So, as some of you might know, I manage a small/medium tourism business. As well as GM, I’m also the IT Manager (and Safety Manager, Training Manager, Head Barista, Chief Toilet Cleaner, etc etc. You get the idea…)

I know we’ve got some super clever people here, and I know just enough to get myself into trouble. So, in the interests of “why pay an expert to do something, when I can do it myself in 5x the time” I thought I might try to revamp our IT systems… So, I’m seeking advice.

Our setup is pretty simple: cat-6 right through the building, coming to a passive bay and then to a 16 port SMC Switch. That’s hooked to an ASUS DSL-AC55U that provides our Wifi and incoming VDSL. That all seems to work just fine for us, so not looking to change too much there.

Computer-wise, we have four, and looking to add a fifth (laptop). There’s also a small NAS that I have setup as backup destinations for a couple of important databases that live on one of the PCs. The PCs themselves all function pretty much independently, with a tiny bit of file sharing to what I call the “main” computer. Really that’s just for convenience though. Important files live on our MS365 OneDrive/Sharepoint, so those can be accessed from multiple points. Email is through our web provider and works fine (no shared calendars though).

Finally, we get to the point(s): is it worth adding a small server or similar to host a file share, or is that not likely to add any value over OneDrive? What else could I do with a server that I can’t do currently? I did run a headless media server for a few years at home, so I’m vaguely familiar with the concepts and SSH etc.

Then, email: I’d love to have shared calendars (particularly so I can get my work calendar on my phone) - if I shifted my email across to MS365 (presumably I can keep our domain?) then would that add that capability or add any other value?

Anyways, this is mostly a thought exercise at this point, as I sit here in the office on a Saturday, while it’s sunny out and my kids and wife are out having fun lol. Thanks for listening!

  • Rangelus
    2·
    7 months ago

    I don’t really have anything else to add that hasn’t already been said, so I will just leave you with the route I ended up taking.

    I decided upon Google Workspace. The price vs convenience is very high, and I personally have no problems using either Microsoft or Google office software. Google admin is easy for users, and you can easily set up aliases which point to different email addresses. For example, sales@ and info@ can all point to axisential@, and it handles return email addresses as well. I don’t know how MS handles this, as I don’t have much experience with their enterprise side.

    Instead of self-hosting a website, storage, etc, for many of the reasons outlined elsewhere in the comments, I went with Google for file storage and Shopify for the web-store. The cost you pay is more than made up for the fewer man-hours of running a system yourself, and the security built in to the platforms. I have experience with Magento, and I will never use it again.