My company has decided to get another server to replace our aging windows server. This server would be used as a database server, a file server possibly a DNS server and would probably need a virtualized windows server instance to host quickbooks (is the quickbooks server available on linux?). We're mostly archiving our manufacturing data and doing some analysis with it to optimize our production quality along with the fileserving aspect.
In my building we have a debian server that has performed very well so I think we're tending towards linux in the other building. I run linux at home and am familiar with it but I haven't yet set up my own server and started services like OpenVPN or a DNS server on it.
I have however been doing some maintenance and fixing things after the IT consulting companies we've hired have mucked it up. Things like improperly setting up rsnapshot to fill up the root drive if the backup drive is not mounted and fixing our OpenVPN configuration to actually make it work. I'm also responsible for installing and setting up our databases.
I think we don't want a contract option for IT services so they come in and stare at our server for 20 minutes and 20 minutes trying to fix the secretaries printer. We haven't had good experiences with these IT consulting folks so I'm thinking of taking this linux foundation server administration class if the company will pay for it but I would feel more comfortable having someone available in emergencies and for initial set up of the server. I'm wondering if we can't get some linux expert for $100/hour to get this set up and then I can take it from there.
Is that a completely unrealistic option? I feel confident I could do this all myself but I am not confident that I could get it done in a day or two. I'm sure also there are common pitfalls that other people who've tried to do this fall victim to. Why reinvent the wheel right? What else haven't I thought of?
If this doesn't seem crazy, is dice.com, freelancer.com, /r/sysadminjobs good places to find help? Are there better?
Thanks.
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