Strategic Planning

[MYstIC G]

Right then, gather round everyone and pin back your ears as you read this out loud to yourself!

Scenario:

1. 2 Offices (In E14 & SE25 respectively)
2. 2 Sets of completely different computer kit (comprising: PC's, lazer printers, inkjet printers, plotters, scanners, etc)
3. Each office has 8MB BT Broadband running on the business hub that you get from them (this was _not_ my idea)
4. SE25 office has been shut for some time as it floods. Was just re-opened (though it flooded a week later after being dry for 18 months) and the requirement is to bring it completely online, i.e. basically so we can have either E14 up and running and manned, SE25 up and running and manned or both up and running and manned.
5. The problem is that all the work files are stored on 1 PC in the E14 office. There isn't a dedicated server as the office is not fitted out with network sockets, etc. so there was never any point as one machine has always been powerful enough to pump documents around (albeit a bit slowly).

I need suggestions on:

1. The best solutions so that we can access/share all the documents in both offices (i.e. one machine in E14 that SE25 can access or one machine in both that sync with one another, etc, etc.)
2. Ideally it would be even more perfect if all resources were available to share, i.e. if we were talking across the offices then it'd be handy if I could print my notes out for someone on the printer next to them.
3. How best to do this with the existing kit (not that there isn't some scope to purchase kit but I don't want to pay to stick anything into an office that floods)

So, basically... HELP!

 

[Moriath]

your talking major infrastructure on a shoe string

most companys that i deal with use clustering software to mirror between sites

like veritas

use that to constantly keep 2 servers mirrored. You could use a database or similar like Oracle to store the documents in and then mirror the disks with something like veritas having a server in one office as production and server at second office as DR and would come up as production when veritas finds production server down.

However that would require some investment. But youare getting beyond the realm of the inbuilt networking capabilities of m$ and its reliability

 

[Chilly]

two linux boxes, nfs, heartbeat daemons and rsync.

 

[MYstIC G]

OK, that sounds like the kinda answer I was looking for. You got any good pointer books or websites Chilly that might save me from the swathes of blog and product crap that fill google searches these days.

 

[yaruar]

two linux boxes, nfs, heartbeat daemons and rsync.

how does that deal with open documents or documents being edited in the other place before sync, out of interest.

 

[TdC]

possibly rsync will not sync open files?

I'm more concerned as I read G's story as needing a VPN of some sort (not that this is hard to set up).

 

[yaruar]

possibly rsync will not sync open files?

I'm more concerned as I read G's story as needing a VPN of some sort (not that this is hard to set up).

I was thinking more hosted solution myself, sounds exactly the kind of people Live Office (or google apps) or even a hosted sharepoint server are targeted at, all of which are pretty competitive. My worry with solutions synched between sites are the possibility of document revision problems if you lose connectivity or you get documents which are opened in a way to beat the sync.

 

[TdC]

a hosted sharepoint would help I think, but it would have to have proper file locking support. the (MS) sharepoints I use at work either don't have it or it;s not configured right.

 

[yaruar]

a hosted sharepoint would help I think, but it would have to have proper file locking support. the (MS) sharepoints I use at work either don't have it or it;s not configured right.

Properly configured it should lock on check out of the document and proper versioning, in a kind of visual source safe kind of way. I've often wondered why in the past people didn't use VSS or equivilent development tools for general document work, but that would have probably been too sensible

 

[anattic]

We use our revision control software (Perforce) for some document control, admittedly within engineering as part of day-to-day code management.

If you're on a budget and want to go this route, Subversion might be an option. It has a good Windows client, TortoiseSVN, and can be configured to tunnel all the client-server chatter over SSH (if a VPN isn't an option).