Often thought of as the exclusive
province of larger firms, almost all businesses can benefit from the
installation of a fileserver. The benefits might not be as
readily apparent as for some other kinds of IT investment, so
let's first of all take a look at the kind of setup found in a typical
server-less small office, and see where this goes wrong:
Peer Sharing: Chaos in a handy-sized package.
Microsoft's Windows OS heavily promotes this method of working- that
is, the sharing-out of data from your personal "My Documents" folder to
other users on the local network. Smaller networks often tend to
start-off this way. While this at
first sight seems like a very flexible approach -and it has several
major drawbacks. The most obvious is the lack of control over who
can access what, and where. Security is at best minimal, at worst,
nonexistent.
The maintenance costs of a peer-sharing group tend to be high. Consider
a group of five peers; if each user wishes to access the "My Documents"
folder of his chums, then that particular computer will need to make
four 'connections' to the other computers. Five people need
to do this, so in total 4x5 or 20 connections need to be
established. For ten peers, the maximum that Windows supports,
you would need to establish 90 'connections' between computers.
If any of these connections cannot be established, or fails, it
may cause considerable nuisance. The high number of posts on the
Microsoft helpdesk-forum relating to peer-sharing underlines the fact
that maintaining a network of this kind is akin to a plate-spinning
exercise. Or, to use a Scottish analogy, a bit like painting the Forth
Bridge. IT staff will spend a large part of their working day
dealing with reports like "Computer B can see computers A,D and E, but
not computer C" and the like.
Poor Security
On a peer-network, each person wishing to use a computer must
have an account (with logon-name and password) on each and every
computer they wish to use. Thus for ten computers, and ten users
wishing to log-on at any computer, there will be one hundred
user-accounts to set-up and manage. Clearly this is
impractical, and the usual workaround is to dispense with security,
such that users do not need to log-on, but instead just switch-on
and go. Either that, or it is simply accepted that no-one but the
regular user can access any particular computer. This
obviously creates problems if a user is sick or on vacation.
Thus, peer-networks will invariably have poor security,
with little to prevent unauthorised access to data, and no way of
tracking users' activities, either.
No Backups
More seriously, with the data stored on personal computers,
the onus to back-up that data falls onto the users of those
computers - and the one thing you can be absolutely sure of, the chore
of backing-up will soon be forgotten about. When a serious data
loss occurs, chances are that no-one will know who was supposed to be
backing-up that data, let alone whether any backups were actually done.
In fact, a major data-loss incident is often the trigger for
investigating the purchase of a server.
Advantages of a Server:
With data stored in a central location, it is much easier to find the
document you're looking for. Plus, centralised storage gives you
the option to categorise documents according to job, customer or
function, instead of by username. Any user can access any document to
which they have security rights, without requiring access to another
user's computer.
A server will typically have some means of automated backup. Often
this will be a tape drive. This would normally perform the
backups out-of-hours. This avoids slowing the system whilst
work is in progress, and ensures that all documents which have
been properly closed at end-of-work are included in the backup.
An important feature of server backup is its rotational nature.
That is, there should be several copies of critical data,
the replacement-cycle of which should allow for a lost
file to be recovered, even if its loss is not immediately noticed.
Users will authenticate to the server instead of logging-on
to their own computers. This makes possible a more selective
form of security, where the Administrator has the power to control
access to key areas (for example, accounts data) on a user-by-user
basis. The fact that users must log-on also allows for greater
accountability of their actions - for example should
undesirable material be found on a server share, the person who
put it there can generally be identified, as can the time at which it
was done.
Maintenance costs for a server-based LAN are generally lower than for
peer-groups. The server itself can often be administered
remotely, saving a great deal of leg-work or driving. Since
each computer needs to make a connection to only one other (the
server) the problems with maintaining numerous computer
interconnections -the bane of the peer-group setup- are largely
eliminated.
Hardware
A quick scan of the Dell or HP websites will reveal that prebuilt
server prices vary enormously, depending not only on model, but on
equipment fit. What I will say here is that for smaller offices,
prebuilt servers almost always offer poor value for money.
