Best IT-infrastructure For a Small Company? 600
DiniZuli writes "I've been employed by a small NGO to remake their entire IT-infrastructure from scratch. It's a small company with 20 employees.
I would like to ask the /.-crowd what worked out best for you and why? I came up with a small list:
Are there any must have books on building the IT infrastructure?
New desktops: should it be laptops (with dockingstations), regular desktop machines or thin clients? A special brand?
Servers: We need a server for authentication and user management. We also need an internal media server (we have thousands of big image and video files, and the archive grows bigger every year). Finally we would like to have our web server in house. Which hardware is good? Which setup, software and OS'es have worked the best for you?
Since we are remaking everything, this list is not exhaustive, so feel free to comment on anything important not on the list."
Do my job please. (Score:4, Insightful)
Can someone else please make the first post for me?
Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why did they hire you when you don't know what you're doing?
Don't want to be rude or flamebait but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:3, Insightful)
Media server? How about S3. Web server? How about EC2. Seriously, why spend time and $ on procuring, powering, cooling, backing up, and upgrading all that gear? Give everyone a laptop and a gmail account. Put the rest in a public cloud.
Kinda like instead of hiring an IT guy to redesign the infrastructure, you can just post the question to /.
Seriously.. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you have to ask, they've obviously hired the wrong person. You're talking about a very small network with very basic needs.. If you can't do that without having someone hold your hand, you're most definitely in the wrong field.
Re:Why do you want to keep webserver inhouse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternatively, pay someone $50-$500 dollars a year for the same. It's a no-brainer unless you've got some really, really pressing reason.
What are the user requirments? (Score:1, Insightful)
Is it a mobile population? What applications are they running? What propitiatory software are you running (or will you be running)? What is the budget?
The list goes on. For the client end looking at what the users are doing will give you the answer. If they are running million plus record pivot tables or doing 3d graphic design... thin clients are probably out of the question. What would be interesting is possibly looking at software as a service solutions for the "business applications" and you mentioned media applications. Reducing the IT support by focusing on that/those application(s).
As for the backend server if you are just going for a file/web server, go with Apache, linux, I am assuming there is a database somewhere in there (hopefully it is MySQL or Postgres or something cross platform). If it is high I/O plan for that. There really isn't any mystery to this.
Bottom line - pay attention to the business requirements. If you don't then, frankly your an idiot.
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:4, Insightful)
The way most people work today, that's the case whether the server is in your building or not.
Few things to consider (Score:5, Insightful)
First off is keep it simple. The simpler the better. This is not an enterprise, they don't have a lot of people to call on for support. So don't build anything complex.
I probably wouldn't bother with central authentication unless there's a reason, just do it per computer. Ask yourself what it gains you to have. If the answer is just "simpler administration" then don't use it. 20 computers is not a problem to administer without it, particularly since not everyone logs in to all computers. However the central servers are a point of failure, a place for problems.
Also have someone else host all your servers unless a file server is needed. There are plenty of good server hosts out there. For the web, depends on what you want. Pair is a top notch web host I used for many years. Top flight quality in every regard. Hostgator is who I use now to save some money and I'm perfectly satisfied. It works well, is reasonably fast, and they don't bitch that I do like 100GB of traffic a month.
For an internal file server, something simple and reliable. A computer with RAID-5 or RAID-10. Make sure to do offsite backups. An easy option for that is Acronis Trueimage. Great backup program and they will do network backups for a fee. It can encrypt the backup so no security issues. If their service is too expensive, use the software to backup to external HDDs and lock them in a safe or something.
Thin clients: You must be joking. Don't do thin clients unless you understand it well and are willing out lay out a lot of cash to make it reliable. Remember that if a desktop crashes, gets corrupted, whatever one person can't work. If the tin client server goes down EVERYONE can't work. There are some situation where they make sense. If you aren't experienced enough to know when don't use them (yours isn't one BTW).
As for computers, get something from a major supplier. Dell or Lenovo are my recommendations. They don't have an in house IT department they can't really be faffing about with repairs. Get them from someone that'll do onsite service and get a nice long warranty (unless you are sure they'll be replaced sooner). Make sure that there is a company out there that backs up the hardware that people can just call to have shit fixed.
