Consulting for a Small Construction Company
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
A two bay NAS will do the trick here unless I am missing something. Two 4GB drives and a little Unitrends shelf style backup unit and you are good to go. Super simple to manage, very little to break, lots of protection.
I just realized I forgot the biggest part of this whole thing. (facepalm) So he's looking to setup a program that will be used both in the office and in the field. It's a way to create tickets for customers, track equipment, push out notifications to technicians of work, track they have seen it and what they've done, inventory and track parts purchasing, etc. That was why he wanted the server in the first place.
I can't believe I forgot this...I guess I'm more tired today than I realized. DOH!
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@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Are they on Office 365? What do they do for email and such?
Last I knew (this could have changed), they were using plain old Gmail. Something else I wanted to address with them.
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@thanksajdotcom said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@scottalanmiller said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Are they on Office 365? What do they do for email and such?
Last I knew (this could have changed), they were using plain old Gmail. Something else I wanted to address with them.
Trying not to do too much too fast. That scares people away.
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Your way over building this whole thing.....
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If I was rebuilding my company from scratch (15 employees) today, I would do it all online. Not even a question.
Maybe a Synology in-house to replicate to cloud services.
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Why would you want to reduce cost, and implement Hyper-V and UEB?
Why not XenServer and Xen Orchestra for the Hypervisor?
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I still don't understand they need a on-site server. Seems like a perfect opportunity to do everything "in the cloud".
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@aaronstuder said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I still don't understand they need a on-site server. Seems like a perfect opportunity to do everything "in the cloud".
Storage would be the big question. Do they need local storage? If not... grab https://www.smartfile.com/ or get that hosted Datto Drive through @BRRABill and you are all set. Easy peasy zero on site.
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@aaronstuder said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I still don't understand they need a on-site server. Seems like a perfect opportunity to do everything "in the cloud".
Agree 100%
Once you explain to them what it does for them, they'll be hooked.
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@DustinB3403 said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Why would you want to reduce cost, and implement Hyper-V and UEB?
Why not XenServer and Xen Orchestra for the Hypervisor?
I actually have no Xen experience...sadly...
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@thanksajdotcom said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@DustinB3403 said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Why would you want to reduce cost, and implement Hyper-V and UEB?
Why not XenServer and Xen Orchestra for the Hypervisor?
I actually have no Xen experience...sadly...
It's the most simple Hypervisor out there.
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Even if they need a Windows Server (I doubt they do) but if they did I would go ZeroTier and a hosted server.
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I do agree that the more I think about it, the most hosted would make sense. For their current size, it makes a lot more sense than on-premise.
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@thanksajdotcom said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@DustinB3403 said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
Why would you want to reduce cost, and implement Hyper-V and UEB?
Why not XenServer and Xen Orchestra for the Hypervisor?
I actually have no Xen experience...sadly...
You don't need any, it's pretty simple.
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@DustinB3403 said
It's the most simple Hypervisor out there.
It really is easy.
I got a little frustrated at something this week, and decided to consider a move back to Hyper-V. I installed Hyper-V, and no lie was back to XS within the hour.
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@BRRABill said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
@DustinB3403 said
It's the most simple Hypervisor out there.
It really is easy.
I got a little frustrated at something this week, and decided to consider a move back to Hyper-V. I installed Hyper-V, and no lie was back to XS within the hour.
Well that's good to hear. But the whole hypervisor discussion might be moot anyways, because the more I think about it, the more hosted makes sense.
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@thanksajdotcom said in Consulting for a Small Construction Company:
I do agree that the more I think about it, the most hosted would make sense. For their current size, it makes a lot more sense than on-premise.
Cost alone, I mean they can get Office365 with 1TB of storage plus more for each user, and Office apps, and e-mail .... times 7, and it would takes years before you hit the cost of a server probably.
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@thanksajdotcom said
Well that's good to hear. But the whole hypervisor discussion might be moot anyways, because the more I think about it, the more hosted makes sense.
Yep.
We used to have 60 people here, which is why we have the internal stuff.
But like I said, if I could start over, it would be all cloud.
We're actually trying to move as much as possible to the cloud as it is.
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I would recommend a VPS for their ticketing system and no AD.
For files, all they need is a simple on site NAS with redundancy.
Get them on Google Apps for business and Office 365 and call it a day.
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Also, remember that growth means extra income. As they grow, they will have more income. What you are doing is setting them up for growth. If you over spec everything they will never get value out of it. Even if the company doubled in 3 years they still would not need AD .
VPS - low monthly payment that allows for growth
Google Apps\ Office 365 - low monthly payment that allows for growth
NAS - Good investment for file sharing. They can always buy something else if they grow exponentially.
