Windows Server Alternatives for small business

[tmamer2007]

Hi Guys,

I work at a small (22 FTE's) public(not-for-profit) art galley. We are currently a mixed pc/mac office with various departments, all with different needs. Communications/Design are Mac. 2/3rds of the Curatorial is Mac, 1/3rd PC. Public Programs is mostly Mac with one PC. The accounting, giftshop, and Databases are all PC. The giftshop and accounting use ACCPAC. The collections (artwork collection that is) department uses FileMaker Pro backend, with a frontend called "Virtual Collections". We very much dislike Virtual Collections BTW. Our other database, which handles membership, and financial donation tracking, is @EASE. Because we are not-for-profit our overall budget for IT is relatively small, and the system is the way it is because of years of neglect, and stop-gap purchases.

We use a Microsoft Server with Exchange.

We are in the process of building a new gallery, and with it the ability to start fresh on a number of levels. One of which is our Server. Personally I'd like to see us move away from the Microsoft server ecosystem. It is cumbersome, requiring lots of IT support (which we contract out by the way, and costs us a tidy little sum yearly on top of MS Server licensing etc.) Our Management team is considering going to an all PC environment with the (I feel mistaken) attitude that "if all computers are the same flavour, the whole system will run more smoothly and thus be less expensive to manage". As on of the Mac users within this system, who knows a little about, but is no expert in, computers and networks in general, I'd like to be able to open a dialogue with management at this crucial juncture on alternatives to the system we now use.

I had run across a website some time ago that outlined the "real cost of owning and operating Microsoft Servers" but can not seem to locate it anymore. It basically broke down all costs of running a Microsoft environment, and concluded that, over time, it is not very cost efficient, especially for small enterprise.

Have you good people at SmallNetBuilder run across any really good server alternatives to Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Windows Server (I think ours is 2008)? We are a relatively small city, and the IT/Networking companies here all seem to push Microsoft as a be-all-end-all. I'm not so sure. I'd like to present viable alternatives with sound arguments to back them up. Can you guys help? Or, an you point me toward someone who can?

Thanks guys, keep up the good work,

Tmamer

 

[kjemison]

Hello,

I too can feel your pain brother - I have my own company in my small town USA and support about 20 business customers. Many of them have MS solutions for servers / pc's. I found that many if not all of the business programs they use are all written for Windows. Unfortunately, this tends to lock me into supporting MS systems that can become quirky at times.

Over the years, I have been teaching my self on a Unix platform called FreeBSD. Makes a great little server, ROCK SOLID! I install SAMBA for file sharing between the Microsoft systems. I typically will set these systems up for backup purposes. Some of my FreeBSD systems have been up and running for over 3 years without a reboot (Reminds me of the early Novell Servers).

There are many different "ports" for FreeBSD and you may dig around there site to see what they have to offer.
http://www.freebsd.org/ports/categories-alpha.html

Here is the link to the SAMBA organization
http://www.samba.org/

I typically force myself to learn the command line interface of the FreeBSD system to keep other Sysadmins from stealing my customers... Most people understand how to point and click on a GUI

Anyway, hope this gives you an option to look at for your environment.

Sincerely,
Kell

 

[thiggins]

Since you are making a major change, why not consider moving some of the functions to the cloud? You could use QuickBooks Online for accounting. For Microsoft apps without the hassle of maintaining the server, there is Office 365.
Other cloud-based "office" suites are available from Google and Zoho.

 

[tmamer2007]

Thanks you guys.

I am not the IT person at the gallery, just an invested employee. FreeBSD sounds interesting. I have heard of it before, but never really looked into it. It's funny, you good people here at Smallnetbuilder helped me pick out a NAS a little over a year ago for my home storage/backup. I ended up buying a Synology ds209, and love it. In playing around with it, it made me think that a bigger synology system would be great at work. that said, we'd have to have somebody implement, and as i've said, if you utter any word besides "Exchange" in these parts you get some awfully funny looks (and possibly snorts of derision).

We've talked about cloud storage, i love the idea, but it makes management super nervous. "What happens if the host site goes bankrupt." yesh. At any rate, what would really be helpful is a comparison of costs over time of windows servers versus others, in-house or cloud. Anybody know of a good website that has up-to-date comparisons? Ideally it would factor in ongoing tech support, as well as liscensing, etc.

again thanks Kell, and Tim for your responses.

Troy

 

[thiggins]

You can find general convert-to-cloud cost case studies with a bit of searching. Here are a few Microsoft studies.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Search_Results.aspx?BusTaxID=30683&LangID=46

But costs are very use-case specific.

Re: "what if the host site goes bankrupt" concern. That's valid for smaller providers and resellers of larger services. But it's no more a concern for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. cloud services than for their non-cloud services.

"Management" is usually more nervous about cloud security. But ask them if they know whether their current data backup plan is robust or has even been tested. Or how secure their self-hosted business critical data is.

The point is that there are risks no matter what you do. The key is knowing what the real risks are and managing them. And it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing approach. Some services/apps can be cloud-based, while others are on-site.

I'd start by getting Exchange off your back. There is no reason why you need to be hosting that on-site. I'd also look at your existing business practices and processes and see if they can be changed/simplified to give you more options for hosting them and perhaps extending access to iPads and other mobile devices.

