"Turn-Key" Linux-Based Fileservers?

idjitProof asks: "I work for a non-profit organization with about 70 satellite offices. We're trying to find a cheap way to get these offices out of the stone age and into an ethernet with centralized, secure file-storage. I was wondering if there is a Linux hardware solution that is fairly dummy resistant or, alternatively, remotely configurable (with decent security). I spent the better part of today searching the web, but all I could find was boxed software products, no hardware solutions. I'd appreciate links to any companies that might have this kind of product."

Comments

Why not one of the commercial UNIXes? (Apple?)

[jerde]

Linux may be free, but you're looking for something that costs money and comes with support...

Apple's XServe servers aren't a bad deal. OS X is based on FreeBSD, so don't think that Apple is still in their proprietary little world any more. They're certainly better at embracing open standards than that silly Redmond company. :)

- Peter

Re:Why not one of the commercial UNIXes? (Apple?)

[sweetooth]

Dell and IBM both sell Linux boxes with all the support your want (or are willing to pay for).

Though apparently most people forget this.

Re:Why not one of the commercial UNIXes? (Apple?)

[Ratso Baggins]

Since they're non-profit, I guess this means budget. Xserves are more than $7000!! what planet are you from?

Redhat Advanced Server + 2 (or more) $200 Wallmart boxes (for redundancy) per remote.

All the redundancy & clustering is handled out of the box.

With $upport of varing level$, you're way ahead, <snagglepuss> an order of magnitude even...sheesh!</snagglepuss>

Re:Why not one of the commercial UNIXes? (Apple?)

[Twirlip of the Mists]

$3000 is with 256M. OSX needs 370M to not hit the pagefile...

That's completely bogus. I used an iBook with 256 MB every day for over a year with zero problems at all. My new Power Mac was only recently upgraded from 256 MB to 512 MB, and the only time I noticed swapping before the upgrade was when I was running Virtual PC. 256 MB would be just fine for an XServe, particularly if you're not running a web server or any additional stuff like that. Any extra RAM would be used for filesystem caching, which would be a good thing, but not a make-or-break thing.

Netmax/Toshiba

[martin]

have teamed up to do this kind of thing.

http://www.netmax.com/products/magnia_prods.html

We use their software based distro in a couple of our remote office at work.

EXACTLY what you want!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

This is the Aries from Celestix. The model linked has groupware apps, as well as file/web/Internet sharing. They make a few models. Some have embedded CheckPoint FW-1 (pricey). You can get a more basic config for about $700.00 USD.

Re:EXACTLY what you want!

[Directrix1]

I believe Snap! Servers would be more down this person's alley. They are rack mountable, easily configurable, and relatively cheap. Although, I can't imagine a plain old file server bringing a company out of the stone age. Time to bring in a middleware tier if you want to be considered "out of the stone age".

eSmith

[Kz]

Now called SMS, but the same thing (look in www.e-smith.org for the free version and support).

It's a cd you pop into a pc and turns it into a really dumb-proof server. very complete and cheap!

Clarkconnect!

[fordboy0]

Clarkconnect is a robust "turnkey" server package that really kicks ass. I have used e-smith, Mandrake's SNF (Single Network Firewall) and Smoothwall.
I am running this firewall/fileserver on a P100 with 96M of ram, so performance was pretty important to me.
I run the following servers on the box...
Appletalk (netatalk), Samba, FTP (Proftpd), HTTP (Apache), SMTP (exim), DHCP, SSH, CUPS, WEBMIN and SQUID.
The performance of the box is outstanding and very robust. It has a really nice web-based interface for modifying the box's setup.
I'm not knocking any of the others... I still have an e-smith server running at a clients and it's been chuggin' along for a couple of years now.

Just my $.02
-Fordboy0

Linksys

[Khazunga]

If you're just looking for cheap fileservers, this is a nice option:

http://linksys.com/products/group.asp?grid=35&scid =43

Re:Linksys

[Khazunga]

I have no idea if the NAS uses linux. I do know for sure that their WiFi routers and home gateways do run linux. And more, they run linux with excellent support: constant software updates, new features, etc. Linksys does have the expertise to do the NAS with linux, and I'd be surprised if they did otherwise (therefore paying the MS tax).

Para-Docs

[mchappee]

Para-Docs offers a turn-key solution for file management. In addition to traditional file serving, the appliance offers document management with workflow, trigger-fired messaging, and a ton of other features. The appliance is linux-based and uses postgres for it's database. It rocks, and is available at several price points.

Let me know if you need any additional information.

