JoshuaD's questions

I'm the de-facto system administrator for a small law office. I'm looking for help to setup the network in a good way. Here's the basic layout/requirements:

Windows based.

The Server: A headless windows vista machine accessed by VNC from my workstation. Every workstation needs to be able to access, edit and delete the files stored on this server.

The Workstations: From WinXP to Win7, about 6 computers throughout the office.

Access from Home: It would be nice, but not necessary, to be able to securely access the files on the server from home. Does anyone know a good piece of software for this? Assume a very low level of competence in the users. They are smart, but not tech savvy, and not easily trained.

Back-up: The files on the server are critically important and cannot be lost. I'm looking at using StorageCraft's ShadowProtect Desktop for an incremental back-up scheme. Any advice on how to set this up for optimal space, effort and protection would be great

That's it. It's a simple network. I'm asking here if anyone has any pointers and/or warnings about pitfalls that I might run into that I'm not currently anticipating. Do you advise using anti-virus software on the workstations? etc.

Any advice will be appreciated. Just throw me what would come to mind for you if your job was to administer this network.

Thanks!

edit: A number of the comments are warning against using a desktop computer as the server. Why? I had a sense of trepidation about it, but (with my very limited system administration knowledge) I can't think of a reason why it's bad. Can someone explain to me what the dangers and downfalls are?

I'm the system administrator of a small law office (6-8 employees) which stores a large amount of important legal documents (Primarily PDFs, Excel Spreadsheets, and Word Documents) on a simple Windows XP computer, which we call our server.

Each user has full delete privileges (a necessity to be able to work.)

What is a good backup scheme for this sort of system? I am going to run back-up every night, but the difficult question is what to do with moved and/or deleted files. Do we delete them out of the back up? Do we update our back-up to reflect the deletion, but hang onto the deleted file just in case we need it in the future?

Does anyone have an elegant solution to this problem? The data being backed up is about 70GB.

Ideally I'd like a snapshot of the server for each day. As the data is 70GB, this is impossible to do in a direct fashion. Something that keeps a "diff log" from day to day and retains all data, but lets me view the server exactly as it appeared on day X would be perfect.

Edit: Well, I've done some more research, and it sounds like what I'm looking for is fairly common. It's called either "Incremental" or "Differential" back-up schemes, and it looks like the best scheme is one that integrates both.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a piece of software that will help me do this and can be scripted/configured in a fairly flexible way?

In response to "9 Questions you must ask yourself", which was linked to below:

1)How important or sensitive is the data on your systems?

Very important, moderately sensitive.

2) What type of information does the data contain?

Text documents and Scans of Text Documents. Excel Spreadsheets.

3) How often does the data change?

A small amount of the data changes daily. The rest rarely changes. As new Legal Files are opened, the data in those files change until the file is closed, then it might never change again, or just have a little added to it here and there.

4) Can you supplement backups with shadow copies?

Sure. Whatever is needed I can do.

5) How quickly do you need to recover the data?

Speed of recovery isn't an issue. A day would be fine.

6) Do you have the equipment to perform backups?

Right now we only have other office PCs. If something is absolutely necessary, it can likely be purchased.

7) Who will be responsible for the backup and recovery plan?

Me.

8) What’s the best time to schedule backups?

After hours 8pm - 3am

9) Do you need to store backups off-site?

Eventually. Having a good backup scheme in-house will solve 99% of problems.