I help out a very small local company who have virtually no IT skills but
some years ago were sold a 5 pc network with a Windows NT4 server running on
a Compak with mirrored scsi drives, tape backup and win98 as the workstation
os. The installer has now run away!

Although many years ago I was quite well skilled and ran a large Novell
Netware based network with several servers and a couple of hundred users I
am now stale and out of date with no recent experience of Windows servers. I
am pretty good with pcs and networking but a little shy of Microsoft server
software.
At home I have a nice little setup with 8 pcs, hubs, a router, broadband,
central printing and a single pc which acts as a sort of server for music.
etc with shared drives. I can't help thinking that this is perhaps more
appropriate than the "NT server" based solution in the local company. I fear
their server is a liability.

Essentially, their server is just used as a common file repository. Each
user has a drive letter mapped to the server and they save their word
processed files to the server. The server is backed up nightly to tape. They
do not use any of the more sophisticated services that a server can provide,
such as email, as they all have broadband and external mailboxes.

It strikes me that rather than running server software they could just as
easily have a normal pc sitting there with shared drives and run things as a
simple workgroup.

All users have access to all files, security (as in confidentiality) is not
an issue.

I am concerned that their file server is getting old and that when it fails
they will be faced with some difficulty. Their server software is also out
of date and in itself becoming a liability.

The only software that could involve file sharing is a bespoke Access
database, two people sometimes work on this at the same time. Do you need
proper server software to handle file locking? I don't think so but you know
more than I do.

In your opinion could the server be replaced by a simple pc running Windows
XP Pro? Backing up would be simpler, maintenance is simpler, replacement is
cheaper and above all I am confident in my own ability to sort it out.

Thank you for any advice, it is appreciated.

Les

If all they are doing is saving word documents, then yes you can replace the
server with an XP Pro machine and just set everything up as a workgroup.
Seeing there is only 5 pcs there isn't too many that you will to configure so
having a real server is not necassary. In my opinion thats what I would do,
plus it would save them alot of money because when you get into servers, you
have to purchase licenses which can add up to be alot of money.

The only problem about a workgroup is that you have to configure every pc
but seeing there is only 5 that shouldn't be that bad.

"Dadioles" wrote: