what can redhat do

[charlo]

Hi there I am sorry if my questions are going to be a bit dumb for most of you but please forgive me as I am a newbie and really want to learn Redhat.

I have a client that have 12 pc's on their network all connected to the internet via adsl they asked me to setup the following for them and I just want to know if Redhat has the capability for this.

Firstly they want internal email - how to setup apart from the current internet connection?

They want a file server
Backup server - is it best to backup to tape drive and if so is one drive sufficient

Basically what I want to know is where can I get decent step by step instructions on this type of setup and can all of this be done on one machine or do I need separate ones for each server.

I know I can do this with windows but would like to attempt it with linux as I hear it is more stable and reliable. I will appreciate any links and advise. What will the best pc specs be for the server type(s) I want to setup.

Will appreciate if someone can assist. I currently have redhat 9

[rokytnji]

Below How To is for CentOS which is civilian Version (my words) of Redhat Linux.

It should apply to what you are trying to do.

The Perfect Setup - CentOS 5.0 (32-bit) | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

[Rubberman]

Just about any Linux distribution will do what you need. Red Hat is a good choice for that. As for backups, given current cost factors, I think that backup to disc is a better option these days. You can get 1TB or 1.5TB sata drives for about 10c per gigabyte ($100 USD or less for 1 TB Seagate 7200 rpm drive) which is cheaper than tape, and an esata drive enclosure that supports quick load/unload of the discs for about $50 USD.

There are a number of good email options for Linux systems.

A decent hardware setup can easily handle email and backup duties, as well as network storage tasks, without any difficulty. As for step-by-step instructions, I think you need to do some homework first and should install something like CentOS (free version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) on a system to see what you are getting into.

[charlo]

Thanks for your reply guys. What system specs will be best to use for CentOS and for what I want to do with it (RAM, HDD size etc) Rubberman I just want to clarify on your reply you suggest creating backups on external HDD - is that wise to go that route as you can have a hdd crash and all info lost? What is the file sizes for downloading Centos?

[Rubberman]

Thanks for your reply guys. What system specs will be best to use for CentOS and for what I want to do with it (RAM, HDD size etc) Rubberman I just want to clarify on your reply you suggest creating backups on external HDD - is that wise to go that route as you can have a hdd crash and all info lost? What is the file sizes for downloading Centos?

The CentOS LiveDVD is about 4.2GB. There are also a set of installation CDs much as RHEL uses - 7 CDs of about 600MB each. However, if you have time and don't want to download that big of a data set in one go, there is a network installation iso image that is under 10MB. That does require a live internet connection, which the CDs or DVD do not.

Specs? Assuming you want a GUI desktop, any decent system w/ about 1GB of RAM and 80GB (or smaller) disc will do nicely. Personally, I'm of the "more is better" school when it comes to computer hardware - I run a dual quad-core system w/ 8GB RAM, 320GB system disc, and about 8TB of data storage.

Backups? I have been backing up my system drive to external discs ever since USB 2.0 came out - about 10 years or more. I have never lost a byte that way, but it has saved my bacon on numerous occasions. I even back up my Windows systems via a Linux rescue CD to ext2 USB drive (full disc image, compressed). I have been able to use that to restore my systems a few times when they got infected with viruses (Windows only), the hard drive failed, or there was some sort of catastrophic failure (UPS failed to shut down Linux workstation cleanly after a lengthy power outage). These days, with esata drives on my workstation, I use a quick-load esata enclosure for my backup drives (faster and cheaper than tape), but I still use USB drives for my laptop. FWIW, my 320GB Linux system drive compresses with gzip down to under 50GB. I don't use bzip2 because it is too slow by an order-of-magnitude. With gzip I still get good compression, but it can stuff the entire disc image on a 250GB USB drive in an hour or so. Data backups are incremental using rsync.

Anecdote:
About 5 or 6 years ago my Dell D600 laptop drive started to suffer from thermal failure (overheating). I contacted Dell tech support (the system was still in warranty) - they shipped me a replacement drive immediately for next day delivery. I let the system cool down, booted my linux rescue CD and did a bit-image backup of the entire hard drive (including partition table and boot loader) to a USB drive. The next day, when the replacement drive arrived, I installed it, booted the rescue CD, restored the system disc from the backup image, and was back in business - no data lost. This simply would not have been feasible with tape, not to mention a LOT more expensive! Hard drives these days have incredible MTBF specs, and if they do develop bad sectors, usually you can recover them since any decent drive hardware performs automatic swap-to-spare of bad sectors on the fly. Not to knock tape (I've used them plenty in the past), but sata drives these days are faster, more reliable, cheaper, and more flexible (backup and online/nearline/offline storage). At 10 cents (USD) per gigabyte, you cannot touch that with high-capacity tape - a 500GB (native) SAIT tape is about 30 cents per gigabyte from online discount vendors, and a drive is about $2500 USD. A quick-load esata enclosure is under $50, and a 1.5TB drive is under $150. So for the cost of a SAIT tape drive alone, I can get about 25TB of backup storage on disc along with a couple of enclosures which have esata and usb ports so I can use them anywhere.