Ask Slashdot: Uses For a Small Office Server? 260
ragnvaldr writes "I'm the 'IT guy' for an office of about a dozen people. And when I say IT guy, I mean I'm the only one here who can use google well enough to figure out how to make things work. We have a 500GB Mac server with a Drobo with 6TB of storage attached. So far all this server does is back up data, and I want to make it a little more useful. We also have a Filemaker server on it, which I have yet to learn how to use at all, let alone efficiently. Any suggestions to make this machine a little more useful?"
In my experience... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hire a professional... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hire a professional... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm sure a 12-person office has an extra 100k sitting around for an IT guy.
Needs based approach (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds to me like you haven't identified a business need and are fishing for one. Wouldn't it be better to look at how the business operates and from there see if there is something that can be done more efficiently? If there is, then ask yourself how this server can be used to address that problem. A server can do a lot of things, but don't look at those things and try to force it on the business when the need doesn't necessarily exist. It may create more problems then it solves.
If what you are really looking for is something to play with, then Filemaker sounds like a great place to start. It could be your introduction to databases. Once you understand the power of databases, you may find areas of the business that might benefit from a database. But until you have the knowledge, you aren't in a position to implement and support one. Just remember, if you're going to play with something, don't do it on a production server. Backups are a real business need. Even if that is the only thing the box is used for, it is a perfectly good reason for its existence.
Re:MAC Server?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? It's doing backups, and it's a full-fledged Unix machine.
Re:In my experience... (Score:4, Insightful)
But when you're as inexperienced as this individual is, sometimes you have needs that you don't even recognize, and which you may be able to solve with the resources already available. Clearly he shouldn't be trying to make it something it isn't, but they may not realize that there are easy fixes out there to problems they have in the office and simply put up with at the moment.
Re:Hire a professional... (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't that at all. I've worked in the field and taken plenty of calls from guys like this. Guys who thought, yeah, I know just enough to be dangerous, let's see what I can do. Then he's sitting there, no backups, no duplication of media, nothing to keep his ass out of the frying pan, and then he's on the phone to me because he's got some hot project that he needs the system for and it suddenly becomes my priority to unfuck the mess he's in.
Either way, he should call the pro. It's cheaper if he calls before he fucks everything up beyond belief.
You non-science, non-engineering types, especially in IT, love to exaggerate and use pontificating language. You clearly don't mean "fucks everything up beyond belief" because it's a meaningless phrase that you picked up from your stupid colleagues in IT. "nothing to keep his ass out of the frying pan" -- is that really necessary? Get to the point and move on.
How hard are backups? rsync, RAID, different storage media, onsite and offsite backups, and cost / benefit analysis to defend the choices. Some of it will be subjective (the "benefit" of something is obviously difficult to gauge and liable to debate). You could suggest some points of reference. That's what every good scientist and every good engineer I've met does -- because they know their worth is not limited to learning some quirks about programs. They design and build stuff. They often debug it. The bad ones constantly overstate their worth and present themselves with a really irritating know-it-all attitude. The bad ones think that by communicating their ideas and helping others out, they are risking job security. The good ones help others learn how to learn. The good ones demonstrate that they know their stuff and understand their worth is not rooted just in knowledge or wisdom, but also in interpersonal skills, often overlooked or downplayed in STEM fields.
I used to be like you in high school. I had worked at a few Fortune 100 companies as a coder / sysadmin type and I didn't realize my douchiness until I left the field in college for computer science, electrical engineering, physics, and chemistry. I know my comments sound a bit harsh, but maybe my tone may make you reevaluate how you behave.
Re:Hire a professional... (Score:4, Insightful)
Call the pro?
Call him for what? If you don't have a problem and you "call a pro" you're going to get a solution you didn't need for a problem you didn't have.
You have this backwards. First he comes to slashdot to figure out how to make it useful, once he's done that only THEN can we tell him to hire a pro.
Admittedly there are many people who follow your model of thinking. They invariably end up spending the rest of the year figuring out where all the money went while reading their emails on an iPad sitting next to their computer.
Re:Wrong way around (Score:5, Insightful)
It's generally better to start a project from "I want to accomplish [x], so what do I need?" rather than "I have [x], so what can I accomplish with it?" The first approach will be much more focused and more likely to succeed.
Rubbish. That is waterfall methodology all over.
Sometimes you don't know what you want to accomplish until you know what is possible. The problem with technology is that many people don't ask for what they want because it has never occurred to them that it is possible. They don't even know what they want because they cannot articulate a need that they have no words or concepts for.
Looking at what is possible can help someone to clarify their real needs and desires. That is what this guy wants. A few hints about what is possible, about what other people are doing, not a sanctimonious lecture about the need to define your goals at the start of a project.
Re:Hire a professional... (Score:2, Insightful)
I second this, a good small business I.T. consultant/contractor can be hard to find, but if you find a good guy a few hours of his time could save you a lot of headaches. My former boss who had small business specializing in networking for small businesses probably could set everything up for a business your size in a few days.
Yeah, and then nobody in the office has the knowledge and or the ACCESS to fix even the tiniest little thing, and so someone (or everyone!) sits around for a whole day (minimum!) while the 2-person "IT consultancy" gets time to get around to you.
In fact, that's why I ended up doing IT for the firm I worked as an embedded developer for. We had an outside IT firm. But their response times kept slipping and slipping, and I kept getting collared by the secretarial (and other) staff as I walked in the door "Can you fix my printer?" "Can you help me find a file?" "I don't think the backups ran last night." Et frickin' CETERA, 'til suddenly one day it became actual company policy to call me before calling the IT consultants.
Yeah, I know about you guys, and have the battle scars to show for it.
As they say, "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want."
I got more than my share of IT "experience" that way...