Hi,

I am working on a large project for a class in school and just want a
suggestion from experience, not an answer (although I don't think
there is a correct one). I am tasked to develop an IT department from
the ground up for a company that currently has all their data from HR
documents to every transaction on paper. I want to design the network
first and then I can build the applications, web design and QA around
that.

The company is about 250 employees and I need to implement the
following:

1) Internal Internet
2) External Sales and product information for inventory control and
automated ordering and sales features
3) Web host and internal Intranet network
4) Hardware and software for 75 desktop systems supporting sales,
inventory, and production

I want a suggestion on the server arrangement and how many I should
use to support the LAN, email, internal and external connectivity, and
internal application/desktop support.

I haven't had much experience with network design; however, was
thinking about using the following:

Use a business class dsl provider
DSL will come into the router, which will connect, to a switch to the
various workstations/servers
I need 75 desktops and plan to break up into two subnets for
supporting sales/marketing and inventory/production
Implement one Intel Based Linux server for DNS/DHCP
Implement one Intel Based Linux server for Apache
Implement one Windows Server with Microsoft Exchange Server for email
Implement one Intel based Linux machine file server
Implement one Intel based Linux machine backup
The 75 desktops will run Microsoft Windows XP

I know I can probably combine some of the server functions, but that
is why I am asking for suggestions of how business's actually do it. 
Also, would it be better to go all Microsoft?  Thanks for any
suggestion on an architecture so  I can begin planning the rest of
this project.

Stay away from Microsoft as much as possible!! Can't stress that enough.

Hi,

Does the above setup sound OK or can some of the functions be combined
on single Linux servers?  Thanks!

Hi,

I don't have personal experience with anything that large-scale, so I
can't answer your question, but I have read articles on the subject
and will offer a suggestion or two.

One thing to keep in mind is that, although Linux makes every attempt
to play nice with Microsoft products, Microsoft does everything in
their power to screw up interoperability between platforms.  As a
consequence, there will probably always be some problems when
combining the two platforms.  These are not insurmountable by any
means, and I would certainly use Linux servers where possible.  Your
setup certainly sounds workable.

I'm curious: why use MS Exchange for email?  Exchange is costly, and
many contend it is insecure.  Postfix is easy to configure, free,
stable and secure.  If you want the other things Exchange provides,
you can get them from other pieces of free software.

Have you considered a few Linux servers + dump terminals as a
replacement for desktops?  75 desktops running XP is going to be very
costly.  Not only that, but your administration tasks will be much
more complex.  Now you have 75 desktops to maintain...hardware and
software.  Dump terminals are cheap...seems like I remember seeing
some for $250 a piece.  Setup a few cheap, fast Linux servers to serve
the terminals, and you won't have nearly the hardward to break down
(dumb terminals are reliable), and your software administration will
be much simpler because it will be centralized.  The money you'll save
on software and hardware will be enormous.

The general office software for the Linux desktop is already in
place--Openoffice.org is powerful, user-friendly, and stable.  It
exports/imports Word documents well...of course, if your entire
organization uses Openoffice.org, you don't have to worry about that
nearly as much.  Anyone who is familiar with Word will have no trouble
using OpenOffice.org.

I have personally tested Linux on the desktop with people who are
definitely NOT computer-savvy.  If you set it up for them, they have
no trouble whatsoever using GNOME or KDE in place of MS Windows. 
Sure, they couldn't administer a *nix box, but they couldn't install
Windows from scratch either.

If you want to know more about setting up terminals, I can point you
to documentation on the subject.  You might also want to check out the
Linux Terminal Server Project:

http://www.ltsp.org/

Regards,
Bikerman

I have every reason to hate microsoft, I worked there, however
microsoft has one big advantage, it has user base.  In other words,
you don't have to train users to use it, they already know, have used
it at other companies, use it at home, etc.  Of course that is not
true of back office.  That is why there is some much desire to mix the
two worlds, as much as they hate each other.   Dumb terminals are
good, in my opinion, for simple tasks, that are self examplanitory,
and would, therefore not cause at lot of training issues.  On the
oposite end of the spectrum, creative types net PCs because they will
use a variety of applications, including ones that they will
"privately" install, they want to play "doom" on them, etc.  POS,
shipping, data entry, customer services would be good dumb terminal
activities.   As far as combining services on a server, it would be
best to consider the peak loads of these services.  For example, say
backup happens at night.  Why leave backup server almost completely
idle during the day?