Desktops vs laptops depends on the usage. If the intent is that these are used in the office, then desktops. They are cheaper to purchase, cheaper to find repairs for out of warranty, and harder for someone to walk off with. Don't get a laptop unless there's a real need to get a laptop. If people are going to be walking around with them for work reasons then fine, though it still might be good to have a desktops as well in case they forget their laptops at home or lose them or something.
For OSes, depends on your needs. I'd say Windows unless you have a reason not to. Yes, yes I know MS evil and MS tax and all that jazz. Forget all that. These computers are tools to get a job done, the users don't care past that. Get them the best tools for the job. That will probably mean Windows for running MS Office, and for working with media since Linux tends to fall down in that department. Only do Linux if you are sure it will meet their needs (and by sure I mean you've tested it) and they can get the support they need.
In general I'd stay away from Macs. They cost more per unit, and they are not good with business support. Their idea of support is generally "Take the system to a store, we'll look at it and get it back to you." Fine for a consumer, not for a business. For a business you want "I call you and a tech shows up tomorrow with all the parts to fix it." Only go with Macs if you have a real reason and if you can't think of one, then you don't have one.
Remember to keep pragmatism in mind above all else. Get people the tools that do the job they need. That is all computers are to non computer people is tools. You are just being asked about expensive hammers or saws or the like. Your job is to figure out what they need, what will do the job the best, what can be th
Re:Ask Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask Slashdot: Why do your job when you can ask others to do it for you?
Why indeed?What reasonable motivation could he have to poll a well-established base of computer experts for advise? Could it be that an infrastructure is a hard thing to get perfectly right? Maybe up-front decisions made right will negate hours of work and wasted productivity down the line? Remember those security and infrastructure failings we've been so critical about all these years? Those clueless IT guys who screwed up royally and condemned employees and management to countless hardships? Maybe he doesn't want to end up in that position... maybe he wants to do things right?
That lazy bastard!
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:4, Insightful)
I did exactly this when building out my recent company. Google mail service is fairly good, but hosted exchange is far better in terms of operating like a normal company with blackberries, etc. We outsource our web serving also. We basically have a fileserver and a pair of ADS boxes for inside services, and a redundant Internet connection.
Re:It sure is getting CLOUDY (Score:2, Insightful)
Am I the only person who doesn't trust the cloud? I want my data where I can physically touch it (well, physically touch the media, that is).
Maybe it's because I recently lived through a year with very spotty internet access (in the middle of a city), and anything on the cloud could only be accessed for a few hours every week. And with the internet disconnections for downloading songs, putting anything you need on the cloud seems like a really bad idea to me...
Re:Did anyone else read this thread as.. (Score:2, Insightful)
"IT is for failed engineers anyways"
A bold statement on Slashdot where IT is a large part of the community. Oh but I see you posted as Anonymous Coward...
Re:Do my job please. (Score:3, Insightful)
The first question to ask the NGO management and staff is: What applications or functionality is required? Who hires these bozos who subsequently post to ./ asking for information about how to do their job? Egad, Master Richie!
Re:Ask Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:3, Insightful)
And when Joe Farmer runs his backhoe through your Fiber line? Send everyone home for the day? Tell your clients that their media is stuck on Amazon?
And how often does that happen? Often enough to pay for server hardware, power, cooling, upgrades every 18 months, backups, and sysadmins to run it all?
Re:Don't go cheap with hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember - they wont be paying corporate rates for MS products. The difference is huge.
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:5, Insightful)
Great idea, except:
1) S3 performance is poor. You've got to pay a LOT for performance.
2) Non-hardware (administration) costs are still going to be the same.
3) Cloud services are dependent upon connectivity. Which do you trust more: no link failure in thousands of miles of cables, fiber, and networking equipment, -or- the volatility of your local network and attached storage systems? You will need at least 2Mbit of low-latency throughput for something like this.
4) You will need redundant outside-network links. This may not even be possible in his locale, and if it is, there's no guarantee something upstream won't die (and in many places, the certainty of something failing upstream is fairly high due to shared carrier).
