Good day all,
I was wondering if I could pick some admin heads here as I have a HUGE project I have been tasked with.....
I am asking here since I will be basing everything on Centos, and want it to all play nice together. If anyone feels this is straying off topic, please just reply off list. I do not want to be the cause of one of those threads.
I have 3 offices, 1 in Canada, 2 in Mexico. We are currently investigating connectivity options (still no results yet), but I suspect one of the mexican sites will be very limited.
I need to setup the typical office setup, but need to get the following figured out. I personally do not have experience in this type of network (all my past experience comes from a centralized office, one location, or a multi office with services all based in their respective locations).
So because The connectivity is probably limited (in our mexican offices), I will need to take that into consideration (obviously). Our head office has a 10mb full duplex fiber feed, but we also have equipment in data centers.
What I need in the end is:
- exchange like functions IE Global address book, shared calenders, etc (looking at scalix, or could keep my existing email server - very happy with it, and just setup a LDAP server and a CalDAV server - still investigating this one though). - Funambol with various connectors to push email and calendars to blackberries and iphones. - vpn (openvpn) - mostly just the head office though - collaborative / project management environment (looking at alfresco - sharepoint alternative) - monitoring (nagios) - helpdesk (glpi with ocs for inventory management) - file sharing (samba) - remote file backups (probably just rsync into a dedicated backup machine in a data center) - access to all services (probably - still waiting back from the higher ups) from all locations
So my first thought is that my preference it to keep as much at a data center as possible due to security, temperature control, connection reliability, etc. Due to my inexperience with some of these products, (IE Scalix,etc) I am kind of wondering what the best way or topology is to do this is.
So at a brief first thought I kind of envisioned this:
- scalix, Funambol, alfresco, nagios (also one in my office as backup), backup box collocated in the data center providing it can be locked down adequately, and still provide the needed services to all 3 offices. - in each office a samba file server, vpn server.
Due to the probable connectivity issue with the remote offices (one is literally in the desert at a work site), I did not think a constant inter-office VPN was the way to go, Or even securing the main data center services with VPN (unless I could build it right for speed).
However I guess I could lock down the data center services with VPN, and create a constant connection between head office and the data center, and allow the other offices to connect via individual vpn connections as needed.
Thoughts? Just looking for a general broad overview, or some software recommendations if anyone from experience has a recommendation that is possibly better than the software I had outlined here.
Dnk
On Sat, 2008-05-31 at 22:47 -0700, dnk wrote: <snip>
I have 3 offices, 1 in Canada, 2 in Mexico. We are currently investigating connectivity options (still no results yet), but I suspect one of the Mexican sites will be very limited.
Depending upon which cities in Mexico your offices are in, you may be pleasantly surprised. Probably the connectivity will not be as fast as in the USA, but if they are in large cities, they will probably have very good connections available to them, at a price. From here, we get to the USA via satellite or undersea cable, which is very limiting. From there, it should be much faster. Tel Mex is a company you should be contacting, among others. They have lots of $ and should be able to provide whatever you need.
GL, Lanny in Colombia, South America
Thank you so much for the information.
I will follow up with them regarding connectivity. I know that the one office will be Ok (Mexico City), but the other is tiny.
dnk
On 2-Jun-08, at 1:04 PM, Lanny Marcus wrote:
On Sat, 2008-05-31 at 22:47 -0700, dnk wrote:
<snip> > I have 3 offices, 1 in Canada, 2 in Mexico. We are currently > investigating connectivity options (still no results yet), but I > suspect one of the Mexican sites will be very limited.
Depending upon which cities in Mexico your offices are in, you may be pleasantly surprised. Probably the connectivity will not be as fast as in the USA, but if they are in large cities, they will probably have very good connections available to them, at a price. From here, we get to the USA via satellite or undersea cable, which is very limiting. From there, it should be much faster. Tel Mex is a company you should be contacting, among others. They have lots of $ and should be able to provide whatever you need.
GL, Lanny in Colombia, South America
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Mon, 2008-06-02 at 13:19 -0700, dnk wrote:
Thank you so much for the information.
You're welcome!
I will follow up with them regarding connectivity. I know that the one office will be Ok (Mexico City), but the other is tiny.
I read your post again about one office being at a work site in the field somewhere. Even there, they should have, at the minimum, a satellite connection to the Internet available to them.
Mexico City is one of the largest (most populous) cities in the world and it is the capital city and I'm certain they will have excellent connectivity.
Your field site will be much more problematic and probably slow connectivity, but they will be online.
I don't know if Tel Mex has offices in the USA, I suspect that is possible. If so, contact them there. If not, they will probably have some people in their main office in Mexico, D.F. ("Mexico City", Ciudad de Mexico) who are fluent in English and you can communicate with them in English. One of our neighbors is an Electronics Engineer (Telecommunications) as is his wife and he told me that all of his university work in a public university here in Colombia was done in English.
On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 3:38 PM, Lanny Marcus lannyma@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 2008-06-02 at 13:19 -0700, dnk wrote:
Thank you so much for the information.
You're welcome!
I will follow up with them regarding connectivity. I know that the one office will be Ok (Mexico City), but the other is tiny.
I read your post again about one office being at a work site in the field somewhere. Even there, they should have, at the minimum, a satellite connection to the Internet available to them.
Mexico City is one of the largest (most populous) cities in the world and it is the capital city and I'm certain they will have excellent connectivity.
Your field site will be much more problematic and probably slow connectivity, but they will be online.
I don't know if Tel Mex has offices in the USA, I suspect that is possible. If so, contact them there. If not, they will probably have some people in their main office in Mexico, D.F. ("Mexico City", Ciudad de Mexico) who are fluent in English and you can communicate with them in English. One of our neighbors is an Electronics Engineer (Telecommunications) as is his wife and he told me that all of his university work in a public university here in Colombia was done in English.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
I'm from mexico city and there are several solutions for connecting your offices almost as in the US, CA, Europe.( ADSL, Cable, T1, T10, E1, Frame Relay, etc.).
Telmex is the BIGGEST communications company here and they DO have presence in the US, and there are other companies which can provide telecommunications solutions for your needs using of course Telmex infrastructure.
I am using several ADSL and Cable connections to communicate with associates and customers in the US, Japan, Argentina and Spain.
This is done using Multiwan Pfsense systems and we're running Win2K3, CentOS, RHEL and even Mac OS servers, and it's not too expensive as a T1 or E1 line, and we get almost the same connectivity.
If you need more info I'll be glad to help you, or even google would. ;-)
cheers,
Victor.
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dnk -
Lanny Marcus -
Victor Padro