Some Ideas on Network Setup

[mairving]

I am reworking my Network at work. Currently have about 70-100 users. The current setup is like this:

Windows NT PDC P3-500 512RAM, functioning as a file server, Exchange Server, PDC, Proxy and several other things.
Windows 2000 Dual Xeon 2.4Ghz, 1548RAM running SQL Server.
Windows 2000 Dual Xeon 2.4Ghz, 1548RAM
RedHat 8.0 P3-800 512RAM running squid/dansguardian.
Redhat 8.0 Athlon XP-2000+ 1024 RAM.
Slackware 9.0 P200 64RAM running Apache/MySQL/PHP as a web development machine.
ADSL line


When I started here a year ago, there were just 2 servers, the SQL Server which was running on the Squid machine and the NT server. So my strategy has been to (1.) Remove some of the reliance on the one server and introduce some redundancy. (2.) Move some of the apps over to a Linux boxes for stability and $. So with that in mind, my current plans are to:

Remove all apps from the NT machine
Move Windows apps and Exchange over to one of the Dual Xeon Machines.
Move the files to the Athlon machine. Also have it function as a 2nd proxy server.
Keep the SQL server as is. It is running a propietary app.
Run a local DNS server on the Squid machine.
Replace the Slackware machine with the old NT machine and have it function as a 2nd DNS and as a web development machine. Install RedHat on it to be consistent.
T1 line


Eventually, I would like to move the mail server over to either Sendmail or Qmail but that is probably a next year project. I am probably stuck with the SQL server since it runs an app that requires SQL server.

So tell me what you think. Do these plans sound good? If not, what would you change?

Thanks.

[chrism01]

sounds ok. A couple of ideas are
1. move PDC functionality to a Linux box
2. Checkout http://www.opengroupware.org/en/index.html. Its a spinoff from OpenOffice and has just announced its first release of an Exchange replacement. Don't know the details, but there was a thread about it on slashdot recently.
Its not 100% of all the fancy extras in Exchange, but it may have sufficient for you, which would save a fortune in licenses. Also includes connectors for eg Outlook.

HTH

[mairving]

Yeah, I thought about moving the PDC over to the Linux box. I still may do it. Actually my original intentions were to setup a W2K AD and move the functions to it. I will review that decision.

Thanks, I will check out the OpenOffice product.