5) Are connections of sufficient throughput and latency even locally available? There's no mention of things like: mail use, type of work performed, etc. What if they do CAD work? What if they do a lot of email with attached documents? Graphic or sound work? These are use cases which are horrible for cloud computing.
That's just a starter list. It's suitable for some purposes, but for most day-in and day-out stuff, it is not good as a primary source of IT infrastructure.
For general purpose daily cloud computing, S3 isn't even a good/best option.
As for the OP... this guy should obviously not be in IT. The most notable thing missing from his list is: competent and experienced IT personnel. Obviously this was not considered as a requirement by those paying the bills, but it is important.
Hint: use requirements are the first thing to consider. Everything is based off of that. The vendors picked depend on experience and available purchase agreements. What I do for 90% of my customers will likely be a poor fit for many of your customers. And so on.
Fucking amateurs. They make us MSPs look bad.
Laptops only when needed (Score:4, Insightful)
If you like the idea of people taking their work home do you accept the increased costs of lost and stolen laptops and the decreased lifespan that frequent travel brings? Is your data secured on an encrypted volume? Even if IT creates an encrypted volume are users actually using it rather than saving files to the unencrypted desktop? Have you planned training to address this sort of issue?
When traveling overseas these lost/stolen concerns magnify. Furthermore is there anything on the laptop that your country does not allow to be exported or anything that the visited country does not allow to be imported? Perhaps even that state-of-the-art encryption software you normally use has export/import issues. Not to mention the "personal" folders where porn was downloaded. Have you planned training to address these issues? Even when a laptop is clean customs may hang on to it for some reason, its fully within their power to do so. Will having a person lose their day-to-day computer be an issue?
When a person takes work home are they on the clock? Do you live in a jurisdiction where unpaid overtime is becoming more and more of an issue even with salaried people? You may be setting your company up for an unpaid overtime lawsuit once someone becomes unhappy and quits. I've seen it happen. I've seen companies in California switch all their engineers and lower level of management from salary to hourly due to this sort of thing.
The list goes on
Laptops can be great and they can be required while traveling. Perhaps have a few than can be checked out on rare occasions when people *must* work at home or travel. Have them copy only what they need for that day or trip, and wipe the laptop when returned.
Re:We need details! (Score:2, Insightful)
get a couple of Apple BaseStations
You're seriously advising a business to use consumer grade wifi? I don't use wifi, but if i was forced to, it would be on a different VLAN from the company and secured to the hilt and with a RADIUS box, not WPA2.
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:4, Insightful)
GMail? Nothing wrong with that... as long as you don't mind all your internal memos being examined by data-mining software.
S3? Cool. Let's just put the video about our upcoming IPO on somebody else's servers, where others can have access to it.
EC2? Yep. All of your financial reports and graphs will look just great coming from somebody else's data store.
Okay, so I'm being a bit sarcastic. But not much. I wouldn't care much if it weren't for the fact that we know they actually do mine data.
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Baloney. Use SME Server [theregister.co.uk] or Zentyal [theregister.co.uk]. I run a nearly identical organisation and my headaches have been significantly reduced since we stopped relying on Windows servers.
And to all those who derided the OP for asking others to do his job for him: This is why you ask others' opinions: because sometimes what you think you know isn't always true.
Re:Ask Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Why indeed?What reasonable motivation could he have to poll a well-established base of computer experts for advise?
Maybe they should just hire one of these "computer experts" who knows the answer instead of someone who can't even seem to use Google?
Seriously, they're paying him to get the job done. If he doesn't know how to find this information for himself and make an informed decision, he should not have accepted the job in the first place.
Let someone who has the requisite knowledge have the job (or contract) and get the job done using well established procedure and expertise.
Even if he does know, he should come to the table with options and ideas and ask (say, on a forum) for some expert opinions about specific products (or at least brand names/vendors!) This shows that you have at least done some homework.
Re:Just remember (Score:4, Insightful)
These days, bloated Microsoft solutions, Oracle, long-term service contracts, etc. are just plain foolish, unless you have lots of money to just toss around.
