Setting up a small network system, Advice needed 4

[glider03]

Our small company had it's server harddrive crash and we are about to reinstall our Server Software on a new hardrive.

We have about a dozen work stations with 2000 pro and are using a PIII with Windows server 2000. Do we really need to set up a domain server? We have been using simple files sharing and it seems works ok. We print to an IP address. We each access the internet a router.

If the accounting Dept. is added to the system (which management is not real keen on) how secure would it be from prying eyes. Would a domain system be any more secure. Would I need one Forest or two.

Thanks,
Glider

 

[Zelandakh]

don't need 2 forests.

RAID5 on the drives is sensible.

create users and groups. create folders like accounts. share the folder to the group and no one else. it is now secure.

 

[bbyes]

Hi,
According to popular belief and good network practice, when you have more than 10 workstations you should be using a domain structure. (as opposed to peer to peer)
With a single domain you will be able to accomplish file sharing as well as back ups from a central location.
When adding the accountants group just make sure to remove the Everyone/Full Access permission from their folders and grant permissions to the appropriate groups. If you are worried about prying eyes, enable auditing for successful and failed attempts to access these folders.

 

[glider03]

From Glider

Thanks for the posts. These are really helpful and I love this site. Ok, can you give me a little more on the RAID5.

I've been scouring the internet for this kind of info for day's and you guys replyed in just minutes.

Wonderful,
Thanks again
Glider

 

[ricpinto]

Read this links:

RAID 5:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/levels/singleLevel5-c.html

Hardware RAID

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/conf/ctrlHardware-c.html

Software RAID:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/conf/ctrlSoftware-c.html

How to configure Windows 2000 RAID 5:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q303237

 

[Ringers]

Raid 5 is a way to setup your hard drives so your system is completely recoverable, if one of your hard drives fail. You will need at least three hard drives to occomplish this. Try to make them the same size, make and model. It writes all you data across two drives and uses a parity bit for the third. So if one fails you install a new drive and use the parity bit to recover all data.

 

[glider03]

Thank you for the Raid info...Just what I was looking for. I now have a pretty solid basic understanding of Raid.

Also for addition referance on Raid 1, thanks to "ricpinto" :

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;302969

Thanks to all,
Glider