Office Servers
From MissionTechWiki
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Description of Office Servers
An Office Server is simply a Server system used in an office, so covers a wide range of server types including
and so on
How are Office Servers used in Missions?
There are basically two types of servers
- Microsoft branded servers
- OpenSource/Linux based servers
Microsoft Servers
Open Source/Linux Based Servers
It is possible to use an Open Source server to perform any of the above functions.
SMEServer is a Linux based server based on a customised Redhat 7.3 installation which admirably performs those roles. Crosscape Technology Ltd supports a number of missions using SMEServer.
Issues with Office Servers
Backups
Tape Backups
Backups for office servers are vital, but it turns out that tape drives are comparatively expensive. There are some IDE based tape drives around, although the media is still expensive, and the amount of data held is small compared with the size of disk drives today.
CD/DVD Backups
CD & DVD backups have been popular, but are usually not suitable for server backups due to their limited capacity.
USB Disk Backups
Backing up to a series of USB disks is actually economical. USB disks are also effectively hot-pluggable, so the server does not need to be shutdown to install or remove the disk. Multiple disks are required to ensure that the latest good backup is not over-written.
Offsite Online Backups
With the availability of cheap, reliable internet connections it is now feasible to backup servers offsite. Apart from the initial setup, normally only changes are sent to the off-site server. However with Asymmetric broadband connections (eg ADSL) the upward connection speed can be quite low. It is also necessary to trust the backup provider. Cost is also a factor with most providers charging a siginicant amount.
Implementing your own offsite online backup system may be an option.
Backup Software
Symantec Backup Exec System Restore is a great option. The near-line images created can easily be restored to different hardware as well as to a VMWare virtual machine. A great way to ensure that even if hardware fails, you can have your server back up and functioning in a matter of hours rather than days. Server pricing starts at $1,100 retail and desktop is $70. Well worth it and recommened. Shawn - Missionary Tech Support
For smaller installations, especially laptops that might not always be conencted to a network, you may find Second Copy a good backup application. It will synchronise folders and disks across drives and networks. About USD30.00 per seat, less in quantity. Second Copy® is the perfect backup product designed for Windows 9x/Me/NT4/2000/XP/2003.... It makes a backup of your data files to another directory, disk or computer across the network. It then monitors the source files and keeps the backup updated with new or changed files. It runs in the background with no user interaction. So, once it is set up you always have a backup of your data somewhere else." David B
Another product that many missions are using is Crashplan. Crashplan has a free option where a donor/partner could host a crashplan server for their favorite missionary. The crashplan enterprise edition is not free, but is very cost-effective. These are more of a "data only" backup solution. Tim Young
Workstation Rebuilding
Along with backups of the server and workstation, there are interesting issues with having to rebuild computers. As a computer is used, it acquires programs and things that cause lots of slow-downs and other issues. Most techies have found that it is easier to rebuild computers regularly to keep them running at high efficiency. If most of the data is stored on the server (preferred) or on a data partition, the workstation can be rebuilt fairly painlessly. Especially if you use tools to capture a computer snapshot.
Ghost
Norton Ghost is one of the tools that will make a copy of a disk image. Once you have gone through all the effort of installing an operating system and all the programs, it is often very nice to be able to take a snapshot of the computer in that state. When you restore the computer, you will need to apply any security updates and install any additional software that might have been added to the tool-set since the image was created. But having backup images stored on a server hard-drive can make virus removal, or other odd issues that crop up much easier to repair. Many people will restore from image (taking 20 min) instead of trying to track down issues that could otherwise take many hours to figure out.
There are many other disk cloning tools that do the same thing as Ghost. Ghost was listed here simply for name-recognition.
FOG
FOG is a tool that takes disk imaging to the next level. For organizations that purchase their computers in bulk (more than one at a time and using the same or similar hardware), FOG is an incredible tool. It allows you to create one disk image and roll it out to multiple computers. It helps take care of renaming the computer once it has been built, as well as having tools for managing operating system licensing and other sticky issues that come up. If you find yourself needing to rebuild computers fairly regularly, look at FOG.
FOG comes as a virtual appliance, so you can roll it out fairly quickly for testing or actual use.
Disk Storage Arrays
Disk RAID arrays have been developed to increase size/ speed and/or availability of disk storage for server. Normally this is RAID 0 - striped, RAID 1 - mirrored, or RAID 5 - redundant data striping. See wikipedia: Redundant_array_of_independent_disks.
Disk Arrays can be SCSI SATA or Fibre Channel.
Different implementations and solutions using Office Servers
Hardware for Servers
See the article on Servers for help selecting hardware.