Hello,
I run a small, home-based accounting firm. We have 3 employees, including myself, with interns coming in and out. The other two are off-site. Right now, we have a Dell Optiplex running as a terminal server for the two employees of site and I have a shared folder on the machine. I can see their shared folders and place files in them. This works great, except for printing. When they print, sometimes pages come out backwards and skewed. The easiest solution I thought of would be to create a VPN so they can run the programs (mainly excel) on their local machines and access their files on mapped drives, but print locally. So I landed at the Mac Mini Server.*
In house I have 7 Windows machines, and 2 iMacs. One employee uses a Mac, one a PC. Inside the house is wired for Gig E for all devices except 3 laptops that float around the house.
So what I'm thinking is that I can set up Active Directory in my house, and all my children/wife can access their files from any machine, as can I (the kids bounce around machines as available and it gets annoying dealing with "but I have it save on THAT one"). I'd set them up to map the My Docs to the Home Directory on the server. I'd then set up the VPN server to allow my employees to access the network remotely. I was also thinking I'd put my very simple, very low traffic website on the server, and also set up mail services (it doesn't look good to clients that I'm still using an AOL email). I have a static IP and 22/5 speeds, with peaks closer to 50/10.
Currently I use a 1.5TB drive to backup via eSATA. I put it into the fire safe after every backup to protect against fire/theft. It also has a FW (I think 400 unfortunately) port. I'd want to keep using that. I have heard Time Machine works differently on OS X Server. Are there recommendations for a means to backup to this external drive?
So my question is, how feasible is this? Off the top of my head I'd be using VPN, SMB, Mail, and Web. I'm flexible on doing Mail and Web myself. I'd be willing to outsource those, but I'd rather not if possible. The website is not mission critical, just an online business card. I'm very tech savvy, with Cisco certifications, but Ive never used OS X Server. I'm looking for insight from the minds of people who have used OS X Server to handle tasks like mine before.
I run a small, home-based accounting firm. We have 3 employees, including myself, with interns coming in and out. The other two are off-site. Right now, we have a Dell Optiplex running as a terminal server for the two employees of site and I have a shared folder on the machine. I can see their shared folders and place files in them. This works great, except for printing. When they print, sometimes pages come out backwards and skewed. The easiest solution I thought of would be to create a VPN so they can run the programs (mainly excel) on their local machines and access their files on mapped drives, but print locally. So I landed at the Mac Mini Server.*
In house I have 7 Windows machines, and 2 iMacs. One employee uses a Mac, one a PC. Inside the house is wired for Gig E for all devices except 3 laptops that float around the house.
So what I'm thinking is that I can set up Active Directory in my house, and all my children/wife can access their files from any machine, as can I (the kids bounce around machines as available and it gets annoying dealing with "but I have it save on THAT one"). I'd set them up to map the My Docs to the Home Directory on the server. I'd then set up the VPN server to allow my employees to access the network remotely. I was also thinking I'd put my very simple, very low traffic website on the server, and also set up mail services (it doesn't look good to clients that I'm still using an AOL email). I have a static IP and 22/5 speeds, with peaks closer to 50/10.
Currently I use a 1.5TB drive to backup via eSATA. I put it into the fire safe after every backup to protect against fire/theft. It also has a FW (I think 400 unfortunately) port. I'd want to keep using that. I have heard Time Machine works differently on OS X Server. Are there recommendations for a means to backup to this external drive?
So my question is, how feasible is this? Off the top of my head I'd be using VPN, SMB, Mail, and Web. I'm flexible on doing Mail and Web myself. I'd be willing to outsource those, but I'd rather not if possible. The website is not mission critical, just an online business card. I'm very tech savvy, with Cisco certifications, but Ive never used OS X Server. I'm looking for insight from the minds of people who have used OS X Server to handle tasks like mine before.