"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

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.

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.

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>

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!

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.

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. ;-)

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.

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).