Can I setup a computer at office as server and one at home

[Telson]

Hi,
Can I setup a computer at office as server and one at home for four people to use?
How much would be the cost?

 

[KM-Tiger]

You can but what services are you looking for this server to run?

If you are looking for a collaboration platform, your own server might not be the best way of doing that.

 

[Telson]

Thank you very much,

All of us(maximum 4 people), want to access normal files like word, excel etc. , work on the files

I didn't understand the 'collaboration platform '

Only one person would be using one file at a time

Can it be done?

Thanks in advance

 

[Frank the Insurance guy]

Have you looked at Office 365 - No need for a server as all of you can access the MS suite of products as long as you have an internet connection (Which you'd need to connect to the office server anyway.

It includes One Drive where you can hold all your documents and decide who has access and can use settings for access.

Far easier than setting up your own server as you can all access all the documents from anywhere.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Without great knowledge on the topic, my immediate thought, like @Frank the Insurance guy was to use one of the many cloud platforms such as 365, Drive or Dropbox.

 

[mattk]

Unfortunately, it isn't just as simply as setting up a server. At the very minimum you'd need a server and a separate physical backup. Ideally for resilience you'd need two servers. Then you need to keep the patched and the OS updated etc. In reality, you're likely to need to pay an external company to provide you support for this, unless you're prepared to do it yourself.

Alternatively, you can simply subscribe to a cloud offering. As mentioned, Microsoft 365 is the industry standard and will give you the ability to share files without the headaches mentioned above of hosting your own servers.

 

[zigojacko]

Thank you very much,

All of us(maximum 4 people), want to access normal files like word, excel etc. , work on the files

I didn't understand the 'collaboration platform '

Only one person would be using one file at a time

Can it be done?

Thanks in advance

As others have said, you can just use GoogleDocs with Google Drive or Office365 and the suchlike for collaborative work on documents...

 

[KM-Tiger]

I didn't understand the 'collaboration platform '

A collaboration platform would facilitate more than file sharing. Could handle email, shared contacts and calendars, messaging and video conferencing, and so on.

Office365 works well. Less well known but excellent is NextCloud. A key thing with Nextcloud is that you retain complete control and ownership of your business data.

 

[gpietersz]

I have an Owncloud install (related to to NextCloud). Not heavily used and I only have it because it installed along with my mailserver, but it seems good. I would probably prefer NextCloud if I only wanted the file sharing.

A collaboration platform would facilitate more than file sharing. Could handle email, shared contacts and calendars, messaging and video conferencing, and so on.

I have most of that using MailinaBox and Jitsi.

 

[Financial-Modeller]

I'm guessing that you're not an expert on these things @Telson - I'm not either.

I would suggest you will have far more time working productively, and fewer headaches from solving your IT problems, using O365 or one of the other off-the-shelf products recommended above.

 

[gpietersz]

Or you could pay someone like @KM-Tiger r to do it for you and have the best of both worlds. its not time consuming to do, so should be affordable to set up and running costs are lower.

Things like Owncloud ARE off the shelf products. You just have to install them on a server.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Share point with one drive at your level. The electricity alone would cost more than the cost of a subscription. Add hardware and backups in and the numbers are even worst.

 

[computerbeing]

Cloud services such as dropbox, Onedrive and others are convenient, but have some disadvantages. Among them is the continuous monthly or yearly cost and the bandwidth they consume. An alternative is setting up a NAS (network attached storage) to your office on a RAID configuration for onsite backup and an inexpensive cloud backup. This would also work well if your upload speed in the office is decent. Main advantage with the NAS is the control of your data being physically in your premises and that it has a one off cost.

 

[gpietersz]

Share point with one drive at your level. The electricity alone would cost more than the cost of a subscription. Add hardware and backups in and the numbers are even worst.

You can do a lot with cheap and efficient hardware these days.

You can run "self-hosted" on a VPS, and cheap dedicated servers deliver a lot. Again, you get a lot for your money these days. I would generally prefer this to running your own hardware.

Subscription services are cheaper short term as they eliminate setup costs. They are usually a lot more expensive long term. £20/month is £1,200 over five years.

