A friend of mine has a small business (4 employees with computers) and he would like to beef up his network. Right now he's just running a simple 4-port gateway and all of his computers are just sharing folders peer-to-peer.

He would like to buy a simple box to use as a server which would be run as a domain controller, network storage, and Exchange server. Some sort of VPN access would also be nice.

Couple of questions:
1) Is it possible to have Exchange installed on the same computer as the domain controller?
2) What would you recommend for a simple VPN solution?

Remember, there are only 4 people at this office, so he doesn't want to go overkill. He might have a couple other people in the near future, but don't expect this to be an international corporation anytime soon.

 

Hmm...wonder why you addressed this to the admins.

 

You should be able to run Exchange on M$ Server 2k3 Small Biz Edition. The VPN would be configured through the switch/router, Cisco.

 

Sorry, not AZ admins... network or sys admins. Although, I'm sure Soopa could chime in with his

 

Is there an affordable VPN router from Cisco that allows logins through a client software package? Most of the Cisco VPN stuff I've seen in the past has been $$$$.

 

don't see why 5-people company should need VPN, just not cost-effective.
May want to consider other means like those web-based remote-desktop solutions

 

SBS 2003 is the way to go. You could setup the server to run Remote Desktop. This will allow two concurrent remote logons and it would appear to the user as if they are sitting at the server.

If they really need VPN or some sort of secure tunnel you might take a look at Sonicwall. They have SOHO routers that support IPSec and the client would only need to install a small application.

EDIT: on second thought, SBS has the option for VPN access. You'll just have to enable/install the Routing and Remote Access service. No thrid party software necessary.

 

How likely and/or how soon is this company to grow beyond four employees?

For that small a group, running a Windows domain and Exchange seems like overkill to me. Especially if they have no in-house IT expertise. My thought, host mail and web services externally and continue using peer to peer but refine things a bit. Put all the PC's plus one additional "server" PC in the same workgroup and local accounts for each of the four people on all the boxes.

Now, if you end up going the domain route in house, then SBS is the way to go. I believe the R2 version is due out any time now if it hasn't been released already. I don't think it contains much in the way of significant improvments but they may as well buy the latest if they're buying new.

For remote access in the SBS environment, I would consider having a dedicated PC for remote desktop and/or running the free Sharepoint services on the server.

EDIT: Just saw the post about VPN access with SBS. Completely forgot about that as I never deal with SBS.

 

 

Look into Hosted Exchange solutions if you need all the functionality of Outlook. 4 person office doesn' t need the headache of running Exchange.

 

Yeah....I wonder why....

Title changed to make it as clear as possible for ya!

 

All very good advice. Thanks everyone!