Debian for business?
I've been using Debian for almost ten years in academic environment. It
has done great job as mail, web, DNS, LDAP and DB server. I used Samba
just for some simple tasks. Most of my clients were MS so we had
additional MS servers for AA (authentication&authorization), file sharing
and DB.
Now I have opportunity to implement Debian (or some other free distro) in
business environment.
Requirements are:
1. 15 clients
2. AA and Printer/File sharing (printers are already there - cannot choose)
3. Main bookeeping application is written in Access an they are very fond
of it (it has to stay)
4. Groupware with very detail "Calendar" module, strong CMS and most of
all document sharing and versioning
5. Simple backup with user-friendly interface
6. CRM application
7. Custom made simple ERP application that interacts with data in Access
DB from bookkeeping
Proposed server hardware is :
IBM xSeries 226
Intel Xeon 3.0 GHz/2M
800MHz FSB, EM64T,
2GB ECC DDR2 RAM,
U320 SCSI,
2x146GB SCSI HDD
DVD-RW DualLayer,
PS 2x514 W,
10/100/1000 NIC,
1500VA UPS
I've already done such installations but using Windows Server. I'm not
sure if all of this can be done using Linux with same features. Users must
not see difference between such Linx server and Windows server W2K they
are already using. Old server will be retired.
Here are my doubts:
1. Is server hw enough for Linux with Samba as PDC, other sw and 15 heavy
users?
2. How important is lack of linux printer drivers if nobody will ever
print from linux - only win clients?
3. I spotted on web that there might be some problems with ms access file
(mdb) locking on samba - how serious is it?
4. What gw do you suggest? - (doc sharing and versioning is crucial!)
5. What backup approach do you suggest, that user with no knowledge of
linux can carry on? Maybe some web app?
6. Can Samba offer same functionality as single W2K domain server? Is it
transparent for users - what difference will they see?
7. Some open source CRM?
8. Is Ruby On Rails capable and mature enough for building simple ERP with
interaction with MDB? If not, maybe some other (not neccessary) web dev
tool?
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