davidhodgkinson Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 Hi, can anyone help? We have a small LAN at work, running winXP and Win2k machines - non of the machines have a static IP address. One machine is on 24/7 as it receives all the faxes for the company. What I want to do is to make one pc a "mail server" that will pick up and send all the emails for the company. Then I would like all the other machines to be able to read the emails this server has and send replies/new mail if required. I DON'T want each machine to store the messages on them - ONLY on the server and I don't want to have everyone going to the "server" to type in a new email. Does this make any sense? If so is there a cheap solution Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silentandy Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 MS SBS 2003 Server comes with Exchange 2003 and isn't that expensive for a small amount of users, but it really depends on what you define as "cheap". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drpellypo Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 Xchange 2003 would suit you nicely. But as said, it's not pannies. A good investment though, as if your company grows, SBS will lap it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colly Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 SBS2003 isn't too expensive - around the £200-£300 mark. This will include the latest exchange. You will need a server rather than a desktop to take the load of mailboxes etc. (Dell are very cheap for low end servers). This would suit your requirements - all mail will be kept on the server in mailboxes for each user. You would then set up each client with outlook connecting to the server, also a good benefit of this way is security as all emails etc will be scanned on the server before delivered to the user (you will have to purchase this software seperatly but it is quite cheap). With the server in place you will need an network switch \ hub to connect the client machines etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colly Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 There is abit of work involved though with the inital setup - but if want more info let me know as I have just recently implemented a similiar network. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidhodgkinson Posted March 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 Good ideas. Cheap usually means free in our area (yorkshire) At the moment I can only use the current winxp machine as the "server". I don't expect that they will stretch to buying a true server machine as there will be 2 problems (both minor). 1)cost and 2) space. We have a very limited space available, so if I put in a true server, this machine will take the place of a current desktop. As such the server pc will need to be used as a day to day desktop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidhodgkinson Posted March 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 Thanks exchange looks ideal, but too expensive. Any other recommendations? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silentandy Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 Free = open source. Only problem is I can't think of any Windows based open source mail servers. There's lots for Linux of course! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisan Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 If you are on a budget, Linux is your friend. With the recent releases such as Fedora Core, or one of the White Label Enterprise Linux's, the software is completely free. I have setup dozens of Linux based mail-relays and mail-servers with anti-spam and anti-virus. They also make excellent firewalls, Internet gateways and web content filters. Of course MS SBS is a superb groupware solution. But for pure email, there ain't nothing better than Linux. Ask your average ISP. If you want any help or pointers, feel free to PM me. Cheers, Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidhodgkinson Posted March 17, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 Thanks ChrisAn, I'll look the linux route, I've never thought of that! I've got a suse version 8.2 in a box somewhere Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frodo Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 Interesting stuff I have been observing this thread. Exchange is an enterprise based solution although the SBS version may suffice. But do you just want a mail server or a collaboration solution to allow shared calendars, contacts, resource booking etc? Exchange will bite you if you don't invest in the hardware and out grow the intial design. RAID 1 for OS, RAID 1 for logs, RAID 5 for database and 1 hot-spare across all arrays that is a minimum of 8 disks. Plus a tape device say SDLT that is probably around £10K of hardware. But how much would it cost your company if you lost all historical mail and couldn't send and receive for a week? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silentandy Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 Frodo that's a bit OTT for just a small LAN with a few users though don't you think? You're quoting straight out of the MS recommended implementation, you don't actually need that to run it, if you did there would be a lot less installations of Exchange! You can install it on a single disk if necessary, I know of one office where it's run happily on a base spec proliant for nearly 6 years for 10 users without a problem. Of course a disk failure would be catastrophic, but the same could be said for any other cheap alternative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarMad Posted March 17, 2006 Report Share Posted March 17, 2006 I'd go for a fibre attached dual SAN with a couple of LUNs on each one... and MMmmm maybe not I think I might need some sleep. I think you need to have some resilience in the setup. A server with RAID5 or some simple mirroring should be more than enough with a good backup regime. Anything else for a small setup is probably over kill. I think its easy to see what enterprises do that small businesses really don't need and can't afford IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bison1379134007 Posted March 18, 2006 Report Share Posted March 18, 2006 Exchange, it sadens me to say, is actually quite a good groupware setup. However it is expensive and sometimes (ok i haven't used it since 5.5) can actually be quite hard to setup / maintain. I mean not hard if you're a geek but i wouldn't put it into a business that doesn't have a geek. We used to use mdaemon for small businesses http://www.altn.com/ It works very well and has imap support so you can let users store mail on the server and access it from there. Linux would be my solution. Its free and it Just Fecking Works. CentOS is the rebadged free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and would work a charm for what you're after. www.centos.org - however you will be on a steep learning curve if you've not used unix. You might be barking up the wrong tree though... how many users have you got and how much bandwidth? Why not just outsource it? It will be more reliable, usually cheaper and definitely less of a pain in the arse. If you need exchange for colaboration use someone like www.mailstreet.com (although you will have to archieve mail locally) and you don't just get a bunch of large mail boxes with an ISP and use IMAP and some kind of archieving setup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frodo Posted March 18, 2006 Report Share Posted March 18, 2006 Andy my point here is you deploy a messaging system on the cheap and then your business becomes reliant on it. As you say a single disk failure will be catastophic but it doesn't have to be. How many people then blame Exchange for the failure? Half the reason Unix is perceived to be more stable than Windows is becuase the systems are built properly. If you are going to run a business of any size on computer systems you shouldn't be running it on a "desktop". Now even a RAID SATA solution is fairly cheap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidhodgkinson Posted March 18, 2006 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2006 We will probably only have 3 users, currently I just backup the outlook files once a week as most of the emails are not critical anyway. Fingers crossed that it does'nt go pear shaped next week Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frodo Posted March 18, 2006 Report Share Posted March 18, 2006 Your doomed!! With that few users why not have a look at OutlookLive MOOL and just outsource and let someone else worry about backups, performance, etc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danksy Posted March 18, 2006 Report Share Posted March 18, 2006 Why not let someone else have the hassle of managing the backups and hardware for you? 1 and 1 do a package which for £8.99 per month gives you 700 mailboxes, virus scanning and spam filtering. Now thats cheap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IT_S8 Posted March 18, 2006 Report Share Posted March 18, 2006 Microsoft changed licencing of Exchange 2003 to make it more attractive for service providers to deliver Exchange on a per mailbox/ per month basis. Its MS's was of getting the punters in that couldn't normally justify a dedicated Exchange server or licences. Google for something like 'hosted exchange' and you'll find dozens of companies offering you an off site solution, so it takes no comms room space, power, cooling, support or backing up... look at the total TCO and it might be worth a look.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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