D
David Smithz
Hi there,
The scenario is an office of four laptops.
The office shared data is on a USB harddrive that is attached to one of the
laptops that stays in the office most of the time.
On that particular laptop the USB drive is shared out with sharing
privileges over the peer to peer network.
So everyone accesses it as the S: drive for example.
However, now they want to have remote access on a low budget and I was
wondering how to proceed. They want to keep things simple so ideally avoid
the use of a "SERVER" in the traditional sense of the word, but they would
not mind buying a desktop PC that they could permanently attach the network
drive and somehow give remote access to that.
Is there a good way people recommend they achieve this.
The options I can think of that do not involve Windows Server 2003 SBS are
* VNC / (PC Anywhere) access to the server device, download files as
required. - Problem is that it means they have to work with the file on the
office PC via the VNC or download the file they want to work with.
* Get a static IP address and have an FTP server program running to allow
them to download and upload files. (Not ideal for the non techie, but they
could be trained - Any problems with this method you think??
* Any other suggestions ??
I know SBS server can be bought cheaply, but I think there concern
rightfully is that it is a bit harder to maintain and therefore there are
much higher on going support costs (e.g. making sure everyone is connected
to the domain etc., a better backup solution as apparently the inbuilt one
is very poor.
So any suggestions welcome.
Cheers
Dave
The scenario is an office of four laptops.
The office shared data is on a USB harddrive that is attached to one of the
laptops that stays in the office most of the time.
On that particular laptop the USB drive is shared out with sharing
privileges over the peer to peer network.
So everyone accesses it as the S: drive for example.
However, now they want to have remote access on a low budget and I was
wondering how to proceed. They want to keep things simple so ideally avoid
the use of a "SERVER" in the traditional sense of the word, but they would
not mind buying a desktop PC that they could permanently attach the network
drive and somehow give remote access to that.
Is there a good way people recommend they achieve this.
The options I can think of that do not involve Windows Server 2003 SBS are
* VNC / (PC Anywhere) access to the server device, download files as
required. - Problem is that it means they have to work with the file on the
office PC via the VNC or download the file they want to work with.
* Get a static IP address and have an FTP server program running to allow
them to download and upload files. (Not ideal for the non techie, but they
could be trained - Any problems with this method you think??
* Any other suggestions ??
I know SBS server can be bought cheaply, but I think there concern
rightfully is that it is a bit harder to maintain and therefore there are
much higher on going support costs (e.g. making sure everyone is connected
to the domain etc., a better backup solution as apparently the inbuilt one
is very poor.
So any suggestions welcome.
Cheers
Dave