Re: Small Business Server Replacement

Gene,

Many thanks for taking the time to reply... My plan is to setup a test server as you suggest; also many thanks for the advice regarding books - if i get stuck maybe you can ship one of your prebuilt ones over to the uk for us?

cheers

jim


ERACC wrote:
On Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:12:17 +0100
jim <jim@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I've recently started looking after a small business (8 workstations) that uses microsoft small business server - they are looking to expand to about 16 users and don't really wont to pay for the client access licenses for the extra uses.

Yep, can't blame them. Those pay per user licenses are highway robbery.
That is a lucrative business if folks do pay for them though. Even so it is
plain theivery.

I am considering getting rid of the sbs in favour of a linux system but apart running a linux desktop which i occasionally play with i have little experience in linux admin. The server is really used only as a file &
email (exchange with pop3 connector) server.

Does anyone have any ideas/opinions on whether this would be a good plan, what distro to use, whether i would be out of my depth (having little linux experience), etc.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

You are the only one who knows your skill capabilities. Sure you might can do
this but who else could tell you? I suggest trying to set up a new server with
what you want it to do and get one "guinea pig" user to agree to try it and
help get it working. Once you get it all working for one user then just add the
other users. In the interim keep the other users on the old system. Other than
the hardware and your time you are out no costs to do this.

As for the distribution to use one could make a case for almost any of them.
You are going to have to know Linux system administration and that is still done
best from the command line as the command line is always going to be more
powerful than any GUI for configuration and administration. That said, some
distributions offer Webmin and you might want to give those higher
consideration. Webmin is an administration tool that runs a browser interface.
It works pretty much the same no matter which distribution one chooses. One can
use Webmin to configure the system then go look at the plain text configuration
files to learn what is done to them.

http://www.webmin.com/

You still have to know about the daemons you want to configure and what needs
to be done. Setting up and administering a server is non-trivial. In your case
it appears you need SAMBA, a MTA (sendmail or postfix or qmail or ...) and a
POP3 daemon like courier. I've set up sendmail and postfix and like both.
However, in my experience sendmail is much more configurable and thus has a
steeper learning curve. But Webmin does give you a GUI interface to do the
configuration. Plus Webmin can be configured for use across the LAN, WAN or
Internet.

You might want to get some "dead tree" books to study and have on hand when you
start working with SAMBA and your choice of MTA. I suggest some or all of these:

Using Samba by Gerald Carter; Robert Eckstein; Jay Ts
http://www.anrdoezrs.net/email-2546588-42121?isbn=0596007698

sendmail by Bryan Costales; Claus Assmann; George Jansen
http://www.anrdoezrs.net/email-2546588-42121?isbn=0596510292
--- AND ---
sendmail Milters - A Guide for Fighting Spam by Bryan Costales; Marcia Flynt
http://www.anrdoezrs.net/email-2546588-42121?isbn=0321213335
--- OR ---
Postfix - The Definitive Guide by Kyle D. Dent; Wietse Venema
http://www.anrdoezrs.net/email-2546588-42121?isbn=0596002122

If your current system also provides DNS then you should get:

DNS and Bind by Cricket Liu; Paul Albitz
http://www.anrdoezrs.net/email-2546588-42121?isbn=0596100574

If you are in the market for a new server with Linux preloaded and ready to
configure my company builds those with the choice of several top distributions
from which to choose:

http://shopping.eracc.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=38

HTH,
Gene (e-mail: gene \a\t eracc \d\o\t com)
.

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