[BNM] Optimal Small Office File Storage and Backup Solution

[Andy Budd]

Hi Guys,

We have a small office with about five people, mostly running macs,  
all attached to a cabled network. Currently all our file storage and  
web development is done locally and pushed to our main web server for  
testing. This is purely a stop-gap measure while we decide on the  
best set-up.

Ideally we'd like to have a machine in the office set up as both a  
web server and central file store. We've toyed with the idea of  
getting a Mac mini with an external drive or a second hand G4, all  
the way up to an XServe or NAS device. However we're really not sure  
what the best solution would be. Any thoughts or suggestions?

The other issue is back-up. We'd like to automatically back-up all  
our machines, using something like carbon copy cloner, to external  
hard drives. This is mostly to enable easy rollback if something  
breaks. As most of our important files will be on the file server  
we'd probably have another back-up drive just for this.

The other issue is off-site back-up. Obviously its not sufficient  
just to keep back-ups in the office, so I guess we wither need to get  
a portable drive (or some other form of removable storage), or look  
into backing up to an external server. Whichever options we decide,  
the speed, ease and unobtrusiveness of the back-ups are really  
important.

So does anybody have any suggestions on the best small studio storage  
and back-up solution. One that's easy, not too expensive but will  
cover all our bases?

Yours

Andy Budd
Creative Director, Clearleft Ltd
+44 (0)845 838 6163
+44 (0)7880 636677

www.clearleft.com - We make web sites better