Its like the difference between renting and buying a car or a house or equipment or anything else.

While subscription services are supposed to take care of things like backups, there is a reason that there are now services for backing up your "cloud" services (as well as careers in managing the costs of cloud services).

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Among them is the continuous monthly or yearly cost and the bandwidth they consume

. Oh boy and a NAS is running on witchcraft not bandwidth anymore.

Main advantage with the NAS is the control of your data being physically in your premises and that it has a one off cost.

Wrong again, a NAS is a single point of failure and designed to last 2- 3 years at best these days. Only decent entry ones are qnap but preferred Synology. RAID is not a BACKUP!!!

Raid 5 Synology 4 bay is about £400 + 3 1TB drives enterprise grade each about £80 so all in about £650 for a decent NAS with some hardware that is designed to last 3 years. Add at least 2 back up drives ( £75 each and about £30 electricity per year ) to it and it needs to be setup and maintained. 2 hours IT / year lets say at 75/ hour

So to run your NAS as designed for 3 years as a business setup and not a gangster / please pro solution we are looking costs of around £37/month excluding costs somebody taking 1 backup drive off site and a lot of headaches if something goes wrong and extra data destruction costs for end of life!

SharePoint with OneDrive £3.80 / month or 10 times cheaper with less headaches and hey we even get a free audit trail for GDPR too. Sync over the internet with Synoilogy is quite nice but again a 3rd party is hosting the initial contact before both parties sync.


There will be a sweet spot for bigger business to run in house but he is lightyears away form that.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

You can do a lot with cheap and efficient hardware these days.

Hardware these days is poor at best, PC / NAS tech is running on fume margins and even the enterprise tech is getting doggy and poor quality. We are not in 2000s anymore.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

While subscription services are supposed to take care of things like backups, there is a reason that there are now services for backing up your "cloud" services (as well as careers in managing the costs of cloud services).

force local cache copy and all data is saved locally and on the MS server. Done. My previous post explained the pricing and this is business not some cheap hardware running on consumer drives.

I doubt the poster will suddenly decide to host his own VPS server. Can be done but he seems to be on the more none techie side so a product for 3.80 month will be his best bet with little headaches.

 

[John Hemming]

Strikes me that hosting something in the cloud is best. I host a lot of stuff myself, but we do a backup to the cloud (AWS).

 

[gpietersz]

SharePoint with OneDrive £3.80 / month or 10 times cheaper

Per user, excluding VAT, right?

So that pricing is only accurate for a (VAT registered) one man band requiring only one service.

If you have 10 users, it changes the relative costs drastically. Needing multiple different services changes things equally drastically.

Hardware these days is poor at best

Hardware failures are still a far rarer cause of problems than software issues or security breaches. You should have backups, and they should be automated.

I doubt the poster will suddenly decide to host his own VPS server. Can be done but he seems to be on the more none techie side so a product for 3.80 month will be his best bet with little headaches.

Which is why I suggested he pays for setup and maintenance. That cost plus the cost of the VPS will give him the ability to run multiple services and have unlimited users (and be free of any other artificial restrictions designed to up sell people).

 

[gpietersz]

Strikes me that hosting something in the cloud is best. I host a lot of stuff myself, but we do a backup to the cloud (AWS).

What is the cloud though? A subscription service or a VPS or "serverless"? They all run on someone else's hardware at a remote location.

Backing up stuff you run locally to the cloud is a good idea to get things off premises. On the other hand, if you have stuff in the cloud (or otherwise off premises) backing up locally is a safe option.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Strikes me that hosting something in the cloud is best.

Never that the best as I would never use such word but based on the post that's the best option. Running it on on site hardware can be done but so much more of a pain and costs.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Per user, excluding VAT, right?

So that pricing is only accurate for a (VAT registered) one man band requiring only one service.

