Small Business distribution

[Darryl Moore]

Pedro I. Sanchez wrote:
> Darryl Moore wrote:
>   
>> Thanks Pedro, that looks very promising. I was also pointed to 
>> http://www.contribs.org by someone else who made a private reply. Both 
>> look great, unfortunately both also are targeted at windows 
>> environments. I need something that is for a native Linux network.
>>
>> I'm going to look into seeing if ebox can be patched to make it work 
>> better on a native Linux network, it looks to be a little closer to my 
>> ultimate goal.
>>
>> cheers,
>> darryl
>>
>>
>> Pedro I. Sanchez wrote:
>>     
>>> Darryl Moore wrote:
>>>   
>>>       
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> Last week I posted draft network spec which I suppose was too detailed
>>>> in many ways and not detailed enough in others as I didn't get any replies.
>>>>
>>>> Attached is a point form list for a basic small business network I'd
>>>> like to provide. The basic setup includes a minimum of 2 servers (for
>>>> service redundancy) and any number of workstations
>>>>
>>>> I'd like to work with anyone on completing this. If we can come up with
>>>> a basic standardized set up then it would be helpful for all of us as we
>>>> could say that it is supported by other vendors too.
>>>>
>>>> Here is what I'd like to do, and perhaps I should set up a wiki to do
>>>> it, if anyone else wants to help.
>>>>
>>>> 1) decide if this assortment of applications and servers are the most
>>>> ideal for most small businesses, make any changes to the list now.
>>>> 2) develop scripts to install all these application on a clean Ubuntu
>>>> installation.
>>>> 3) develop scripts to customize them after deployment.
>>>> 4) decide what additional scripts are needed for puppet and nagios and
>>>> write them
>>>> 5) decide what additional utilities businesses might need to do basic
>>>> administration. An easy way to add/remove LDAP user & groups and manage
>>>> group directories comes to mind.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not a Linux Professional (YET) but I seriously think there is some
>>>> potential here, and am working hard to both get my Linux certifications
>>>> and build this system. A week ago it sounded like there was a lot of
>>>> interest in this. I am hoping there still is.
>>>>
>>>> cheers,
>>>> Darryl Moore
>>>>
>>>>     
>>>>         
>>> Have you looked into e-box (http://ebox-platform.com/)? It is 
>>> Ubuntu-based and comes with a web interface for admin functions that 
>>> facilitate installing/uninstalling software.
>>>
>>> You can extend e-box to cover any software that you want via a plugin 
>>> architecture. In this way, rather than spending time in developing your 
>>> own scripts to manage software you could contribute plugins to the e-box 
>>> project.
>>>
>>> On the other hand, my approach to SME's would have different components, 
>>> each likely being a self-contained solution, with integration services 
>>> becoming an added value for my services company:
>>>
>>> o Network component (firewall, NAT, VPN, DNS, DHCP, etc.),
>>> o VoIP component (asterisk, freeswitch, etc.),
>>> o Application server component (mail, collaboration, LDAP, CRM, etc.),
>>> o Client component (OO, mail client, etc.).
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>>   
>>>       
>
> Why do you say that e-box is targeted at Windows environments? It is a 
> server, not a client, and it seems to me it fits well the "Application 
> Server Component" I talked about before, even in a Linux-only environment.
>
>   
It only supports SMB file sharing, not NFS. That makes using Unix file
permissions rather difficult. I'm not sure how it handles groups and
domains yet, but they too are probably windows domains and groups, I
don't know if they would be mirrored in unix groups too.  There are no
modules for handling repository mirrors, or Linux Terminal Servers. It
does use OpenVPN instead of PPTP though, which is good.

I'm not sure all the ways that it is designed for Windows networks yet.
but having SMB and no option for NFS is a big one, and certainly
identifies where their focus is.

cheers,
darryl
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