Optimal Small Business Server Configuration

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MarvynDT

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 4, 2003
Messages
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I own a small web design/development business. I am currently using a Windows XP box running both Apache and IIS for internal development. Also, all my client, legal, and financial files are also stored in the same box. I backup daily to an external HDD using Windows native backup software.

I've been contemplating having three boxes. One box would run some flavor of Linux (considering Ubuntu). Another would run some flavor of Windows. And the last to store all client site and internal files. Is this a wise/logical setup?
 
Why would you need the separate Windows and Linux boxes? You might be able to consolidate and virtualize with something like VirtualBox, if these are sandbox/testing environments for web development. You also get the added benefit that if you totally hose your sandbox, just restore the image. No need to bring the machine down for an hour.

I would suggest using a separate machine for storing files and a file repository used by your business, since I wouldn't want to use the same machine I test and develop on to store all that data, in the case that something happens when I'm testing something. I usually break my environment more often than not. :p

edit: added some more stuff...
 
why not use Vmware? I agree with Bill's post above. I would say get one server for your storage and then get another server and run vmware for development. That's how i would do it. ;)
 
I wasn't aware of a solution like VirtualBox/VMWare. Thanks for the tip.

After some further research, the upgrade outline looks like this so far:

- 1 box as a server running VirtualBox for Ubuntu and Windows XP
- 1 box as a file storage for site, legal, and financial files
- 6 external HDDs: 5 for daily increment backups, 1 for full weekly backups
- Implement SVN/CVS for revision history

One thing I'm a bit unsure of is the box for file storage. Would I be looking for a NAS type setup? Or would it be similar to the server box? And is that even possible? Meaning that the files that the server are hosting are (lack of a better word) not local to the box as they're are on another machine?
 
I wasn't aware of a solution like VirtualBox/VMWare. Thanks for the tip.

After some further research, the upgrade outline looks like this so far:

- 1 box as a server running VirtualBox for Ubuntu and Windows XP
- 1 box as a file storage for site, legal, and financial files
- 6 external HDDs: 5 for daily increment backups, 1 for full weekly backups
- Implement SVN/CVS for revision history

One thing I'm a bit unsure of is the box for file storage. Would I be looking for a NAS type setup? Or would it be similar to the server box? And is that even possible? Meaning that the files that the server are hosting are (lack of a better word) not local to the box as they are on another machine?
 
MarvynDT said:
I wasn't aware of a solution like VirtualBox/VMWare. Thanks for the tip.

After some further research, the upgrade outline looks like this so far:

- 1 box as a server running VirtualBox for Ubuntu and Windows XP
- 1 box as a file storage for site, legal, and financial files
- 6 external HDDs: 5 for daily increment backups, 1 for full weekly backups
- Implement SVN/CVS for revision history

One thing I'm a bit unsure of is the box for file storage. Would I be looking for a NAS type setup? Or would it be similar to the server box? And is that even possible? Meaning that the files that the server are hosting are (lack of a better word) not local to the box as they are on another machine?
Click to expand...

You wouldn't specifically need it to be NAS, you want the machine mainly to be a file server.

If I understand your question correctly (and I may not be) then yes, you can separate the data you want to preserve from your work/development machine. If you're worried about how to go about accessing the data on the storage machine, you can set up network shares, or use FTP. At my company, all the data kept off our computers are placed onto a variety of network shares, labeled appropriately so you understand what the shares hold, i.e. \\software-libraries is a share for development libraries used by the developers in the company. The shares are also restricted and require the proper credentials (so I can't access the stuff the legal department has, for example).

I'm on the development side, so when I want to access the code at work, I fire up my perforce client and check a file out to work on. At home this is my work environment for my person stuff:

Debian (running inside virtual machine) is Apache server with all the modules and stuff needed (it is basically a nearly perfect copy of my production server environment from my webhost). I develop my code on Windows Vista since my Linux installs don't run X servers, and I get the code from my SVN repository (running in another VM, but that's cause I don't want to run multiple machines). Then I send changes over via FTP to the Debian server to check out my changes.
 
Sorry about the confusion. I'm not questioning file accessibility by users within my network, my concern is the web server's accessibility to the files. Not sure how to explain my concern w/o going into example.If I look at this file http://server-A/foo.php, where foo.php actually resides on server-B. Can I actually set up Apache on server-A to know that the directories are on another machine? (server-B, where all the files are stored)
 
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