Inexpensive Network Servers?

Linuxthess asks: "I work in a small company with only 20 or so employees. Being the most tech-savvy of them I find myself doing less work as a salesman, and more as their non-paid tech support. I was asked for a solution to create a domain for login authentication, a DHCP server, a webserver, file & printer services, and e-mail. I found three such companies with an inexpensive, yet solid products aimed at what we need: one is Celestix with their Aries and Taurus products; there is a company in Chicago called Dartek which sell a custom-built box called iMass which comes in three flavors; and lastly a company in Canada named Net Integration Technologies Inc who has a box named Net Integrator that is available in various flavors. Does anyone have experience in regard to these solutions? I think we will go along with the Taurus, but I want to hear a little more regarding the quality of doing this job inexpensively (these things start from $800 and go until $3000). I spoke with a tech-support guy, and he told me customers buy a couple of these since they're so cheap for redundancy, and clustering."

Comments

Get a used one.

[Unknown Poltroon]

Save you 1/2 the money, and you generally know if the models gonna be a lemon or not. Youre not gonna need the top of the line server for office stuff anyway, just something reliable.

Re:That's great.

[vertical_98]

So a salesman-turned-techie is going to be able to setup a Win2K box, easier then a Linux box? Samba is fairly simple, even from a newbie point of view. DHCP? A cheap 486 with a Freesco disk stuck in it can handle his office.

I used to work with people like you every day. We had a Compaq Prolient that served as a RAS server in our office. When it came time to replace it, I convinced the management to let me install a cheap box, running Freesco. I replaced a Pentium III - 800 box with 2 - 9 gig SCSI drives and 512M ram, with a P75 with 16meg RAM, no HD, and it did the job just fine. The NT Admin wanted to go out and by a brand-new Win2K server with all the trimmings, and refused to believe I could accomplish the same feat on a machine, I bought for $20.
If he is going to get support, why does it matter if he runs, Windows or Linux? Is the Linux support worse than that provided by MS?

Vertical