Home office network advice please

[Red C220]

My little business has grown to an unexpected degree this year, we needed to build an office in the garden so we could cope:-

We're a few weeks away from being able to move in and I need some advice on a computer set up as I'm a retard when it comes to such things.

There will be two workstations. I have wired internet in the office from the modem in the house (BT Infinity) and we have a decent Samsung laser printer that can be networked.

We also have a VOIP phone system that we will expand to two handset and two lines.

What we'd like is one computer with two workstations so we're both able to work from the same hard drive, print to the same printer etc.

What would I need to do this? How would I actually set it all up and can I do without having to have Windows 8? (I don't want a Mac btw).

Ideally a shopping list on the Dell website would be perfect please.

TIA.

 

[Sp!ke]

I would suggest considering whether to store storing your documents in the cloud somewhere so you can access them from any computer regardless of location.

Thee are many similar cloud service providers now so price is very competative and your data is safely managed and backed up.

As for computers... you just need two laptops by the sounds of it.

 

[Red C220]

That sounds simple.

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

If you want your data stored on your own hardware, consider buying a NAS, which you then connect to your network modem-router so that all your computers can access the data through 'shares'. If you go this route, you can either backup your NAS data onto another drive, or it can be backed-up to a Cloud service as Sp!ke mentioned.

 

[noy91]

Looks a nice office space.

For simplicities sake I'd suggest the line in from the house goes into a switch such as this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0000E5SEQ/?tag=amazon0e9db-21), which will allow the printer and two workstations their own wired connection, while also leaving room for a NAS should you choose to go down that route.

For the printer, it should be as simple as plugging it all in and the adding via either the driver CD or just via the Add Printer dialogue.

Regarding shared storage, a cheaper alternative to the NAS would be to just a share a folder or partition (My Computer -> Map Network Drive) from one of the workstation hard drives, or alternative use a cloud service such as Dropbox or OneDrive but make sure you have it synced to a local folder otherwise its a bit of a pain.

 

[Biglee]

If it a wired connection into the office just buy a small switch and then all computers printers and laptops can plug into it. Re networking buy a small NAS device or even and old computer with an external hard drive attached and share it out on the network .

 

[Red C220]

If it a wired connection into the office just buy a small switch and then all computers printers and laptops can plug into it. Re networking buy a small NAS device or even and old computer with an external hard drive attached and share it out on the network .

I have an old desktop which might be ideal for this.

Thanks all for the responses.

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

The advantage of using a NAS is that it offers something called redundancy, a fancy word basically meaning that your data is better protected against drive failure. A simple but effective setup involves a NAS containing 2 drives which are 'mirrored', meaning that each drive contains exactly the same data as the other. The NAS writes to both drives automatically when you save a file.

I have built many NAS devices, so can help if you have any questions regarding NAS setups. If you are willing to spend more, then you can even go for a 3-drive mirror, which offers even greater protection against data loss.

As others have said here, have your network cable enter your office, and then plug it into a cheap 8-port gigabit switch. Then plug your computers, printer, NAS etc into this switch. Simple, cheap, fast and effective.

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

Whilst using an old computer as a NAS definitely works, depending on the age of the computer it may be a sub-optimal solution for 2 reasons:

1. If it is an older computer, it will likely consume a lot of power (> 100W/200W), which costs more to run and it generates more heat which is good in winter but not so good in summer.

2. It will likely be noisy due to its cooling fans (graphics card fan, power supply fan, CPU fan, chipset fan etc)

For about £100 today, including rebates, you can buy one of the best purpose-built empty NAS devices on the market: an HP N54L microserver. They consume little power, are quiet and house up to 4 drives. For hard drives, I recommend Western Digital Red NAS drives, which are built & guaranteed specifically for 24/7 use in NAS devices.

HP N54L:
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-...y-99-54-after-30-cashback-serversplus-1990409
http://www.serversplus.com/microserver_cashback

For good prices and sources of WD Red drives for the capacity you want, try www.skinflint.co.uk and enter WD Red in the search fields. A useful site!

