Setting up office network

[Glaith]

I have had an amazing opportunity arise to further my IT skills and just had a question.
My mate has gone and bought himself a metal fabrication business but the previous owners are taking the Computers and server etc.
He has asked me to be in charge of setting up a basic small network (one server and about 3 desktops).
Now I’m confident in setting it all up hardware wise and installing OS’s etc.
The only thing I don’t have skills in is stuff like Raids and mirroring drives and robocopy I think it’s called which is all stuff I can learn pretty quick while doing it.

I’ve been looking into office 365 as it looks very simple for this project have you got any input on using it?

 

Any tips would be amazing like 101 rules etc.

 

[GDRRiley]

just grab old i5 pc and add ssds for the desktops, for servers you can look at older dells and suppermico servers (wouldn't grab hp has to many issues)

[Akolyte]

I think I still need more info, like what do you mean by 365? The clients or SharePoint?  If you decided to go with Windows Exchange which would be very expensive but have benifits if it was a proffesional network with emails and such. 

If you go with Windows or Linux my advice is if you want to keep it cheap go with disk mirroring.  If you have two or more drives you can do a software raid 1 and have instant redundancy. 

 

If if I was in your position I would interview the stakeholders and get some basic info: Do they want a mail server, is it the company network, do they want web hosting internally, what services do they want. 

 

If your friend is willing to pay then setting up Active Directory, and getting Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint would give the business a lot of flexibility.   Otherwise you can setup the Linux side and use bind9 as a server and use an open source alternative to exchange.  This would be the cheapest option but wouldn't be as proffesional.  

 

Because this reply is getting long, you can ask any questions and I will try to answer. I'm not a professional I'm a computer network engineering student and currently managing a network used for game hosting, automated share hosting but we use all open source, no exchange or active directly.  All virtualised and Linux.   But I'm currently getting my MCSA so I will try to help with Microsoft too.  

 

Good luck, hope this helped.  

 

#EDIT-------

Sorry, my advice for server components is a core i7, 8GB is fine if you aren't gonna use it for too much, 16gb is good if you want to use Virtual machines for web hosting file hosting etc.  and otherwise you can buy a second hand server but building your own would give you the most flexibility because you can choose the components depending on what you need.  What about a switch, router?  VOIP? 

[Donut417]

45 minutes ago, Glathier said:

I have had an amazing opportunity arise to further my IT skills and just had a question.
My mate has gone and bought himself a metal fabrication business but the previous owners are taking the Computers and server etc.
He has asked me to be in charge of setting up a basic small network (one server and about 3 desktops).
Now I’m confident in setting it all up hardware wise and installing OS’s etc.
The only thing I don’t have skills in is stuff like Raids and mirroring drives and robocopy I think it’s called which is all stuff I can learn pretty quick while doing it.

I’ve been looking into office 365 as it looks very simple for this project have you got any input on using it?

 

Any tips would be amazing like 101 rules etc.

 

Hardware wise:

For raid get a raid card. While I have no experience in server hardware, I know for a fact you dont do software raid, or the raid built in the motherboard. 

Besides that I got nothing. 

 

Software:

What are you doing with Office 360? Because thats pretty much a subscription version of MS office. Should just have to set up the subscription and install. 

 

Networking: 

Because this is a business, you might want to look in to a business grade router. Ubiquiti is probably what your looking for. There stuff is very affordable, we all should know, because its the number 1 suggested router home/business wise on this site. 

 

You didnt mention anything about wireless. But if you do plan on setting up wireless, be smart and do a site survey first. See how the WiFi signals act in the building (using a router you might have on hand), then decided how many APs you will need. 

[Glaith]

Thank you for the advice, I have plenty of switches as I am a IT assistant for a bigger company at the moment I am just not the Admin, I am the eyes and ears for the Main guys up in head office so I get all the toys. I have 1gigabit switches im going to donate and have plenty of routers.

 

I dont need to worry to much about making it at an enterprise level as its very small business.

 

What i would like to set up is Server is king for all data with it automatically backing up data and emails to a NAS, also making it so each computer hooked up to network connects to an account to the domain that way there stuff is accessed on any computer depending on login

 

Im looking at windows server 2012 as its the one im familiar with.

[Glaith]

9 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Hardware wise:

For raid get a raid card. While I have no experience in server hardware, I know for a fact you dont do software raid, or the raid built in the motherboard. 

Besides that I got nothing. 

 

Software:

What are you doing with Office 360? Because thats pretty much a subscription version of MS office. Should just have to set up the subscription and install. 

 

Networking: 

Because this is a business, you might want to look in to a business grade router. Ubiquiti is probably what your looking for. There stuff is very affordable, we all should know, because its the number 1 suggested router home/business wise on this site. 

 

You didnt mention anything about wireless. But if you do plan on setting up wireless, be smart and do a site survey first. See how the WiFi signals act in the building (using a router you might have on hand), then decided how many APs you will need. 

With office 365 professional it comes with an online exchange meaning i do not need a physical one in a rack.

[Lurick]

For servers, look on ebay and the likes and see what you can get in the way of Dell R610, R620, R710, and R720s. They are all AMAZING servers both in terms of price to performance and noise. I've got two R620s in the closet in my bedroom and at night I don't hear anything from them.

 

For networking gear, Ubiquity is probably your best bet for a single solution.

[leadeater]

If you can avoid using any onsite servers at all then do that. Office 365 and Azure AD will take care of almost everything you need. Businesses that don't have a focus on IT tends to let servers go well beyond their recommended service life and get in all sorts of problems, design something where that is impossible.

 

 

[The Benjamins]

31 minutes ago, leadeater said:

If you can avoid using any onsite servers at all then do that. Office 365 and Azure AD will take care of almost everything you need. Businesses that don't have a focus on IT tends to let servers go well beyond their recommended service life and get in all sorts of problems, design something where that is impossible.

 

 

I seen this first have, I worked for a small engineering company of about 50 people, and the server/network/IT was god awful. I expected it to all crash any second.

basicly had 0 IT budget when everything was relying on it.

[Unhelpful]

16 hours ago, Donut417 said:

 

I'm going to dissect this a bit.

 

Hardware wise:

You don't always get a raid card, depending on your file system. Ex/ ZFS likes having full control. In that case you go for an HBA.

 

Software:

It's Office 365.

 

Networking:

It's a bit hard to call most Ubiquiti stuff business grade. Pro-sumer / small business, I suppose. I'm not against this recommendation at all for a small shop. I like mine quite a bit.

 

Just meant to nitpick a bit, sorry!

 

17 hours ago, Glathier said:

 

 

Honestly, I would recommend against on-site primary storage. I agree with @leadeater 100%.

[NZLaurence]

Like @leadeater said, office365 with SharePoint (any of the E plans) is a great combo for small businesses if you can swing it. Use Azure AD as well for a little fun.