It Solution 2 site business

[gingerdad]

I'm after some advice hopefully i'll have the inital questions and answers but here goes

we have two offices which both run small servers and a few pcs

Office 1 has main server/e-mail server
3 x PC's
1 x Laptop
1 x Printer networked

Office 2 has small server
3 x PC's
1 x Laptop
2 x Printers networked

All the PC's run XP and Office 2003 Laptops Windows 7 and Offcie 2010

Not sure what software server one is running but approx 5 years old

Server two is 2 years old DELL Poweredge t110 with some verison of windows server 2008

All pcs are approx 5 years old also

Servers are only used for e-mail/docs/excel server 1 and server just docs/excel etc

our main company software is webased.

we also have a vpn between the offices and the laptops can dial in remotely

all key staff also have smart phones with e-mail (blackberrry or iphone)

The questions how would you move the it forward we need e-mail for 10 staff and storage of docs/excel with off site back up

we don't feel we would get the ROI on a replacing server 1.

Hope it makes sense , thoughts please

 

[Quest Cloud Solutions Ltd]

Hi Gingerdad,

How many users do you have in total? I know you said email for 10 users, but is that everyone?

How good is your Internet connection? Speed and reliability?

How do you want to move the IT forward? Are you looking at traditional IT, cloud, or a hybrid model?

You have a number of options. For the email I'd definitely recommend hosted Exchange mailboxes as there really is no need to replace the existing server that is providing emails. As for file storage, you could utilise a hosted virtual server to replicate the newer on-site server for resilience and redundancy, as well as the ability to access files remotely even if the server in the office is down (due to maintenance, power cuts etc.). Off-site backup I'd recommend you use a UK-based firm to avoid any data privacy and protection issues, and check how resilient it is and that the providers' terms of business state that you retain data ownership.

An overall recommendation for moving the IT forward would really depend on what it is you want to achieve in doing it; give us a bit more information about what you need it to do, where you're trying to save money or improve the service, and how you use your IT on a daily basis (as well as what kind of Internet connection you have) and we'll be able to give a more detailed response.

Hope that helps!

Cheers

Ryan

 

[andygambles]

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[vjarjadian]

There are many things you could consider depending on exaclty what your problems are.

For the E-mail... I would recommend using hosted Exchange as well, even if only for keeping your E-Mail working should your server or internet connection fail. Also, if your sending files and accessing your E-Mails remotely... you will probably find that uploading things from your site is rather slow compared to a hosted solution.


As for the rest of the setup...

To move forward you would need to consider what your servers don't do at the moment that you want them to do.

Just because one of your servers is 5 years old, don't think it's useless... I've seen Windows NT Servers still working.

Are you using Active Directory in your offices? That would be one way to move forward if you were to easily support additional employees.

You said you have Site to Site VPN, do you have the servers setup to automatically move data between your sites so that in the event one is not usable... you can just move to the other site?

It's difficult to suggest things when you havent given a list of problems to solve. Moving forward could range from doing nothing... because your servers do everything you want to purchasing expensive software to do something you actually need or want from them in the future.

Just because something 'can' be done to improve your IT... doesnt mean you should do it. As long as your IT is 'Good Enough' for your business, everything is fine.

 

[gingerdad]

Thanks for that there are about 7 users at these two sites and three other users at a 3rd stie

To answer the issues currently we don't have any but the IT co we use is suggesting we need to upgrade the server at site 1, and we don't feel we need to but needed some other options, the main issue if the current server dies is e-mail. our main software to run the co is already net based and our accounts are run from a 3rd site.

 

[Quest Cloud Solutions Ltd]

While I'd love to try and up-sell you to a fully hosted cloud solution, I don't think you need it yet, especially given that the second server is fairly new. I'd suggest taking hosted Exchange mailboxes so that you can retire the old server, or re-purpose it as a fail-over machine should the newer one have problems. An email server for 10 users is really a cost you don't need.

There is scope to completely rip out and replace what you have with a fully hosted system, but there's no point doing that yet when you have good infrastructure on-site. Hosted mailboxes, on-line backup, and possibly a replicated file server in the cloud for resilience and redundancy and remote/home working?

 

[vjarjadian]

Considering you have 2 Servers and so few users... I dont know why your IT Co might be recommending a new server...

Ask them to tell you what value this new server will add to your business... how will it repay it's cost over using a server that is paid for and will continue to run for electricity cost and any repairs it needs...

As a certain youtube educator says... You can be 100% right, and 100% fired. They may be right that a new server may do things faster and better... but do you really need it as a business? chances are, if you have no IT problems... theyre getting close to being fired.

Your IT Company should base their recommendations to you based on what they know about your business and your budget and how much you trust them.

I know nothing about your business... but if your not running a AD Domain then your probably fine with just using those 2 servers as File storage. Set them up to mirror or sync the data between the 2 servers so if one blows up your fine... Make sure no data is stored on your workstations and then just backup the lot to an offsite storage provider...

Your E-Mail can be easily done on the web, where it will be faster and more reliable...

 

[gingerdad]

Thanks for all your feedback, you've given me some good thought especially e-mail, my thoughts where we are over covered.

will also look at the using the vpn to for back up of each others files.