 

[Red C220]

Thanks this is all really helpful. Despite having to Google NAS to actually find out what it is!

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

NAS: acronym for Network-Attached Storage.

Basically, a (small) custom computer built to house your data storage hard drives that connects to your network.

 

[Red C220]

So basically I need an 8 port switch an NAS and we can then just attach our printer, phones and laptops to everything by plugging them into the switch?

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

Yes. Count how many network devices you have and allow a few extra ports for future expansion when you see an extra gizmo or computer (new colleague?) you need to attach to the switch.

HP also make a great range of switches too - Procurve if I remember correctly. Cheaper switches exist though. I don't work for HP or have shares in them

If you would like a hand, I'm available to help out.

 

[DSM10000]

All excellent advice and another prime example of how members help each other!

One further point; it is wise to store data crucial to your business in more than one place so as well as some form of network attached storage it would be wise to have a secondary back up in case of catastrophic failure, fire, flood, theft etc. in or from the office.

Also, it may be a good idea to invest in an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), essentially a mains powered / charged battery system that will ,in the event of a power cut, keep you operational for anything from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the unit, it will also help protect you from power surges and most have software that can safely shut down your computers to avoid data loss.

 

[Red C220]

All excellent advice and another prime example of how members help each other!

One further point; it is wise to store data crucial to your business in more than one place so as well as some form of network attached storage it would be wise to have a secondary back up in case of catastrophic failure, fire, flood, theft etc. in or from the office.

Also, it may be a good idea to invest in an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), essentially a mains powered / charged battery system that will ,in the event of a power cut, keep you operational for anything from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the unit, it will also help protect you from power surges and most have software that can safely shut down your computers to avoid data loss.

We currently use a portable hard drive as a backup plus a memory stick for the critical stuff so we have two copies of things held in different places.

The power supply is not something I'd considered though.

 

[noy91]

We currently use a portable hard drive as a backup plus a memory stick for the critical stuff so we have two copies of things held in different places.

One thing I would say is that while such a solution works well for bulk backup, the files you value most dearly (at least in the short term) are probably those being currently or recently worked on, and potentially not copied across - auto-syncing cloud services are an easy way round this, or alternatively something like SyncToy set up in Task Scheduler would allow new files to be backed up every x amount of time.

 

[Mrhanky]

I was in a similar situation as yourself. I went for two laptops which when Im in the office we hook up to 24" screens. Just means you have to put hdmi, power and usb plug in each time

It was important to have laptops as we use these offsite with clients. For storage I got a WD mycloud and we use dropbox as well.

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

One more thing that occurred to me:

There are different kinds of NAS devices.

Some have an integrated operating system (Windows, Linux etc) - the computer code that makes it do something when it's switched on. And some have no integrated operating system.

The one I mentioned (HP N54L) has no integrated operating system, which means one needs to install one oneself. If one is not very technically savvy, this can present a stumbling block, and therefore for these people it is probably better to buy something which has an integrated operating system.

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

The other important thing to be aware of when selecting a NAS device, is to ensure your data is not stored in a proprietary data format, as this can make data retrieval after a hard drive failure difficult and/or expensive.

For this reason, when choosing a NAS device, look for the following two things:

1. Simple Mirror (in techie speak, this is known as RAID-1 (raid one), or RAID level 1)
2. Non-proprietary data format

Personally, I use a software RAID system known as ZFS, which was invented by Sun (now Oracle) as a clean-sheet design to overcome the evolutionary-kludge problems of data storage, but is now open source and thus freely available and non-proprietary.

RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Basically it means your system uses extra disks as insurance for that inevitable time when a hard drive dies, so that you don't lose data.

Also, as others have pointed out here, despite having your data better protected using a NAS, backups are still essential.

Hopefully I've given you enough information to understand the basics without bamboozling you with too much gobbledygook!

 

[Red C220]

Hopefully I've given you enough information to understand the basics without bamboozling you with too much gobbledygook!

You have and so have many other helpful members of the forum in this thread. It's what brought me back here after some time away due to a small minority of problem members.