[The Placid Casual]

Hey all,

I'm after a bit of advice on how to implement some server and network ideas I am currently planning for the next few weeks... Don't know if this is the right forum, if not Mods please feel free to move it to the right place!

Basically I am after an idea as to what software and hardware I will need, and how difficult it will be to implement certain ideas.

Equipment and connection wise, I currently have in the office:

1 dual 867 Powermac
2 G4 450 Cubes
1 Dual USB iBook
(All running Jaguar 10.2)

1 Ethernet 8 port router

1 DSL connection with 8 static IP addresses at my disposal

Rather than get people in to do the work, who I would have to call back should there be problems, I want to try and do it all myself... My aims are to:

Firstly, give all our clients an email address at our domain name... Figures wise, by the end of next year we will hopefully have about 5000 people with addresses...

I have no idea how to do this, I presume I will need a mail server etc?

Secondly host our company website from a box in the office...

I'm pretty 'savvy', having set up our internal networks, file servers etc but never attempted stuff like this. However I don't mind getting my hands dirty (thrive on it actually!)

Oh and ideally it all has to be Mac based, I really don't like (!) PCs and Microsoft, so don't want any of that stuff cluttering up the place...

Any advice would be very greatly appreciated!

Many Thanks,

Marc

[Kave]

Ok, I would like to recommend you have a tech specialist do this at location but here is how I use to do it.
First, you need dns services, that is for the domainname and the various names in the domain like www.domain.com should work. Either you get QuickDNS from www.menandmice.com which is in fact just an interface for controlling the built in dns server of OSX (even the OS X clients work), or you let someone do dns service for you, your isp for example.
Second, you need mailservice. One option most people in this forum would through at you is OS X Server. As a administrator of various mailservers through time I can't recommend that. I would go with Communigate Pro, it's at www.stalker.com. That will cost you 500$ for 50 users. You can download it and try it out and buy the license whenever you are ready. This server gives you alot of benefits over OSX Server, first is decent support. Second is proper documentation.
Third, you needed a Web server. I would go with OSX Client for this purpose. Just head over to System Prefs and enable web sharting and you are up and running.
You will also need a Firewall, since that will protect your variuos servers, and make life easier. Either you use a Mac HW for this, with two network cards, or you buy a finished product. It's what I recommend you.
Both Communigate Pro and Personal Web Sharing can be used on the same server computer, but I would recommend you to use one per task, if one computer goes down , it will only render one service down, not both.
Then you need backup etc etc but I will leave that over for you.