Need help with domain/workgroup sharing...

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jyi786

Supreme [H]ardness
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My server, which runs SBS Server 2003, hosts a domain, e-mail, and all user files. Let's say for some reason my server crashes.

Which it did. And [H]ard too (dead motherboard). :rolleyes:

Management did not make it any easier (for budget reasons) and did not allow me to have a redundant server in place for backup. So naturally, network shares, internet, shared devices, etc. obviously don't work anymore with the server down, since it is the central hub for everything.

Is there anyway for me to maintain network sharing (files, printers, etc.) between the computers on the network without having to have them switch from the domain to a workgroup, since the server is down? That's practically the only thing I'm concerned about right now. If I can tackle that, I've got 75% of my problems solved.
 
fix the server, overnight motherboard and be up and going, any other way your gonna get crazy with tweaking machine.

you would need to swap machines to pull dns/dhcp from the router, you would need to transfer files to a machine, share to everything, and map that to each machine.

just overnight mobo, people will be out for a day but shouldn't be a big deal in a SBS setep
 
marley1 said:
fix the server, overnight motherboard and be up and going, any other way your gonna get crazy with tweaking machine.

you would need to swap machines to pull dns/dhcp from the router, you would need to transfer files to a machine, share to everything, and map that to each machine.

just overnight mobo, people will be out for a day but shouldn't be a big deal in a SBS setep
Click to expand...

You exactly described the scenario, and exactly what I'm doing. New motherboard should be in here today, within the hour (overnighted from Dell). People were out for a day. I sure hope it's the motherboard that is the problem.

And yes, I've already been crazy tweaking a few machines, namely, accounting. They have to have access to the payclock time punching machine, which does not use DHCP (I have yet to configure it since the previous IT admin). So I absolutely had to get them to see that device.

So after the server gets up and running, I still want to have some type of redundancy. What's the easiest way for me to do this? I have to have the exact same server/hardware/software config, no?

Is there anyway that I can image the server, which I've already done through Acronis backup, and use the images on a VM like Virtualbox, and set up a "ghost server" for redundancy?
 
well one option is to get the same server without drives, just swap the drives and go. but if its a raid controller or hard drive issue your out of commsion.

for a sbs setup that may be worth it. what type of server?
 
marley1 said:
well one option is to get the same server without drives, just swap the drives and go. but if its a raid controller or hard drive issue your out of commsion.

for a sbs setup that may be worth it. what type of server?
Click to expand...

Quite unfortunately, it's a Dell Poweredge 1800, which seems hard to come by these days.

It does run off RAID, which is RAID 1 and RAID 5, I believe.

So there's no alternative to run a "server" off an image?
 
ask them what it cost for them to be down as long as they were.

when they realize where you're going, get a backup DC.

Perhaps a better life cycle on your hardware too, instead of running it until it dies.
 
ajm786 said:
So there's no alternative to run a "server" off an image?
Click to expand...

You can convert an image into a virtual machine, but once you get your server repaired, you'll need to image the virtual machine back to the physical server.
 
the backup DC doesn't do that much in a SBS environment, i deployed this at a client of mine and when we replaced the server we didn;t setup all it again.

so more detail

originally 2 server 2003 boxes, 1 good dell server, 1 lowend, main server was doing everything, 2nd was secondary dc, dfs, yada yada.

then we outgrew storage so got a new server, went to sbs, 2nd box just became a application server.

just think about it, you would need to cluster up exchange and everything on the 2nd server to make it worth while.

thing to do is scour ebay for a Poweredge 1800, get another raid card same as the other one, and you should be able to just swap drives if something happens
 
marley1 said:
thing to do is scour ebay for a Poweredge 1800, get another raid card same as the other one, and you should be able to just swap drives if something happens
Click to expand...

Looks like that might be the easiest thing to do; I probably have no choice other than to get everything else hosted outside.
 
well most of my business rely on inet and email, so postini will be coming out with a mail redundancy feature in case ur mail server goes down you can load up a web based email system hosted outside.

so set dns to be sbs network and router as secondary, use postini or similar system (think mxtoolbox has something like this) and have your email sent to 2 places.

that takes care of inet and email

f
 
marley1 said:
well most of my business rely on inet and email, so postini will be coming out with a mail redundancy feature in case ur mail server goes down you can load up a web based email system hosted outside.

so set dns to be sbs network and router as secondary, use postini or similar system (think mxtoolbox has something like this) and have your email sent to 2 places.

that takes care of inet and email

f
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. I've actually went ahead and taken care of the e-mail problem a long time ago. I set up a redundant "ghost" system via Google Apps that takes over for the e-mail as soon as our server happens to fail, so all users are covered in that respect. The only thing caveat is that I have to figure out how to sync between Exchange e-mail boxes and the Gmail boxes BOTH ways; I can sync the Gmail with the Exchange, but not vice versa. I have yet to figure this out.
 
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