SBS Question: Way to simplify the server setup?

[Winston]

Hello,
Have a simple network. One public ip address, one router. Am testing the
12 0day eval. of Small Business Server. This eval. includes exchange as
well.
Our DNS is handled by our ISP. 20 clients. Each getting their IP address
from the router via dhcp. Each person gets their email via pop and the isp
mail server.
1)Do I have to have exchange handle our email? Don't want this.2
2)All I want to do in Exchange is share a calendar and contact list
3)Is there a way to turn DNS off for the server
4)This is the only win2k server on the network and will always be the only
one. Any way to simplify the server so that the website is not running and
the ftp is not running.
5)Basically, what is the simplest way to run this server? Want basics only.

my client only wants
1)share ms office files on the server
2)email to reside on their own pc, not on the server
3)share contacts and calendars between 20 people
4)everyone has outlook 2000 now but netfolders is flaky at best

Thanks
-Ed

[Chad A Gross]

Hi Ed - see inline

"Winston" <Win...@dontreply.net> wrote in message
news:X0s9a.38530$Pa.37...@news2.west.cox.net...

> Hello,
> Have a simple network. One public ip address, one router. Am testing the
> 12 0day eval. of Small Business Server. This eval. includes exchange as
well.
> Our DNS is handled by our ISP. 20 clients. Each getting their IP address
> from the router via dhcp. Each person gets their email via pop and the isp
> mail server.
>
> 1)Do I have to have exchange handle our email? Don't want this.2

No, you don't have to have Exchange handle your email - but trust me - you
really, Really, REALLY do want this. All email is stored on the server - so
it is backed up every night. In addition, when you get your Exchange-aware
anti-virus solution, all incoming messages are scanned before being
delivered to users' mailboxes.

> 2)All I want to do in Exchange is share a calendar and contact list
> 3)Is there a way to turn DNS off for the server

Leave DNS as it is.

> 4)This is the only win2k server on the network and will always be the only
> one. Any way to simplify the server so that the website is not running and
> the ftp is not running.

Exchange requires IIS

> 5)Basically, what is the simplest way to run this server? Want basics
only.
>
> my client only wants
> 1)share ms office files on the server
> 2)email to reside on their own pc, not on the server
> 3)share contacts and calendars between 20 people
> 4)everyone has outlook 2000 now but netfolders is flaky at best
>

If you don't want Exchange to handle email, don't want to use DNS, just want
to share calendars & contacts and only want file shares on the server, why
exactly are you looking at SBS instead of plain Win2k? Its kind of like
buying a brand new Peterbilt to pull your golf cart trailer . . .

Your life is going to be extremely easier in the long run with SBS if you
let this box do what it wants. Use Exchange for all email / contacts /
calendars. Set up this box with 2 nics - one for your internal network and
one for your internet connection. Have your SBS provide ip addresses to lan
clients with DHCP - and have all of your lan clients point to your SBS for
DNS. Use ISA for a firewall. Get a good tape backup solution and do a full
backup every night. Invest in an Exchange-aware anti-virus solution (such
as Trend Client/Server/Messaging Suite) and keep it up to date.

I'm sorry for being rough on you - but I personally don't think the setup
you propose is appropriate for 20 users. Does that router have a firewall?
Is it a stateful packet inspector with egress filtering? How are you
planning on handling anti-virus - please don't say that you're going to
trust each user to keep their individual PCs up-to-date with virus
definitions. What type of information is going to be in those email
messages? If they contain business critical information, how are they going
to be backed up? When users need to email someone else internally, you're
going to have those messages go out to your ISP before the other user
downloads them? I cannot stress enough that setting this box up wrong will
be a support nightmare. Do it right - and set it up securely - and you'll
have fewer problems, plus a wealth of information and experience (this
group) to help you with the few problems you do encounter.

I'll admit that some of us (me included) have a tendency to say "do it this
way" which can lead to a fairly single-minded approach, which we really
don't want or mean to promote - so I apologize for that. I know there are
several people around here who have SBS with only 1 nic and a hardware
firewall / router instead of using ISA. If you want to go that route, there
are people here who can help. However, I think not using Exchange for your
email is a *very* bad idea. You have an extremely powerful enterprise class
email server - why would you not use it?

> Thanks
> -Ed
>

--

Chad A. Gross

Mr. Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet remains a
constant; the population, however, continues to grow

[SuperGumby]

I'll 2nd most of those thoughts.

