Question : What would be the best way to network my buisness

Hello,

I own a small, HVAC company in the Portland area with only five employee's at desks...i am wanting to network my business together for all the great reasons i hear about networking.

i have some sound knowledge in computers and therefore want to set it up myself because well being the boss gives me too much free time some days.

What i've done so far:
i have all my walls and outlets wired with Cat5e cable.
i have a linksys 8port switch 10/100:
   one port goes to my computer
   one to a tablet pc (at a docking station if its what you'd call it...i am looking to put to use the built in Wi-Fi it has soon)
   another to two other computers
   and another to a print server attached to my HP5200LaserJet
--we are all just Microsoft XP (some home some pro, i am looking to update all to pro to be compatible with future server software) network wizard networked, with the print server being the only one manually set.  We as of now are just going to each others computers shared folders to retrieve and give files...and we also are using QuickBooks and have it set up so that the file that all the computers QuickBooks open is the same file on one of the computers shared folder. that way any changes one makes, the rest receive when opening it.


What my plans are.
I am going to buy another workstation or two and am looking to buy a server for file storage and user management as i can think of now, they are all dell and i'm looking to put Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 on it.  We are mainly going to be using the network for office duties like invoices and word documents and spreadsheets, nothing high on performance requirements, but still what would you recommend i should get performance wise for my server.  (i was thinking in short: P4 ~2.6ghz | 1gb ddr400 | 2-80gb 7200rpm IDE hard drives)  

I've been using 56k for the limited internet we use for now because i've been waiting for a more cost effective internet access...but i put in an order and will get a T1 line sometimes this month (my industrial zone only has this option no cable/dsl :\ )

What i want and as of now will do is i will run the internet through the server which will act as my firewall that will then route it with the switch to the other workstations...i am also looking to create a intranet for communications purposes using my pretty good knowledge of html and php (i like to learn in my free time)

the reason i am posting a question is because what i am asking is, can any of you tell me what would be the most cost effective but also productive and in general best way for me to network my office, i am open to new ideas because i know only what i thought myself about networking so i am nowhere near in tune with all the capabilities my business has...  I am wondering if it is possible to run a program on the server, using the server's cpu and memory, and then having my users be able to use the program from their workstations (the program in question for now would only be QuickBooks Pro... I am also wondering if i would be able to access the server and maybe even if possible a workstation on the network from home using my internet access, if so is there some special way i need to go about setting up the network?...and last but not least, what is the best way for me and my employees to do our file sharing, we would be storing everything on the server, but is there a better way then the normal looking through folders to do it?...also with the server software (or do i need extra software)...can i control which users can access what files or folders?

I hope its ok to be asking so many questions at once, they are all related and i thought that asking them separately might get me answers that are all correct but maybe there is one great way to set my network up that ties everything together nicely, i made this question so many points simply because though not to difficult for many of you really smart guys, there’s a lot to answer.

Answer : What would be the best way to network my buisness

Hi Robert,

SBS has wizards for nearly all the management tasks you are going to want to complete.  With regard to joining the clients to the domain

- once you have your server set-up and you have installed AD and i would recommend installing DHCP - you can specify that your server is the DNS for the clients as part of the DHCP Scope.  To join th eworkstatiosn onto the domain the easiest was is to log-in to the workstationas an administrator and right click on My Computer > go to Properties >go to Computer Name > click on Change - and enter your domain name of the SBS server in the domain box - as long as your client is getting its dns distributed by dhcp form the server it should be able ot find the server and then the server will take you through creating a computer account and adding the workstation to the domain using the Domain Admin password.

The next time you re-boot you will have the option to log-on to your domain.

You will need to create new user accounts on the SBS Server for all your users - as the domain will handle the centralised authentication once the clients have been joined.

You can also controll the permissions each employee has from there.  

With SBS you need a CAL for every simultaneous user connected to the server - you can have as many users on the server as you want, however only 5 poeple will be able to log-in concurrently if you buy the base package.

With regard to assigning permissions the easiest was is to create groups and make the appropriate users members of the group.  Then give the group the appropriate permisisons on the resource - be it the printer, file share etc.

SBS will do the software mirroring - however i would agree with Pete and really recommend a hardware RAID card - it is a relatively low cost to and it removes the mirroring load from the server and reduces your dependancy on the software.

I can appreciate your need for off-site back-up, I would recommend using a smaller tape drive a DDS3 is only 12/24Gb but it would cover your system files and given your rather low predictions on file size should be more than adequate.

This would be alot safer and smaller carting home daily - also if you back-up daily then you have 5 attempts to restore - 1 for each daily tape rather than 1 attempt from the removable HDD.

Pete - SBS is the same as 2000 for most things - it's only the CALs and some of the interrelated things where it's different.  All the file permissions / user accounts etc are all the same. - Its the interdomain things which got limited, and the maximum No of clients (50 in sbs2000, 75 in sbs2003)

Aid