There are companies like Verecloud that can help you through the process, too.

 

[tmamer2007]

Thanks Tim, this is a great start, you're the best!

Troy

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Wow I haven't seen AccPac mentioned in a long long time. Used to see it frequently in the DOS and Win9X days.

Open source versions of Microsoft Small Business Server
ClearOS (developed from Clark Connect)
http://www.clearfoundation.com/

Zentyal (eBox)
http://www.zentyal.org/

 

[tmamer2007]

Ya, ACCPAC

i mean, why do we do these things to ourselves? Alas, i am not management, and therefore, ill-equipped to understand their many nuanced ways.

tm

 

[Thatguy]

Stick with it

FreeBSD is an awful idea. Good luck getting support for a small business there.

SBS is not difficult to use and does not require much IT support at all. If you want any info on how to solve a problem google it or go to technet.com. If you can read and then type you can work MS SBS or really any MS server.

Going unix is great if you have the talent on the payroll, but for a small art gallery i'm guessing paying a unix admin 80 grand a year isn't part of the budget. But knowing a computer guy that can google and use technet 4 hours a month at $30 an hour will be just fine.

Any server just raid it and get DLP or LTO for extremely quick backups. LTO's take as much as the controller can feed it.

Seriously, it's tough to go wrong with MS servers for such a small operation. Nothing but good documentation and people that have most likely had any issue your going to come up with.

 

[stevech]

would MIcrosoft's Small Business server help? It claims to streamline/simplify.

 

[Thatguy]

Sbs

SBS is o.k. if they don't plan on expanding. It's simple to use (all MS servers are) and doesn't require overhead. However, if they plan on expanding then i'd go with 2008 Standard.

To me there's not much of a difference between standard and SBS except that SBS is much more limited. I'd rather go with standard.

If you want to add servers (either backup DC's or member servers) to a SBS it's much more convoluted, although i've never used SBS 2011. But adding backup DC or member servers requires reading documentation and running command line commands. Which isn't a big deal but if their a small shop with no IT support then you don't want to make things unnecessarily complicated.

I'd run standard if they think they will grow, then adding backup DCs or member servers is a few clicks and a reboot.

The reason I mention expanding is because, at least with SBS 2003, they had a max CAL of 75 (not to be confused with users, CALS are concurrent connections (people logged in)). If you want to go over that limit then you run into an issue with having to create a new domain. Which isn't a big deal either, takes about 20 minutes if you have your server built, but something to take into consideration if nothing else.

For a small shop with 30 PC's or Mac's that doesn't plan on doubling in size over the next 7 years you'll be fine. It's tough to get better support than an MS server.

 

[stevech]

the last sentence in the above posting maybe shoulda been the first sentence.

 

[sfx2000]

Windows Small Business Server is a good thing to look at...

Since you're heavy on the Macintosh side, one thing to possibly consider is a Mac Mini Server running OS X Server... it supports not just Macs, but works/plays well with WinXP/Win7, along with various *nix solutions.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/server/

Drop an AppleCare contract on it, and between the initial purchase and the long term support, you get access to a hard core business oriented support team.

Actually, since you're a Mac centric shop, you should talk to your Apple store, and set up a small business account - even there, you will get a better level of support from the already excellent teams there...

When I was out "there" being independent on my own - used this solution for my intranet/internet needs, including customer facing sites.... email to the outside world, VPN access, customer sandboxes for updates and support... good stuff, and a great price. I stilll run it, but mostly in-house now, except to support a vanity site for family info/news.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

To me there's not much of a difference between standard and SBS except that SBS is much more limited. I'd rather go with standard.

If you want to add servers (either backup DC's or member servers) to a SBS it's much more convoluted, although i've never used SBS 2011. But adding backup DC or member servers requires reading documentation and running command line commands.

But knowing a computer guy that can google and use technet 4 hours a month at $30 an hour will be just fine.

Adding other member servers to an SBS domain is just as wonderfully easy as adding them to vanilla/standard AD...there is no difference just because it's SBS. You can even have additional DC's in an SBS DC. I've done it for many many clients, over many years, across different versions of SBS. I have one client that has a staff of around 80 and 6x servers in their network...under SBS.

SBS is great for small biz for many reasons...
*Easy peasy hand holding wizard
*RWW portal to make remoting in from home easy and secure
*Built in backup
*Sharepoint built in
*WSUS
*POP3 connector so super small biz can graduate to real e-mail at their pace

...lots more!

..and..CAL can be users or device...you purchase them in either flavor.

30 bucks an hour for an IT guy...lol...what kind of hack job pizza tech you going to find for 30 bucks an hour? One that installs pirated OS's and AVG Free edition for businesses...that's who!

 

[stevech]

With users accustomed to MS Outlook with Exchange, changing to a cloud solution, or a Linux or BSD solution without Exchange, may lead to a lot of complaints.

 

[sfx2000]

With users accustomed to MS Outlook with Exchange, changing to a cloud solution, or a Linux or BSD solution without Exchange, may lead to a lot of complaints.

Building off the shelf - I agree, could be very painful -

A cloud solution for email/contacts/calendaring is available - MSFT has Office365, and Google has their Google Apps platform...

Something to consider there...