One thing though.
<snip>

> If you don't want Exchange to handle email, don't want to use DNS, just
want
> to share calendars & contacts and only want file shares on the server, why
> exactly are you looking at SBS instead of plain Win2k? Its kind of like
> buying a brand new Peterbilt to pull your golf cart trailer . . .

pricewise W2K Server + CALs & Exchange Server + CALs would probably cost
similar to, if not more than, SBS+CALs, so if the OP never uses more than
Exchange the decision to buy SBS is sound.

But as above, I agree with Chad. You have all the other stuff, may as well
put it to good use.

And for good measure. The mail SHOULD be held in exchange. Backup and AV
being the major reasons. I bet they reckon it's more secure if it's on their
'private' workstations. How many of them have a blank password on their .pst
? Someone steals the PC and imports the pst into Outlook, or just plain sits
down at the PC and copies it. And cracking the passworded ones is a five
minute job.

[Kevin Weilbacher]

Winston, I have installed several SBS servers in very similar conditions to
yours. Trust me --- don't fight SBS and how it is designed to work. What do
I mean?

1. You mention 'NetFolders' being flaky. Not only is it flaky, but it is
not even available in the later versions of Outlook at all. You want shared
contacts and shared folders? Then you want Exchange! Trust us --- you want
Exchange.

2. You say all the users want their email on their own workstations. Fine.
You still get that with Exchange, but you get so much more. Ask yourself
(or ask your users) - what happens if their PC crashes right now and you
lose your all your data? where's there email?

But with Exchange, guess what? If Mary's PC crashes, Mary can walk right
over to Sally's computer, login as Mary and have all her email, all her
contacts, all her appointments!

3. With any company, security is a must. Viruses are all over the place.
Right now, with each person getting and storing their own email on their own
PC's, you are relying on the fact that they are not only keeping their virus
software up to date, but in fact hav eit running. I have gone to many a
site where customers say they are running an antinvirus software - but it
ain't the truth. I have found 4 year old versions of McAffee on some
computers, and on others they had completely disabled their A/V software.

All it takes is one person to put an entire server and ocmpany at risk!

On the other hand, by allowing your SBS server & exchange to do its job,
and with a server based A/V software running guess what? All email is
checked BEFORE it goes to the server!.

Not only that, let's say Mary does disable her A/V software on her PC, and
then sticks an infected diskette in her computer and emails that infected
file to someone. What happens? Well, in your present scenario, the email
will go out to the Internet and be sent. But with SBS and Exchange, the A/V
software ont he server also checks all outgoing email - you stopped the
virus in its tracks -- inspite of the user.

4. You say you want an easy to use server? What ever your arguments,
whatever the concern of your users -- do it right --- use SBS and ISA and
Exchange and IIS to help you run a solid server. I installed my first SBS
server 2 years ago -- I didn't know squat about Microsoft servers. I
followed the prescribed install process, I stayed in close contact with this
newsgroup - and to dat, every one of my servers is still running along just
fine!

5. Keys:
1. don't scrimp on memory - het 1GB at least, 2GB would be better.
2. don't scrimp on backup. If a customer or client of mine says they want a
server, but can't affor tape backup, I tell them they can't afford me
either, and I walk away.
3. don't even think about not using the SBS wizards. Too many "experts" who
have installed Microsoft servers (non SBS servers) think that they know it
all, and that wizards are for wimps. Not in this case. Miucrosoft has put
together a setup that allows you or I to run a single server that contains
multiple server applications (Exchange, SQL, ISA, IIS, TS). They have done
a really good job with SBS2K!

-kw

"Winston" <Win...@dontreply.net> wrote in message
news:X0s9a.38530$Pa.37...@news2.west.cox.net...

[Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz - SBS Rocks [MVP]]

I, too must join in on the bandwagon.

This is one of those things that once this little guy is set up right, he just
chugs. SBS is a server box that I equate to "the little engine that can".
We're the "Rodney Dangerfield" of the Security world, we're the "little box"
next to those big servers, sometimes we SBS'ers get laughed at, but there is so
much "bang for the buck" that you would be insane not to take advantage of what
you've got under the hood.

Like all the others who have posted in on this, it comes down to a couple of
things:

Centralized data.
Centralized security [yes even with running IIS]
Centralized monitoring
Centralized tools for spam, viruses, etc.

Are you able to do any of those things right now without sneakernetting your
way around the office?

With SBS, you can do all of that and much more.

Just like any other "runt", keep yourself out of the way of the bad guys [keep
port 80 closed up], watch yourself [awareness], have someone looking out for
you [firewall], and keep a supply of bandaids around [software updating], most
of us do quite fine out here.