Nope, service is 0% VAT rated via Ireland invoiced and you can run multiple users for that. Give me a budget of £5 / month and I run you share point with more than 10 users and access restrictions. Can be done but takes a bit of tweaking and magic. For the 5 he would get enterprise email, cloud drive and SharePoint that can easily handle 5 users or more.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Hardware failures are still a far rarer cause of problems

It is going downhill in the last 10 years and even big rock solid brands start to cut costs in hardware. Last weeks visit business getting new Cisco switches 5k a piece 1 failed within 1 week. It is what it is.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

ou should have backups, and they should be automated.

Having backups and specially automated backups. Automatic backups is not a true solution. Only a fully tested backup is a real backup. How many times I get stuff in that was set to auto and failed or backups got damaged or corrupted because the owners where never told to actually test them properly.

 

[KM-Tiger]

Automatic backups is not a true solution.

Not on its own, the process needs to be monitored for success/failure. And restores tested from time to time.

 

[John Hemming]

Only a fully tested backup is a real backup.

That is true and can be generalised.

 

[EmC007]

I'd go Windows Virtual Desktop everyday. No physical servers, all in the cloud and 365 integrated with security.

 

[gpietersz]

Nope, service is 0% VAT rated via Ireland invoiced and you can run multiple users for that. Give me a budget of £5 / month and I run you share point with more than 10 users and access restrictions.

So you can get round the published price list? How?

Having backups and specially automated backups. Automatic backups is not a true solution. Only a fully tested backup is a real backup.

You take automated backups, and occasionally test you can restore manually.

However, you should be doing this regardless of platform, whether its your physical server, or a VPS, or a subscription service so its irrelevant for comparison purposes.

 

[gpietersz]

Going back to the original question, a simple alternative to setting up your own computers is to use a one click install on a VPS. Both Own cloud and next cloud are available for on-click install at Vultr:

https://www.vultr.com/features/one-click-apps/

and if you just want to edit and share office type documents, then Only Office is a one-click install at Digital Ocean:

https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/category/business-apps

Simpler than setting it all up your self, cheap, and unlimited users and plenty of storage

 

[Nico Albrecht]

So you can get round the published price list? How?

published price is "SharePoint Online Plan " £3.80 user/month and added another 1 TB one drive for 80p. Once that's correctly setup and tweaked a bit you run your 5 users of it.

How much is a VPS with 1TB storage?

 

[gpietersz]

SharePoint Online Plan " £3.80 user/month

"user/per month" AND that is with an annual committent. Its £4.50 if you pay monthly

Once that's correctly setup and tweaked a bit you run your 5 users of it.

Is that easy to do, or does it mean paying someone to do it for you? If its the former can you tell us how.

How much is a VPS with 1TB storage?

Varies with provider and with what sort of storage. You can get block storage for similar prices (e.g. OVH) and you have the advantage of being able to use it for all services running on the server, not just file storage.

There are cases where the subscription services will be cheaper - for example if you have one or two users and need terabytes of storage. In general, business users looking to share files have relatively modest requirements, unless they are photographers or video editors or similar

 

[IanSuth]

It is going downhill in the last 10 years and even big rock solid brands start to cut costs in hardware. Last weeks visit business getting new Cisco switches 5k a piece 1 failed within 1 week. It is what it is.

That is normal MTF is such that things tend to either fail quickly or last a long while (like light bulbs)

We had a server (a mini tower pc running CentOS) that other than a new Power supply every 3 ish years sat and chunked away looking after an opensource CRM for over 11 years daily backup onto an encrypted USB of the data and a backup of the underlying database structure on a DVD which allowed us to rebuild from scratch to current in the time taken to reinstall it if there was ever an issue - the machine even had a spare HDD in it with the bare OS and our configs on it. (which i fired up once a year to update the patches), i was amazed it survived but other than precautionary changes of power supply and 1 case fan that started to rattle that sub £300 machine lasted all that time running 24x7 until it was shut off a few months ago when we shut up shop (ought to mention as the office was opposite a very overloaded telecomms cabinet we used to regularly lose internet or landlines for up to an few hours every time anyone in the street needed lines added and OpenReach opened and fiddled in the cabinet, so a pure cloud solution would not have worked for us in the past until backup 3/4G access became affordable)