I do contract sysadmin work for a small NPO, with meager demands:
- <20 FTE
- ~3 print shares
- ~500GB data which will probably dedup to less
- Currently running SBS2K3 in a mixed AD/BYOD environment
- Chained to a 5mbit/1mbit net link, so outsourcing data not practical
We're in the middle of a hardware refresh. I got them, among other things:
- A new server from System76
- A FreeNAS Mini for backups
Priorities in descending order are:
- Robust, reliable file sharing, print sharing and backups
- Simple to maintain, even at the expense of initial setup difficulty
- Phone support available in case of disaster
We have some NPO licenses of Server 2012. I was considering the AD route, but given how many are just bringing their own Mac/iPad/whatever, the benefit is limited for a lot of maintenance overhead. I thought this may be a good use case for Zentyal or ClearOS, maybe running within KVM on Ubuntu (which comes preloaded on the server). Backups would be handled by Bacula (FreeNAS has a server plugin!), and after initial setup, most maintenance could be done via web GUI. Seems to pass most sanity checks, although the idea didn't get much love in /r/sysadmin.
Other points:
- Email currently outsourced
- Org not growing really fast
- Reliability and maintainability much more important than speed or advanced features
- Would like to keep everything as flexible as possible
What would you do in this environment with these resources and priorities?
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