unused, in the back of the supply cupboard.

If you would like some advice on how these services can benefit your business, please email us to arrange a time for an informal chat, a site visit or a quote.