[CLUE-Talk] [Fwd: The Challenge...]

[Kevin Cullis]

Lynn,

He's in the "I want to see" mode and since this RFP is a long way away,
he'd like to do some tinkering himself to see capabilities.  But the
real setup will have to be "professional".  From my perspective, "show
me the money" first and I'll talk, but not until there's real money up
front. Otherwise I'd/we'd be working for free and I don't do that other
than with CLUEbies.  I'll not even forward these emails until I hear of
something concrete, but the ideas are important enough for everyone to
know as well.

Lynn Danielson wrote:
> 
> Kevin Cullis wrote:
> >
> > > My plan is to set up the server. Establish an intranet and a separate,
> > > secure place to share files, plus I want to set up print services and
> > > e-mail processing.
> 
> Presumably offering email, file and print services to Windows boxes, yes?
> Since he wants security, is he planning for a separate connection to the
> internet with a firewall.

Yes, he's planning security, but he doesn't know Linux well, or at least
it's been a while since he's played with it.

> 
> Samba should be able to handle the file and print sharing.  Is the printer
> going to be directly attached to the Linux box or a separate network printer?

Don't know.

> 
> An intranet implies a web server.  So, apache would have to be configured.
> Depending on what he wants to do with it, this could get involved.

That's what I told him.  But his comment was that he gave me more than
what he got from most of his customers in the IT world.

> 
> Sendmail or Qmail could probably handle the email.  What email client is he
> intending to use?  Someone on this list posted recently posted something
> about and Outlook extension for Sendmail.

Again, don't know.  I'm assuming that Windows/NT/Novell is what
currently used since that's his background.

> 
> > > This is to be a model for a future office with only about 10 employees and
> > > needs to have the capacity to handle about 150,000 emails annually as well
> 
> That's an average of over 400 emails/day.  I'm not sure what a good average
> size/file might be for be, but disk space could become an issue, here.  Most
> of my emails are approx. 3KB, but then there's the occasional 500KB or 5MB
> file.  I'd be interested in knowing what other people think would be a good
> size allotment for mail queues and how they derive that.  As long as everyone
> is using pop and downloading their mail off off the server daily, my best
> guess is that 500 MB of space would be sufficient for mail queues.
> 
> > > as well as storage of a 500,000 (about 1GB) entry table with ODBC access.
> > > the data content must be automatically indexed and accessible by all
> > > parties with access rights and backed up on a daily basis.
> 
> PostgreSQL or MySQL (w/ MyODBC) ought to suffice.  What is he planning to
> use for a database client, MS Access?  If so, is he willing to consider
> something else?

Again, don't know. I've asked to "see the current setup" but have not
heard back.

> 
> > > How long should it take to set up?
> 
> Depends on who's doing it.  I'd expect it would take him at least a day or
> two to do it himself.  A paid professional who knows what they're doing
> might be able to set this up in a few hours as long as the expectations
> were clear from the start and the intranet requirements were basic.

The intranet sounds like the most critical since they want indexing of
the files for future reference and backups.

> 
> > > What software solutions are available?
> > > How much ongoing maintenance is going to be needed?
> 
> You might suggest he subscribe to KRUD for monthly updates.  Other than
> that, he'll want to make sure his filesystems don't fill to capacity and
> he might want to check his logs periodically.  Setting up something like
> Big Brother might be sufficient for monitoring problems.  Maintenance
> should be minimal.

Agreed!

> 
> > > Can it be done with Linux 5.1 and nothing else?
> 
> While Red Hat 5.1 could work, why not try something more current, like
> 7.1 or at least 6.2.  If he wants to stick with Red Hat, I'd suggest KRUD.
> I think that all of this stuff comes with every version of Red Hat, I'm
> pretty sure it's available with KRUD (check the home page).  The pro
> version of SuSE comes with everything.  But if he's got a good internet
> connection, it's all just a download away.

That's what I recommended at first.  He's a little niggerdly about money
so I told him to get the most recent version, about $80, is all that it
would cost.  He then said he could spring the money, but "not much" for
a pilot project.

> 
> > > This is currently being done with our NT system in the office (except
> > > the intranet part).
> 
> Really?  Nothing other than NT server out of the box?  I didn't realize NT
> came with a free database.

Yea, I know, ain't it funny?!!

Kevin