Hi! Welcome to the latest edition of our weekly newsletter, bringing you articles on topics that we feel could help you in the day-to-day use of your home or small business PC. The articles are written by myself, Nathan Forrest of Future Systems (Sussex). I've been helping out as a moderator on the free computer support forums at www.d-a-l.com since they first opened and I have 15 years' experience of residential and small business IT.
Previous articles that you might also be interested in:
Access your files from anywhere at home and at work When you hear the word "server", what does it make you think of? A great big rack cabinet full of complex, specialised machines in a back room of a large enterprise IT department? Well that's the image that is generally conjured up for most people.
Start talking to a small business owner about growing their business by investing in a server and you'll usually see them go as white as a sheet and pound/dollar signs roll up in front of their eyes, just like in the cartoons - "ker-ching"! When a residential customer comes to us and says that they want to be able to share their files, music, photos and the one printer in the house between their different PCs and wireless laptops, we have to be careful - telling them that a server could help will usually get you a look as if you had just suggested that one of their children sleeps in the garden because you'll need their bedroom space for all of the cabling and black boxes of electronics!
This reaction is usually because of a misconception about what a server really is. Over time, most technology-related items get smaller and then cheaper, technology becomes more accessible to a wider range of users and, inevitably, terminology and meanings change a little. Remember that, in the 1960s, a "computer" meant a wondrous machine that took many months to build, weighed several hundred pounds/kilos and was so big that a room had to be built just to keep it in! The idea that a child could take a photograph using a camera built into a portable telephone (cell phone) and then immediately view that photograph on a mobile version of a computer that was so light that they could rest it on their lap (a laptop) was simply inconceivable.
Just as a laptop communicating wirelessly with a broadband router is a "network" in your home, any home or small business that has several PCs in a network environment might benefit from a "server" - that no longer needs to be especially big, expensive or complex to use. Indeed, to act as a server, many home users are now buying "media centre" or "lifestyle" PCs that are the same size and shape as a hi-fi CD player and reside in the lounge alongside other AV equipment. For some home users or small businesses, a "server" simply means a standard desktop PC that is dedicated to the tasks of sharing files, images, music and/or printing services. So what exactly can a server do for you? Well, for a home user, consider the following benefits. Share a single printer to every PC in the house, even a wireless laptop - print from the garden! Set up a family music "jukebox" - share your music between all PCs and play it through your hi-fi. Download videos from any PC, save them to the server and play them through your TV. Copy files from each PC to the server and have just one central point from which to back up everything to DVD ... or even automatically to an online backup service such as Carbonite, which we reviewed a couple of weeks ago (http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/150.html). Let little Johnny write his homework essay on his bedroom PC and then save it to the server so that you can check it for him from the comfort of the lounge after he has gone to bed!
These suggestions aren't wild fantasy or expensive extravagance. I have done all of the above in my home by simply hiding a small desktop PC out of sight in the lounge and connecting it up to my network and my home entertainment system. Well, OK, I don't have a little boy called Johnny but I do read through documents on my laptop in the lounge after writing them on a different computer!
Did you know that, after significant data loss, 50% of companies go out of business immediately and 90% don't survive more than a year? Small businesses can gain even more by introducing a server:
Data management Share data (i.e. knowledge / sales resources) between all users. Keep data off of older, more unreliable desktop PCs and store it centrally on a reliable (and backed up) server. Protect the server with an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) so that a power cut doesn't mean lost or corrupted data. Control (grant or restrict) user access to data more easily.
Risk management Additional services Install a cheap fax modem into a server and then fax documents directly from your desktop without a bulky fax machine. Print to a choice of printers for different jobs, even though they are not on your desk.
Improve staff efficiency and effectivenessMigrate from a shared drive on a user's desktop PC to a dedicated server to improve performance and staff efficiency. Email colleagues in the office instantly (without having to wait for the message to travel around the Internet, only to arrive 10 feet away 10 minutes later!). Share a central customer database - use Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook's contact management tools to quickly and easily import the contacts from every PC into a central store ... and then view, update and create them all in one place (with instant links into email, appointments and mail merges). Share diaries - use Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook's built-in calendar to manage all of your appointments on the PC and optionally share that information out to your colleagues. Book meetings easily - use Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook to place a meeting request in your colleagues' shared diaries after you've already checked them to see if they are likely to be available. Remote access - do all of this from home after "dialling in" to the server using your home broadband connection! Even more remote access - do all of this from a hotel room, Internet cafe or even from the car - "dial in" to the server over a secure connection from your laptop using a 3G mobile phone!
I hope that this article has whet your appetite and given you something to think about. For a small business or home user buying their first server, a dedicated system needn't have extreme performance potential - the main benefits are gained from the server's availability and readiness to share data - it isn't being used by someone sat in front of it browsing the Internet, watching DVDs, editing photos and running anti-virus scans. Because the main role of a server is to share data, the component that has the highest demands placed on it is the hard disk.
To get the best performance, it is worth buying a server (even if it is really only a desktop PC) with at least two hard disks. This way, Windows and the necessary server software can be installed and run from one hard disk, whilst the other hard disk is busy only when users are saving, opening or updating files. Depending on your budget, you might wish to have up to 5 hard disks, either for different kinds of files / different uses or for the fact that you can then implement RAID technology - this allows the data to be stored in such a way that, if one hard disk breaks, the server will keep working and can "rebuild" the data automatically. A cheap server (from as little as £300 / $600USD) in a business environment will still need relatively expensive software (typically £500 / $1000 USD or more). However, a home server can be run using Windows XP or Windows Vista, which will probably be pre-installed on the PC when you buy it. Most small businesses will spend up to £5000 ($10000 USD), including labour, having their first server implemented.
Finally, consider what will happen in the event that a server develops a fault. If you've bought a new laptop to replace a Pentium 4 desktop PC at home, that PC will probably be suitable to act as a home server (perhaps with a cheap upgrade of an extra hard disk or more RAM) even if the warranty has expired. However, in an office environment, the server "going down" will have a detrimental impact on the business and you'll want it to be fixed quickly. That's why, as a small business specialist, we opt for Dell PowerEdge servers and recommend that our customers choose the 3-year 'next business day' or '4 hour response' warranty.
Go on - get a server and see how much more useful your data is when you share it!
Nathan Forrest - Future Systems ( Sussex )
http://www.futuresystems-sussex.co.uk
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