Matthew
matthew@mattshouse.removethis.com

You missed the first question

[Gothmolly]

Why?

Seriously, if its a small satellite office which has survived until 2003 without a LAN, LET IT BE. It sounds like you're trying to push a square peg into a round hole. Something is obviously working.

Re:You missed the first question

[sporty]

Unless it can enhance the workplace. Yes, some enhancements should never happen, like employee-tracking, but hey, if it is the difference of doign job X in 1/5th the time with no other effects, why not?

Re:You missed the first question

[Gothmolly]

Except that it isn't without any other effects - cost of the boxen, training, resistance to change by old employees, etc.

e-smith gets my vote

[Raleel]

why? you mentioned secure remote file storage for 70 satellite offices.

esmith can do smb, as well as vpn. sounds like it'll fit your bill. The install is straight forward, and you can get pre-setup boxes from www.myezserver.com, as well as support.

Do you want NAS?

[faster]

The Excel Meridian NAS is pretty cheap, and support is great. A client of mine got 160G of RAID5 for $1k. You can reach files via Appleshare, SMB, NFS, and HTTP. Novell, too, I think. Web-managable, knows rsync (if you turn it on), pretty easy to set up and run.

centralized??

[Twirlip of the Mists]

You lost me at "centralized." You've got 70 branch offices and you want to create a centralized file server for all of them? Have you considered how much this is going to cost per month is telecom charges alone?

If you're remotely accessing a file server, a point-to-point T-1 per branch office is the absolute bare minimum you'll need for connectivity. Don't even think about using a VPN over the Internet; the latencies will be so high that nobody at the branch offices will be able to tolerate using the central file server, so they'll store their files locally, which defeats the whole purpose.

A much better idea would be to put small NAS devices at each branch office, and a big server at the central office. Have the central server back up each NAS server every hour, either using a commercial backup product like Legato (bad idea) or using the NAS vendor's remote mirror feature (good idea). Snap's remote mirror feature, for example, is called Server-to-Server Synchronization. You can do remote-to-central syncs over a VPN over DSL or something equivalent.

There will probably be occasions when a branch needs to access files from another branch. When that happens, you can either have the person who needs the file mount the appropriate filesystem from the central office and copy his file, or you could get a little fancier. You could easily whip up a simple system for scheduling asynchronous file requests. Person X goes to a web page (hosted at the central site) and finds the file that he wants, then clicks a button to submit a transfer request. He goes about his business while the file is transferred via FTP (probably) from the central server to the branch server, then he gets an email, IM, or SMS informing him that the transfer is complete. You could just let all the transfers happen at once, or you could get a little fancier by priority-queueing the requests and executing them in order. This would have the advantages of being easier for your users-- they wouldn't have to know where the file was stored; they could just search for it-- and of keeping all the files on the various NAS servers for easy administration and backup.

Email me for more details. ;-)

Re:centralized??

[aderusha]

it seems pretty clear that he's talking "centralized" within the location (not across the WAN), which is why he needs 70 of these things.

Qube

[sql*kitten]

We're trying to find a cheap way to get these offices out of the stone age and into an ethernet with centralized, secure file-storage. I was wondering if there is a Linux hardware solution that is fairly dummy resistant or, alternatively, remotely configurable (with decent security).

Get a Cobalt Qube, or whatever Sun renamed them to when they bought the company. Plug it in, switch it on and it does all your typical LAN services like file'n'print, web proxy cache, firewall and so on. All remotely administered via a web browser.

Penguin Computing

[macemoneta]

They make some nice rack mount units that should do the job (about $13K for a RAID 5+1 500GB hot swappable Relion 240 configuration).

My company does exactly this...

[rindeee]

Wow! Cool...someone looking for exactly what my company does. Give is a look at Premier Networks

We set up many of our systems for secure remote administration as a lot of our customers simply want us to handle it. We are not a hardware shop, we are a professional services company and our prices reflect that fact (they are extremely competetive).

Why not home grown?

[dasunt]

If they are small offices or don't do much over the lan, just grab an old pentium, throw in a large enough hard drive for their needs, and install your network-fileshare-system-of-choice and sshd. If they are stuck on dialup, just have the servers accept call-ins as well. Once you get one configured how you like it, mirror it to the rest. Cheap, easy solution. (Oh, and buy UPSs. I know this is a non-profit, but they are worth every penny.)

