Serve me up some Server help, please!!!

[phas3d]

Hey all,

Got a machine at home I put together and am thinking about using it as a file/print/email server but really am not sure where to begin. I have a copy of Windows 2003 server, but would XP Pro work?

Basically and primarily I want to be able to leave this computer on and pretty much forget about it. I want to be able to map its two drives containing my movies and music, email, etc to my main computer and a laptop within my home. Also, I would like to be able to manage my email from this computer. I want to be able to setup both my computer and laptop at home so they get email from the file/print/email server, that, in turn, gets the email from my pop3 account. Lastly, the print server isn't much of a big deal but I would want the server to also perform this duty.

Do I have to use Windows Server for the aforementioned tasks, or will Pro work? I use Outlook for email. Any apropos advice welcome.

phas3d

 

[DougLite]

XP Pro will handle the file serving (up to 10 concurrent connections) and the print serving. You may be able to find a freeware program that does the e-mail work, or a program that is not too expensive.

 

[ktwebb]

"I want to be able to setup both my computer and laptop at home so they get email from the file/print/email server, that, in turn, gets the email from my pop3 account."

No advantage to doing it this way. If your going to just forward mail then just continue to setup your client machines to get mail directly from your provider. Now if you want to get your own domain and have your own email accounts on that domain, then you would run an email server. For simple file and print sharing functionality XP would do the job. If you only have one or two users to manage then there isn't a whole lot of advantages in having a server OS provide F&P services over a workstation OS.

 

[phas3d]

Thanks for the responses. I guess I should just use XP pro.

I have a hosting company that hosts my domain (mail.kihitsu.com). The reasoning behind my desire to have an email server is this: I would like to have both my laptop and my main computer have identical email records. The way I currently have it setup is: If I open Outlook on my main computer at home, shut it down and then open Outlook from my laptop, the email has already transfered from the server to my main computer.

I don't know any other way of setting up email retrieval other than by having a centralized source where my emails will come from. Plus, it would be good to have emails pull down to a server that I can always leave up and thus setup schedule to do routine backups.

Anyone have any further input? Thanks again.


phas3d

 

[rcolbert]

Server 2003 provides a cool feature called Volume Shadow Copy, whereby you can snapshot your data drive on a regular basis, and roll back to a previous version of a file if you choose. That's very nice for the volume where you store pictures. If you're like me, you like to edit them to take out redeye and various other things, but every once in a while you'll decide that your edits didn't achieve the result you wanted. Having a previous version on the file server that you can easily roll-back to is a great benefit.

Volume Shadow Copy IMO makes a 2003 file server a much more potent tool than an XP system. If you don't want that feature, then there aren't too many other difference for your use-case that I can think of.

Note that the snapshot is a "copy on write" technology, so you aren't creating a full copy of your drive. You are simply copying data that is changed to another location to preserve it's previous state. This means that a shadow copy is nearly instantaneous, and takes up a relatively small amount of space (100 MB minimum as I recall, but plan for a few GB's depending upon the rate of change of data on your volume.)

 

[Nybbles]

The way I currently have it setup is: If I open Outlook on my main computer at home, shut it down and then open Outlook from my laptop, the email has already transfered from the server to my main computer.

You should have an option within outlook too leave the mail on the server after you've checked it. This way, both computers can download exact copies of the same mail. Now just keep in mind that since you're never deleting anything off your mail server, you may want to find out if they have a limit on mailbox size.

 

[JTY]

For e-mail, just use IMAP if your host supports it. Then, it'll be identical between both your machines.