P.S.
Not to dice words here....but....there is no such thing as a "simple network".
You have a small network. Not a simple network. 20 computers is not a simple
network. I've got anywhere from 12 to 14 here, three attached printers and I
would not call my setup a simple network. Anyone who has a network is no
longer a "simple computer system". That so-called "simple network" is open to
business risks, viruses, malware, worms, etc., port openings, intrusions,
etc. You are no different that the "big networks" out there....just less
resources than the "big networks". SBS allows you to maximize what you have.

Also what happens to your DNS if the Internet goes down? How do the computers
perform? I look inward for my DNS and thus not dependent upon my ISP.

Honestly... flatten that 120 day eval and start over and set this little guy up
to be the productive office tool it has the potential of being.

BTW [we're pretty passionate and give a lot of help to newbies if you couldn't
already tell -- most of us were newbies too]

[Les Connor [SBS MVP]]

Winson,

Perhaps I'm in a bad mood, and should go to bed, but

> my client only wants
> 1)share ms office files on the server
> 2)email to reside on their own pc, not on the server
> 3)share contacts and calendars between 20 people
> 4)everyone has outlook 2000 now but netfolders is flaky at best

I don't think your client wants any such thing. He just wants things to
work. You're the technology consultant, do what he's paying you to do and
make it work. Better than he could ever imagine. And all you have to do is
follow the script :-).

--
Les Connor
------------------
[SBS MVP]

"Winston" <Win...@dontreply.net> wrote in message
news:X0s9a.38530$Pa.37...@news2.west.cox.net...

[Winston]

Thank you!
Wow. Makes sense of what all of you say. I am following your
recommendations. I am very happy with the responses I received and I am
extremely comforted by this that support and answers are out there and so
fast! Wow. I need some handholding and it is hard starting from scratch. You
brought up issues for us to know and they make sense.

A couple of questions though on the setup. The main goal of this server is
too upgrade to a piece of software that requires Windows 2000 Server.

And to share contacts and calendars.

Sharing Contacts: It works.
1. have setup Outlook 2000 and public folders.
2. one user has posted his contacts in the public folders and set
permissions to NONE so no one can delete the contacts
3. but I noticed that anyone can ADD a contact to that list even though
permissions are set to none
4. What is set to none is the Anonymous as the "none role"
5. MS told me that in order to secure Contacts, need to purchase Outlook
2002 on all clients. Where a users cannot add a contact to the public folder
contact list. Is this true?
6. Currently using Outlook 2000

XP Home Edition. Arggghh.
1. We have XP Home Edition PCs that want to connect to the server. Yes, I
know that XP home cannot connect to a domain per se but can still access
network resources.
2. When a user when XP Home connects to Outlook they must enter
1.name 2. workgroup 3.password each time they open Outlook 2000. Even though
I set the settings to "automatically detect network." Is there a way to
setup a permanent password?

Thanks
Ed Winston
"Les Connor [SBS MVP]" <les.c...@cfiveDEL.ca> wrote in message
news:efaC2Y54...@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> Winston,

[Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz SBS Rocks [MVP]]

XP Home.... really ugh... you need XP pros That's the only way they will fully
integrate into that domain.

If you buy right now SBS with the SP1 either slipstreamed or for $5 shipping off
the web, you will get Outlook 2002 and are allowed to install it on all your
attached machines.

Once upon a time, a person from our office built a public folder and messed up
the permissions such that only he could add anything. I went in on his
computer, exported out that public folder data as a pst file and reimported it
back in. It then let everyone post to it. I have no idea what he did ...but I
had to bascially blast it off and rebuild it.

[Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz SBS Rocks [MVP]]

"And cracking the passworded ones is a five
minute job."

Depends.... want me to use the professional tool?
http://www.atstake.com/research/lc/

or the hacker tool where I can just reset the password if I have physical
access?
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

[Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz SBS Rocks [MVP]]

"imported it into a new folder name"

forgot to add that part.

www.smallbizserver.net
Bookmark it. :-)

[Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz SBS Rocks [MVP]]

Oh....sorry..... I read that wrong....

Yes ... as I pointed out in a backwards way...you can lock down a public folder
on Exchange such that only one person can add contacts.

In my office, we are professionals [well....um... we try anyway] and thus we did
want everyone to have the ability to add to that public folder and not just the
original person who set it up, thus, I had to muck with it to "unlock it" for
everyone as one use set the permissions such that he and only he could add
entries.

You CAN set it up locked or unlocked.