Including the UPS, I'm guessing each machine could be configured for about 120GBs of storage without going overe $300. You're going to be hard pressed to find a NAT that will do the same thing for that price. Don't worry about the reliability of a home-brew solution - a properly setup NFS/Samba/sshd server will probably stay running until the hardware fails. Plus, all of the components are cheap, and easily replaceable.

Oh, one last thing : if they need backups, either look into rsyncing it to a main server, or teaching the secratery to swap tapes at the end of the day. Plus, you probably want to set up a cron job, timed so that every day, 2 or 3 of the machines email you with their status for the month.

Of course, I'm not in your shoes, and maybe something like a NAS/SAN is what you really need.

Plenty of FBSD turnkey out there.

[nurb432]

A quick google search or just goto freebsd.org and nose around..

Tons of options out there.. for most every need/budget..

A little bit of homework goes a long way.

And then your users balk

[nurb432]

Give them a week of using VPN to get to all their files and they will start a riot..

Not that it doesnt work, but latency sux.. and it runs your cost up due to major increase in bandwith needs.

Listen: Linux Comes with Support.

[gilgongo]

In addition to the almost limitless support provided by discussion forums on the internet, you can get commercial support for Linux from many companies in your area. Pick up the phone book.

Blimey. Some people...

Quantum NAS servers

[Outland Traveller]

The Quantum Guardian NAS servers sound like exactly what you want. It's turnkey hardware fileserver solution that uses Linux behind the scenes. I posted some detailed information about one of these devices here. It's a pretty polished system and you might want to take a look at it.

Re:OT: e-smith 5.6...? Where to get it?

[maggard]

Y'know, if you'd have bothered to actually look around a bit on the site you'd have found the answer yourself instead of running back to /.

However, since apparently you're not real good with online resources I'll just feed it to you:

1. There are two versions of e-smith/SMS: Commercial and non-commercial.
2. The commercial version went to 5.6 recently
3. The non-commercial 5.6 is still in beta (hence the beta-files)
4. This is the regular release procedure for the product, most expect 5.6 non-commercial any-day-now
5. As to exactly when: "When it's ready"

If you've any other questions I really suggest you invest a few minutes looking over the e-smith.org website, particularly the FAQs and the General Phorum. Your question has been answered there MANY (many, many,) times far more authoritatively.

Another vote for E-Smith

[maggard]

I recommend the free E-Smith Server or it's commercial implementation the Mitel Networks SME Server with ServiceLink (offers more default office collaboration services as well as a easy updates, remote services, etc.)

A stripped down Redhat-based distrib entirely managed by a well-scripted web-interface they really can be locally administered by the Office Administrator. The install is short and sweet and with a few questions it sets up a well organized server offering 'bout anything a modern office would want all automagically.

Ok, actually it's all done off an impressive system of scripts and templates but as far as J. Random "Administrator" is concerned it just works, and all from the clean browser-interface. Groups and accounts, POP & IMAP, LDAP and Webmail, all come built-in. A hardy user community contributes their own extensive set of ports and script templates including user self-management web interfaces, MySQL administration, mp3 jukeboxes, log and queue management, etc.

I set this up on a donated Compaq box a year ago for a local youth services organization (read: Human Services-type folks who don't know anything about computers, aren't inclined to learn much, and really just want this stuff to work with a minimum of muss and fuss so they can get on with their real work) and they've loved it. Ok, actually they don't care: It just does what they need it to do, is easy to get to do those things, offers the services they needed and they're not interested beyond that, which is a Good Thing.

Oh yeah, services they use their E-Smith box for are:

• Firewall protecting their office network
• Caching speeding their web-browsing
• A filter blocking many of the web-ads
• A local email-server for their inter-office confidential email
• A NAT allowing them to save money on the ISP plan they use
• Shared File-Space
• Shared Address Book
• Shared Printers
• Personal Directories so everything isn't only stored on their individual aging PCs
• IMAP folders so all of their email records aren't only stored on their individual aging PCs

Next up is getting them a tape-backup for disaster recovery and reconfiguring things so all of their email is local IMAP-based and downloaded by the server so they can use MS Outlook in the office or the web interface when out of the office, and then VPNs for them when they're working from home.

Personally I've got E-Smith servers in both of my residences (different countries) where I use a Unison implementation for E-Smith to keep both boxes synchronized. It also provides a handy VPN between both houses as well as offering all of the other services listed above. Next up it'll be hosting photo galleries and some web sites for the family as well as a Twiki server for friends to share.

Oh, and best thing about all of this? It runs on low end PIII's, 200MHZ w/ 128MB RAM, not speed demons but stable, reliable, secure, and very effective. Did I mention trivial to administer too?