For 20 people, you only need 1 good server for all your internal needs, unless it's a software development house and the server gets hit heavily. 20 people? No need for video streaming. Just link to the video file.
Of course for serving web pages OUTWARD, to the public, you should have a separate server. That's another matter and has as much to do with security as anything else. But it can still be set up with Apache, which is relatively simple and is the most used server software in the world. Yes, even counting Microsoft.
You are not alone (Score:2, Insightful)
Should a company really put proprietary or sensitive information in the "cloud"? Is trusting your data to a remote location with a 3rd party, and thus constantly transmitting and retransmitting the data, really the best solution rather than maintaining your own infrastructure?
For a company that has no such data, the "cloud" may be a viable solution. However, when I routed my university email to gmail for my smartphone (since it did push, rather than pull every 15 minutes), I remember my bosses musing. He said he wondered how the university would feel if all their sensitive research (research = $$$ through grants and IP rights, and thus means new data is as vital as those bits representing your bank account balance) was placed on a service that scanned them for ad words - especially those departments involved with research with Microsoft or other rival companies. Although I do no research at my university, his point came across loud and clear. Its all about how much do you and should you trust the 3rd party "cloud" services.
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:3, Insightful)
And when Joe Farmer runs his backhoe through your Fiber line? Send everyone home for the day? Tell your clients that their media is stuck on Amazon?
Easy! Just fall back on your emergency operations procedure (likely involving paper) until service is restored.
You do have an emergency ops procedure, right? /., at least? :-p )
(Or you will after another next ask
Let's stereotype! (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, NGO = NON Governmental Organization = tree hugging PC hippies who have no clue. They'd only hire people based on their ability to fit some diversity requirement because no honest government would ever hire them... governments hire only the most competent and skilled people, which is why all US citizens are so happy with every government agent they ever encountered and why they support the government taking over all sectors where private businesses operate.
Yeah, I took your trolling and jumped full force into the flames. My point is this: with so little information on the original poster you shouldn't assume anything about their qualifications. After all, you wouldn't want me to profile you as a racist due to a single post that seems to indicate you believe that certain people can only be hired for their "stylish" qualities and those "stylish" attributes mean they are not qualified or skilled to perform a job.
I'm okay with it (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a public forum, we're all volunteers here.
Personally, I'm okay with the occasional "Help me with best practices" post. I wouldn't want to read that stuff all the time, but it adds to the mix, when taken in small measures. Keeps me in touch with developments outside my immediate interests. Sometimes generates lively debate. Maybe helps other readers in the process, benefits the general welfare.
If you want to blame anyone, blame Slashdot editors for publishing this kind of thing.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do my job please. (Score:5, Insightful)
Twenty people? Talk to each and every one of them about what THEY need. Then, and only then, worry about IT infrastructure.
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:3, Insightful)
But the obvious answer is redundancy [cisco.com] with physical diversity, of course -- regardless of where your IT infrastructure is hosted.
Re:Just remember (Score:5, Insightful)
And tbqh having used Calc, I tend to agree-- Calc really is no replacement for Excel for serious usage (though I use it for my once-a-week time accounting). There are times to avoid MS, but I would be INCREDIBLY cautious about thinking you can install Linux+OOO everywhere and have everyone be OK with it. You may find your solution replaced just as quickly as you are.
And lets keep in mind this is ask
Re:Just remember (Score:3, Insightful)
"You may find your solution replaced just as quickly as you are. ... And lets keep in mind this is ask /.. We dont know what this guys company does, or if they have other vendors that provide web interfaces requiring IE-"
I agree. BUT I can only give opinions on what I would do, given certain assumed circumstances. If I tried to give advice on every possible contingency, I would be either writing forever or not at all.
But as for usability, I simply disagree. Sure... someone in Word Processing will prefer Word because that's all they ever learned and they have used it for 10 years. Anything else is a challenge they don't want to take. But that's their failure. It's not a reflection on the software. And I could say the same thing about Calc. Can you give me examples of things that it doesn't do as well as Excel? I have no doubt there are a few things but my guess is they are in fact few. Note that when I say "as well as", I mean is the functionality there? I'm not asking which one you personally prefer. We already know that.