While self-build of desktop PCs is scarcely economic these
days, servers are one case where the build-to-order approach has a
lot going for it. The key issue with ready-assembled servers from
the likes of Dell is their heavy use of specialist parts, parts which
are mostly unobtainable from anywhere other than the manufacturer. In
fact there is no justification for this, the specialist parts in these
servers offering little or no performance advantage over standard
parts available from almost any wholesaler. The disadvantage, as
if I need say more, is that a fault developing in a server
containing non-mainstream parts will present major problems of spares
supply. Yet, a site's server is the one computer where lengthy
downtime would not be acceptable. Thus, the spares-availability
issue weighs heavily in favour of a build-to-order server, where
standard off-the-shelf parts are used.
Thus, for smaller sites I would strongly recommend building as
opposed to buying prebuilt, where servers are concerned. A lower
price, plus the ability to use off-the-shelf replacement parts are
the key advantages. For sites requiring an Enterprise-class
server, prebuilt may be the only option, but in that case the
question of spares and support should be thoroughly researched.
Whatever specification you choose, a substantial part of the cost
will be the backup subsystem. (and online catalogue server-prices
are often deceptively low because they omit this key element from the
spec, yet a server is of little use without backup.) Tape is
still the only acceptable medium for rotational backup, and
reliable tape hardware is relatively costly.
Software
The standard Windows Server package, currently Windows Server 2003,
will cost about the same as basic hardware. This is a
substantial cost, and can in fact be avoided by using Linux
instead of Windows as the server software. Whether to take this
route depends on precisely what you want the the server to do for you -
a Linux server can perform all of the standard functions, however it may
not be able to run specialist processes which have been specifically
for Windows servers.
There also exists a "Small Business Server " version of Microsoft's
server product-line, which consists of the core server product,
plus a number of other products all encapsulated into one single
package. This costs perhaps 50% more than the core server product
alone, but substantially less than its component parts if bought
separately. In some cases this might offer a more cost-effective
solution, especially if you plan to use Exchange as your mail platform.
There are two key points about SBS, though. The first is that despite
its name, it consists of an amalgamation of several
heavyweight corporate software packages. A corporate site
would normally split these packages across several servers. Running
them all on a single server will place huge demands on that server,
thus don't expect sparkling performance. The other issue with
SBS, and the critical one from an engineer's point of view, is that
thanks to its monolithic nature, a problem with any one service
-for example email- is liable to lead the whole network having to be
taken offline whilst the problem is investigated -which needless to say
will be very expensive in terms of lost working time! This, I
feel, is the Achilles' heel of SBS, and is the main reason I don't
recommend it. There is a saying about putting all of your eggs in
one basket...
For a small site with less than ten users, another option exists, in
that it is possible to use a desktop OS for the server. This is
sometimes the most economic approach. The disadvantage is that
should the firm grow to more than ten users, the server's
software cannot be upgraded, it must be replaced in-toto. Thus for
smaller sites, subject to the ten-user limit, the use of Windows
2000 or XP Professional may be quite acceptable. This
obviously represents a substantial cost saving.
Our advice would in most cases would be to go for the standard Windows Server package.
Timescale
The key mistake here is that of rushing. A server, whether built
or bought, needs to be tested thoroughly before its deployment.
This will require at least a week or two of benchtesting
time. Those firms which oblige in rushing servers onto site
to beat impossible deadlines may think they are doing the client a
favour, but in reality they are not. Almost invariably they will
be still sending engineers to site months later, desperately
trying to resolve ongoing problems. Problems which by rights should've
been spotted and investigated before delivery. Once a server is in
daily use, taking it offline is generally not an option. Thus,
any faults which went unnoticed due to a rushed deployment will be
very much more difficult to track-down than if they had
been dealt-with on the testbench, before delivery. All in
all, a reasonable timescale for deploying a server, from
first quote to delivery, is a month. Yes, it can be done in
less, but wisdom of doing so is extremely questionable.