Need some advice for small business
Hey everyone,My name is Andy and I own a small business. We get the small business package from microsoft so we get a license for home server, server 2008, win xp, vista, 7, etc. But we've never really fully utilized them. As we are growing, I'm attempting to consolidate things into a more professional style setup instead of just a bunch of home PCs. But I'm not totally up on my lingo. I see a post telling me where I can go to get how tos for lots of stuff, but I don't even know which to read. I'm a programmer, not a sys admin, so I'm asking you experts out there!here is our situation:2 desktops that are built into custom equipment that go out to the field. These each have one system drive and one drive dedicated to critical data. These are running XP. 3 workstations, one at my house, two at another location, mine is running XP, his are running vista and 71 laptop running vista (soon to be 7 though)And I'm building a computer to be our server. This computer is a very fast quad core i7, 12GB ram, etc. Way overkill for most server purposes, i know, but hang on.The first and most important thing is our critical data. It is gathered on one of the workstations at the other house and put in certain folders. Then it is manually synchronized using synchron X or something to the two field PCs. The two field PCs go out without network connectivity when they go, and they make some small edits to some files, come back, and eventually are synchronized back as well. Also we manually make a backup on an external drive that is partitioned in sucha way that it would be easy to install XP fresh, our application and replace the drive in one of the field PCs should they fail.So I really want to have my documents and everything available on any of the workstations. I believe this is a "roaming profile". So I need active directory I think. However, is it possible to make a roaming profile, but if the server is down or off or I'm out of network, still be able to access the files? I think I would have to click "make these files available offline" somewhere, but not sure entirely how that is done?This means I need a domain controller. So I was thinking about installing server 2008 on the super fast machine, but making it a multi boot computer so if I need to I can run a win 7 install and do whatever it is I need if I need speed. But when server 2008 is booted up, I could also run vmware server or something and boot the other partitions as virtual machines. This way hopefully my win7 install can act as my DVR too. (i'm mixing work and home life, but hey that's ok). But I really like windows home server because it has the disk management stuff, and I think I could join it to my server 2008 created domain, and eventually boot it up as a virtual machine because it doesn't need that many resources (in fact since it is only 32 I would never want to boot directly to it I think). But would it be possible to have WHS manage all the disks as a virtual machine?Basically i'm hoping I can install server 2008, win 7, and WHS on one machine, run server 2008 as a domain controller, then run the other two as virtual machines so that WHS manages storage for everything and backups, and then win 7 can record TV when I set it up to.This hinges on two ideas. One, that I can store the profile information for the romaing profiles in WHS as a virtual machine. This would also mean storing everyone's Documents folder too. Then I need to be sure that I can get to the files if the server machine is off. Also, I can still log in when the domain controller is down right??So what do you think I should do? Is this a good plan?
December 13th, 2009 7:59pm

I highly recommend that you do not proceed with the multi-boot option and mix business with pleasure on that computer, unless you feel highly confident that you will be able to manage that configuration long-term, through upgrades and udpates that may impact each other, which in turn, may impact your ability to service your business needs.In regards to making files available to your other computers, I would just create a "shared" folder, enable OFFLINE files (via the folder options), then from those workstations, map to those shares and configure them to "make them available when offline". Whenever the computers are on the network, they will automatically sync with the network folder. The edits will be managed by the system to prevent unwanted overwrites.The main purpose of "Roaming Profiles" in an Active Directory environment is to make the user's profile available no matter which domain computer the user logs into. I guess that would work if only one user is "using" the profile at any given time. Otherwise, if three people are using three different machines with the same profile, you wont be able to manage the edits when they connect back to the network. Roaming profiles right back to the location on the network when they log off/shutdown/connect back to make sure the latest profile is centrally stored.Offline Files/Sync DOES have the ability to manage the files when it detects files that have been modified or edited by the user. I would keep things as simple as possible to avoid trouble in the future. Visit my blog: anITKB.com, an IT Knowledge Base.
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December 13th, 2009 8:47pm

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