Small business - Shared storage & database

[Gnrl Kitty]

My family owns a small office based business and I'm the most tech savvy of us all.  They want me to setup something where they can all access the same customer information from their customer database and make changes and see other people's changes in real time.  I have almost zero knowledge about networking, so what should I be looking at to accomplish this?

[rufee]

Depends on how the information is stored, personally i would setup a MySQL database and whip up a quick php site to view the data.

There are other ways to do this as well.

[Gnrl Kitty]

Depends on how the information is stored, personally i would setup a MySQL database and whip up a quick php site to view the data.

There are other ways to do this as well.

Yeah... I have no idea what any of that means. :c

[d33g33]

How are they editing the customer data? a program, spreadsheets?

 

Have a look at the Synology products I highly recommend them and have one personally. I praised it enough I got my mate to switch from a QNAP and we bought 2 Synology NAS' that we ship all over the place for work.

 

If its a program and each PC is using a central datasource you might be able to just map a location on a NAS, dump the datasource there and point the program there and your laughing. You may need to deal with the program company and they can help you collate your data :)

 

Hopefully that give you some direction but if its a small operation it shouldn't be too difficult.

 

Cheers,

DeeG

[Raptus]

How are they editing the customer data? a program, spreadsheets?

 

Have a look at the Synology products I highly recommend them and have one personally. I praised it enough I got my mate to switch from a QNAP and we bought 2 Synology NAS' that we ship all over the place for work.

 

If its a program and each PC is using a central datasource you might be able to just map a location on a NAS, dump the datasource there and point the program there and your laughing. You may need to deal with the program company and they can help you collate your data :)

 

Hopefully that give you some direction but if its a small operation it shouldn't be too difficult.

 

Cheers,

DeeG

That would be a simple and good solution for a small company.

[ProGearUk]

If it is mostly just storage you are looking for then why dont you just have a 4 bay nas with some reliable hdd in it I suggest wd red 3tb drives and then hook the nas up to a gigabit switch and just run it all to the pc's that it is needed from