I have been writing a lot about virtualiztion and going green over the last few weeks, but a thought hit me today as I was planning my next article. I realized that some Small/ Medium Sized Businesses(SMBs), may not even have an established data network to even begin implementing these solutions. I have been to many SMBs for various reasons both as a customer and as a technician and what I discovered was while most had one or several computers they were all stand alone boxes with little or no networking being used. To top it off most of these businesses depend on one computer for things like order tracking and even finances with pretty much no access control.

So for the next few weeks I will lay out a networking solution that is easy to implement and comes at little cost or possibly no cost depending on what hardware/ software you opt for. First thing’s first I will list the materials that I will work in this set up. Most of the software is free for example Esxi and Vmware Server are Free and you can invest in hardware to build a dedicated server using server hardware, buy a used server off of Ebay or Craigslist or quite simply recycle what ever old hardware you have laying around. whether it’s parts from old computers or entire computers. You can use this as an opportunity to replace your existing aging computers, desktop or laptops.
Software:
1. Windows Server 2003 ( Small Business Server, Enterprise, Standard)
2. Windows (XP Pro[ or Home], Vista [ Home Premium, Business Edition, Or Ultimate]
3. IpCop, PF Sense, ClarkConnect Community Edition, Smooth Wall Community Edition
4. VmWare Esxi
5. VmWare Server
6. Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
7. Spice Works
8. Orion Network Performance Monitor
9. What’s Up Gold
10. Software Firewall and Anti-Virus ( Norton’s, McAfee, Zone Alarm are my recommendations) you can buy an Internet security suite instead of each separatel
Hardware:
1. FastEthernet (10/100) or Gigabit (10/100/1000) Switch(s) these can be managed or u-nmanaged ( unmanaged are way cheaper)
2. A good supply of Cat 5E or 6 network cable ( Pre-made is fine but you are probably better off getting a roll and some Rj-45 modules along with a crimping tool, the TIA A/B standards are posted all over the Internet so a Google search will give you directions on how to make your own patch cable.)
3. To keep things neat you may want to invest in a server rack or go down to Home Depot or Lowes and get some wood and some screws and build you self one, just remember a few things
o Make sure you build one with enough room for expansion
o Build the selves with enough of a gap between them to allow for larger devises such as 4U servers, this will also allow better circulation of air
o It may be worth while to also get some mounting rail to allow you to slide out smaller devices and build a keyboard/ mouse sliding shelf
4. A KVM switch, this is totally up to you as to which type to buy and how many devices you want to support but i would recommend at least a 4 port KVM switch
5. Keyboard and mouse
6. Monitor, LCD or CRT doesn’t matter but remember LCDS are way lighter and take up less space. Also size isn’t important a 15 inch will work but the prices are so low you may find it to make more sense to get a 19 inch.
7. Network Interface Cards ( NIC) these again can be FastEthernet or Gigabit and how many you will need will depend on a few things but plan on needing about 3-4 of them.
8. Old computers, here it becomes a bit tricky because you want to use want to use the more powerful systems for the more heavy duty workloads such as being a server but typically a Pentium 3 Class with at least 256MB of Ram and a hard drive( can be any size for some things can be as small as 2 gigabytes and sometimes less!)
9. If you plan on using wireless networking then you may need one or more Wireless Access Points, I like the Linksys WAP54g.
10. You may also purchase a dedicated print server but it is not needed since any computer can be configured as a print server in about 2 minutes but still the choice is there.
11. UPS ( not the shipping company!) this an optional but recommended step because it allows your mission critical systems to remain operational for a few minutes after the power goes out, and automatically communicates with the computers/ servers to allow them to save and shut down properly. These guys can be pretty expensive but you can get one for every server one at a time as money permits.
12. Patch Panel (optional)
Now that is quite the shopping list! But I promise the pay off will be worth it. What we are doing is designing a network that will easily support an office of about 10- 20 people with a one person IT staff or no IT staff. To do this we will not use Active Directory or Exchange, but feel free to use this if you already have it set up, All computers and servers will be on a workgroup and we will also use WINS since NetBIOS isn’t routable, meaning that if you break your network into two subnet for example one for servers and one for computers and printers you will not be able to access the nodes on a different subnet, and this eliminates the need for someone to create and maintain a directory for user access ( log-on’s) and no need to learn how to create group polices etc. Also to minimize the cost and environmental impact we will be using some virtualization for perhaps one or two virtual servers.
I Created a couple of conceptual drawing to show you what your network could look like. The First one is a Server Rack, there are a few things to note, this was blown up a lot to illustrate things like the shelf space differences and remember this is just a concept you set up doesn’t have to be this complicated .

Again this is very rudimentary and only purpose is to give you a visual idea of what you network can look like. Come back for the next in our series, Building a Linux/ FreeBSD Router/Firewall.