As for ugly: who cares? It's an office, not a beauty contest. If you judged employees in the same manner, you could wind up in court or in jail. It's supposed to be the functionality that matters.
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:3, Insightful)
I know of several insurance companies across 5 counties that have been essentially using "the cloud" for a long time (before it ever was popular).
well, actually, they were using web based applications from either their parent offices or the actual provider to obtain rates and set up policies. It's the same thing as the cloud concept as all they needed to do it route to those select locations.
Anyways, I can count several times a year in which either their electricity, internet, or something along those lines upstream, has prevented the offices from doing anything productive for a day or more. And when speaking with one of the reps, this seems to be something of a common thing that they just accept.
The cloud doesn't make sense for small to medium businesses because the type of investment needed to ensure productivity and negate any of those issues is more then they would save (power generator, back up internet, and so on). When your business is placed in a situation where someone crashing into a telephone pole across town or some hilljack decided to dig a drainage ditch 10 miles away will shut down most all productivity, it's not a good thing. When your business is large enough that a work stoppage causes losses greater then the costs of maintaining a generator or having a separate and redundant internet routed differently then the other, then it makes sense.
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:5, Insightful)
far better in terms of operating like a normal company with blackberries, etc.
How Smartphone Users See Each Other [androidandme.com]
His question begs more questions -- do his employees travel? Do they stream video? Do they do heavy processing? What OSes do their applications run best on? Can you virtualize OSes or will that overhead affect the heavy-duty nature of the applications? Do you have the know-how to build your own central authentication service using LDAP, Kerberos, etc? Or would you better served with an Active Directory? And would it make more sense to pay for Cloud-based AD from Microsoft rather than maintaining in-house servers? How much people-power do you have for IT?
You just have to know the right questions to ask, then your infrastructure defines itself.
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't buy any servers. Use the cloud. (Score:1, Insightful)
Searching encrypted data, however, _is_ rocket science.
Re:Do my job please. (Score:1, Insightful)
What's so insightful about these comments? Somebody asks a question, you have the option to skip it. Some of us would like to learn from the experience of others.
You can't DO his job for him anyway. He still has to implement everything, learn what he doesn't know, and support whatever is left. Don't be a smug nerd atop a smelly high-horse. You had to learn at some point too and chances are good somebody helped you out as well.
Re:Just remember (Score:3, Insightful)
Sending out OO files is only slightly less stupid than sending out MSOffice files. (Exactly the cost of an Office licence less stupid)
Thats what pdf is for.
And for collaborative work, you need to discuss a software platform first anyways.
Re:Few things to consider (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy or not, central auth is absolutely, 100% essential in this case (as in most others). Let's consider the facts:
* NGO
* 20+ Employees
* It's an explicit requirement from TFA
Not having central auth in this case could be disastrous...
What if they ever want to expand beyond 20 employees? (Nevermind that 20 is more than enough to justify central auth)
What if they ever need to be PCI compliant?
What if they already need to be compliant with government security policies?...or compliant with security policies of private-sector affiliates?
How do we know that poor security isn't the reason they are scrapping their old network?
What if they actually do care about "simpler administration", as the GP puts it?
What if they need to apply for business continuity insurance?
Re:Just remember (Score:3, Insightful)
You're a few years behind. MS Office works great on Win and OSX, makes PDFs straight from "save as" dialog, and costs less than half a day's employee cost (often north of $75/hr, burdened) - which is barely enough to show them that 90% of their stuff sill work as usual, and that the other 10% either doesn't exist or works differently/is incompatible with all the legacy documentation they have.
As for worrying about someone going to a shop with linux on the desktop (the only place where Office doesn't exist natively), the linux fanbois have been touting for years that you can run practically anything under wine, with the right tweaks, right?
Linus for file services, hell yes. OO for the desktop; only if it's a from-scratch operation, everybody is working for free, and you have no startup capital.
Someone has to apparently (was:Do my job please.) (Score:5, Insightful)