Arrgg im not getting this setup into action too well, life keeps interuptiong. stolen half hour from my kitchen duties to revisit the site and work out how to do this bios update, but im sorry to say im  lost again.

I can see there are 3 versions on the front page, how do i find out which one i need? and do i execute this file on my pc then plug into the server after?

im going to aim to set up a day to work on this shortly asit has sat waitng for over a month for me 

thanks 

If you're using it for web development surely a linux distro would be most suitable so you can get apache/php and so forth setup in a typical linux server config? It depends what development platform you use, if it's Java for isntance you might find Windows easier?

Hey,

Thanks for the replies.

I'm clueless
If I'm honest - I'm a total newb when it comes to this stuff. Never tried Linux. I was hoping to use this as a nice learning experience, while also gaining beneficial from the end product.

Current Network Setup
All the PCs in the building are running Windows (XP on a few, most are Win 7). I'm not entirely sure how to explain the network set up, I didn't set it up myself, but basically it's got no server but all the PCs connect to a device ... which then connects to another device. Essentially theres phone and internet ports all around the building, each cable leads back to the box in teh attic, where the two devices are, cables go into one, then they go into the other from the first device. As for domain controllers ...I would guess we don't have one, but that's only a guess.

Back ups
Preferably it would be people choosing what to back up onto the server, but I'd like it (If Possible) so that each computer / person has their own area that has their backups on, and who can access that area is restricted by set permissions (As we also have some employees that work here, I wouldn't want them access our private files, but I would want to be able to access their data etc).

Having said that ... I would of liked it so we wouldn't need to do anything after initial setup, as I'm the only one that has technical knowledge (though limited in areas like this!), I think people may struggle to remember how to, and to backup to the server every so often. So if it would be possible, after the initial setup on the machine, would it be able to backup the same areas as before that would be specified in the initial run? Does that make sense?

Web Server
The company I have hosting with for the websites that go live use Linux on a cloud network, so there built to work on that anyway but are developed on Windows machines. The languages I currently use (Server Side) is PHP and I use MySQL to interact with databases.

Services
Services wise I'm not totally sure what you mean, I use XAMPP as a local server on my machine and have the Apache + MySQL service running all the time. But XAMPP also has things like phpMyAdmin etc (Though thats not a service as far as I'm aware, it's just a GUI web app for accessing / changing stuff in databases).

Preference
I'd really like to be able to use something I haven't done before ... like Linux. I did look at freeNAS but that doesn't have web server (Though they say it's coming in 8.2).

Thanks, I really appreciate your advice.

Personally if you don't have a techincal knowledge, I wouldn't put Linux on the box if you are going to use it to backup important data! I'd put something on there you know, probably some form of windows... I'd then use another computer to play with Linux. The main reason being if you break linux, then to fix it is either going to take time or be near impossible depending on knowledge and googling skills!

Current network setup:
Yep sounds like a standard non domain based network, so will make things a little more difficult

Backups:
One question does each user have a different username to login to their computer, do they all have passwords?
If so I'd setup multiple shares on the server with each folder the same as their username, you'll then need to setup the users on the server as normal users but they would need to enter their passwords on the server (Due to lack of domain controller) This will mean that you can restrict access to each folder by the username.

Then I'd map a network drive to that folder on the server, so assuming the server is called "SERVER1" you could use the below code in a file called 'mapuserdrive.bat' and put this in the startup folder of each user..

net use u: \\server1\%username% /persistent:yes

If you then wanted to map the my documents folder to use the U drive then you could, and that would automatically backup all documents to the server, if you have laptops however you'll also have to setup cache, to allow offline files, which will sync when the share is available (connected to the network)

If you are using XAMPP currently, and happy with that, then there's no reason you couldn't run that on the server as well..

The other alternative is setup windows server as a domain controller, but that would be quite a pain if your users aren't part of a domain already and Windows 7 home I don't believe is compatible?

Maybe we have given you some ideas, maybe I've just confused matters

sorry for another question, i have booted the hp and my bios is 04/02/2011 bios id 041 can i just use the modified update over this or do i need to make it 2011.01.17 specifically?

thanks