I'd say, get yourself a RAID1 mirrored pair of 2 or 3TB disks, as this should last you for a while.

Then get two 4TB external hard disk as a backup devices and backup to one, then take it home. Then backup to the other and take it home. When you next backup, take the oldest one into the office and backup to it, then take it home again. This will make sure you've always got a full copy at home.

 

Personally I think you'd be much better off with a better server as that celeron is below what you find in a low end computer/laptop.

Just spoke to the IT crowd and they are setting up office 365 cloud based system (exchange online) having spoke to another IT crowd here this will save costs by not setting up another server with exchange in the office.

 

We dont have a huge amount of data, just txt docs and there is only myself and my brother using it. I think what we have no is totally over kill...and not to mention feckin noisey!!!

If only a small handful of docs, why not go with a cloud synch service for files.

 

Even use your own cloud if you wanted, with a product called owncloud.

 

Two other plausible ones are:

https://www.wuala.com/en/pricing/ *encrypted before leaving your pc

https://spideroak.com/

 

Dropbox esq

 

Then email, well exchange or the others like Zoho... although I'm a google mail user, I'm beginning to lust for good old fashioned folders. So probably migrate the rest of my mail estate to zoho as exchange for 50+ domains is a ££ killer.

If only a small handful of docs, why not go with a cloud synch service for files.

 

Even use your own cloud if you wanted, with a product called owncloud.

 

Two other plausible ones are:

https://www.wuala.com/en/pricing/ *encrypted before leaving your pc

https://spideroak.com/

 

Dropbox esq

 

Then email, well exchange or the others like Zoho... although I'm a google mail user, I'm beginning to lust for good old fashioned folders. So probably migrate the rest of my mail estate to zoho as exchange for 50+ domains is a ££ killer.

Colin....you lost me at "own cloud"!!! I'd rather leave it in the hands of someone else and pay them...then when the kack goes down i dont have to stress about how to sort it!!...I have enough to do in a day!! Who ever would have though that something that looked so easy would turn out to be not so!

 

k:)

Haha, the joys of being a boss I suppose thinking you can just click a button then some pixie dust does the rest.

Ignorance is bliss as they say. I agree pay someone to do it so you don't have the stress however its always better

to know a little bit about it then you know your not being bent over on price or being sold a lemon. If they mention a

flux capacitor that needs changing you know they are dicking you about

The number of users doesn't add to the complexity only the migration time but that's minimal, its changing from sbs to full blown server that causes the headaches. Microsoft kind of left its sbs uses behind when they ditched the product. Oh and that's very low end spec Server you have there with no redundancy as far as I can tell. Depends on how much you value your data but I'd want a few disaster recovery options. For example raid 5 will give you hot swap drives so it if one dies you can remove and replace without any downtime. A tape backup will give you some data security and if you can stretch to it some cloud backup wont hurt. We use barracuda for this function its ace you get a box that backs up your server and streams to the cloud giving you a physical and cloud backup. Best bit it has no performance overhead meaning your server is free to just serve. One thing to note your sbs2003 would have come with exchange and free outlook cals. Microsoft don't give this away anymore so you will need to licence these individually.

 

No but neither is he going to a PDC/BDC (fyi not really such a thing any more, just GC and FSMO roles) setup with SQL and full blown exchange.

 

Add new server to domain, promote and move roles. Move file shares, DHCP, DNS, jobs a good un once you've figured out what you're going to do with the email

 

Kit: With <5 users, if you have a good internet connection, why not just go for Google Apps for Businesses? Email/File Shares sorted, doesn't sound like you have anything else to worry about.