Small Office Networking

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Microsoft Home Server is in excellent solution for Small Offices, and now with home computing getting more complex, setting up a home network is a good idea as well. Allowing you to support up to 10 computers, Microsoft Home Server is an easy to set up, easy to run solution for your networking needs.

 

Why should I network my Computers? Why a Server?

As we've written in a previous article, backing up your data is crucial. Home Server allows you to do backups automatically and it can be configured to back up each networked PC and laptop on your network (including Macs) automatically every night - set it and forget it. Should you lose data or a hard-drive, you can recover all of your data and restore it in a matter of minutes.

Networking also provides other benefits - it allows a place to centrally store your business files (with the option to limit who gets to see what files, of course) for shared access to improve the workflow of your team or share your media like movies or itunes downloads so the media can be watched or listened to on any one of the computers or any other device, on the network no matter where it was originally loaded and stored.

Home Server also allows you to access your Home Server files remotely from the road - a useful tool if you're in a hotel room and you've forgotten a necessary document back at the office.

How to Set up Home Server
Networking doesn't have to be difficult. Home Server can be purchased setup on a new Home Server Computer specifically designed as a Server (HP have some nice ones with some nice features), or you can just buy the software and re-purpose an older unused PC for the task (as long as it has the hard drive capacity or USB connection to add other hard drives) as it doesn't need a lot of processing power or fast graphics as a user PC would benefit from.

Configuration of the software is relatively easy to implement and Fix IT can assist you with this if you need the help.

 

  • Install a Microsoft Home Server on your network.
  • Set it up to backup all your computers every night, share your files and remotely access your data and network to access your data away from the office.