Hey everyone,

I have been playing with Ubuntu Server for a bit and now I feel I am ready to take the next step and make my own business network for my small company. I would like to know if the following servers setup will do:

Server 1 - Domain Controller, OpenLDAP, DHCP
Server 2 - DNS
Server 3 - File and Print Server
Server 4 (DMZ) - Web Server
Server 5 (DMZ) - E-Mail Server

Of course Server 1, 2, and 3 will be in one box with VMWare and Server 4 and 5 in another box. Future plans are to expand my company so all of these services will need processor power.

Suggestions and recommendations would be appreciated. I know everything can run in one box, but want to keep it separate for both learning and processor power purposes. I hope all of this is making sense LOL.

Did you think about backups and availability?
Are you sure that you want to use Debian for this? Debian and CentOS are a lot more stable.
Are you using VMWare ESXi?
Have you thought about a firewall and a NAT?

I think that I would cluster the 2 physical servers (master/master, active/active). This way if a physical server fails, the other one can take over with a minimum of downtime.
There are probably a lot more things you can come up with, but I think that availability, backups and security should be the most important things to start a good archtecture. I wouldn't use my production servers for learning. And with this cluster architecture, you will be able to use the processor power of both servers, but when one fails your servers will be up again in a short notice with a little decrease of processing power. But hey, I rather have it a bit slower, then not available at all.

Blue_Ice,

-I agree with you completely about backup and availability. I should have been more specific with my infrastructure design. I plan on having a Box (Server 1, 2, and 3) for primary and another box as secondary. I believe those are the more important servers to have backup. Also I plan on having an external drive that will have a full image as well as virtual files for each system. I also pla on having one box dedicated to backups both server and client computers. What are your thoughts about it?

-What would be the difference between Ubuntu Server and CentOS in terms of learning and setting it up? If I know Ubuntu commands and structure is CentOS the same or would I have to learn from scratch?

- I will be using VMware vSphere Hypervisor, which is free to use. I will eventually get the paid version and expand on its capabilities in the future.

- I will be using IPCop as my firewall and NAT. I have read it is really good and secure and also easy to manage.

Any other questions or suggestions. Thanks for your help and ideas.

I don't really understand what you mean. Do you actually have more physical servers, then you have mentioned before?

CentOS is based on Red Hat, while Ubuntu is based on Debian. You don't have to learn everything from scratch. But there certainly are differences, which will force you to do some more research.

In my previous post, I mentioned that you better use Debian or CentOS, because most of us here will advice you to use these instead of Ubuntu. However it is still your choice. So it is best that you choose a distro that you feel comfortable with.

Ok, I was just wondering if you were using this and not something like the Workstation version. I saw that recently and the admin didn't understand why his servers were so slow...

Never worked with IPCop. I personally use iptables for this. Just make a good plan. A good security setup also includes protection against attacks
from your internal network. I have worked for a company that researched the attacks on their servers and they found out that 73% of the attacks came from their own users.

As much as I want to bash Microsoft and say glorious things about Linux, I still day use the right tool for the right job. As such I would stay with Windows for the office network, Domain Control, File Server and so on, just simply because it would make life a whole lot easier. But the e-mail server and web server, definitely would go with Linux given the choice.