Building a Cloud Server

[duhk]

A friend has just recieve a grant to start a small local business. The business focuses on helping teens and adults with disabilities to pursue a career and education in college. Instructors will chaperone students to their classes and assist in their learning as well as monitoring their behavior.

He's managed a similar busniness before where a lot of things were documented with paper and pen. He wants to go completely digital with the main focus on cloud storage. Instructors will be equiped with small laptops to do work with, and his goal is to have the work synced with a central server at the office. The server will also operate as the usual office server, printing/network/storage/filesharing. So all instructors will operate out of the office only going to the office when there are meetings.

So he's asked me to take this on. He could pay someone that actually has experience, but he knows I'm into computers and electronics and stuff. So he's allowed me this oppurtunity, which I'd really like to take on, accomplish and gain experience from.

I'm probably in over my head but it's something I've never done before. I've googled and there are soo many options. I really have no idea of where to start or look.

I'd really appreciate any help. Thanks.

[Gerowen]

Suggestion from one of the few Linux nuts here on Neowin, :-P

Minimal financial overhead, and in my experience, greater reliability, would result from choosing a Linux based server solution. If vendor support is important to you, I would recommend somebody like RedHat or Ubuntu. I've heard the Ubuntu guys will actually come out, set it up on your hardware and train you on it before they leave. They've even written their own cloud server management software. Of course you can always choose to keep their paid support in the event that something explodes. If vendor support isn't a huge deal to you, you could go with something like Debian (which is what I run on all my personal computers and my personal server), but you'll have to set it up and support it yourself, or use one of the third party Debian consultants; http://www.debian.org/consultants/ . If you do choose a Linux solution, avoid Mandriva, they are going under, and have been for a long time.

Debian GNU/Linux: www.debian.org

RedHat Linux: www.redhat.com

Ubuntu Linux: www.ubuntu.com

Ubuntu Server Support: http://www.ubuntu.co...server/services

Ubuntu Cloud Services: http://www.ubuntu.com/node/1648

If you go with a Linux or Unix based server OS, you could also check out Alfresco. I've been looking into it and appears to be a very solid and feature-full SharePoint-like software that allows people to collaborate on projects and documents in the cloud. You can sign up for a free online demonstration to see how it works on their website:

http://www.alfresco.com/

Just my two cents, good luck!

[duhk]

I think I'm going with Ubuntu. Mostly because it looks more user friendly. :) I'm downloading it right now. I'll install it and check it out tomorrow.

[Gerowen]

I think I'm going with Ubuntu. Mostly because it looks more user friendly. :) I'm downloading it right now. I'll install it and check it out tomorrow.

Cool, if you have any questions the Ubuntu forums are free and quite vibrant last time I used them.

[Yorak]

If you want a stable cloud server, I would recommend RedHat or another distribution that builds off of the exact same packages (specifically CentOS). You do not have to pay for CentOS. The packages RedHat puts through are very stable and tested over long periods of time before they get pushed out in an update. When I am using a desktop operating system, I prefer bleeding edge packages (and thus usually I use Arch). However with servers, I prefer stability and something I can completely trust.

Nothing against Ubuntu or Debian, by the way. They make great server distributions. I guess it depends what type of package management system you like the best in the long run. RPMs are not my favorite in a desktop environment, but I have learned to respect them through various server installations. Basically, you can use anything as long as it has good documentation. Having a helpful community is also important (again, CentOS is great for this...P.S. - I don't work for them, I just love their product), especially if somebody breaks something at three o'clock in the morning and you are scrambling to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

[duhk]

HAHAHA, WOW, I could cry right now. :s

Everytime I google to figure something out, I have to google 3 more times, and then even more. And even then I barely understand what the hell these packages do, and there's lots of them!

The closest I've come to using Unix/Linux is making a small script for my iphone that swapped directories back n forth when I ran it.

God I hope there's someone in this forum willing to help me through this.

I highly doubt I would figure this out before my friend needs something up and running. EIther way, I'm gonna follow through with this for the experience and knowledge. :|

So far, I've installed Ubuntu onto a Virtual Enviroment. Installed all the default Packages it offered during install and then I started googling the packages I installed. Then browsed the packages in Aptitude. Then I realized I needed to take a break because this is too much to take in.

I guess when I get back to it, I'll try to setup OpenSSH.

I hate windows, it's spoiled me rotten.

[remixedcat]

I recommend Redhat Enterprise Linux server or the free variant, CentOS it is very solid! Most webhosting companies use this distro.

If you are going into hypervisors, I recommend vmware for that. Very solid hypervisor platform...

as for the server hardware I recommend Supermicro.

For networking hardware I recommend Cisco routers/switches and Extreme Networks switches (if you cannot find a Cisco solution in your budget range)

Cisco and F5 load balancers are great as well if you are using several servers and I also recommend EMC storage area networks. They have very good vmware intergration.

[paxa]

go with centos, as per server distros, is a very solid one. routers, switches and such go with cisco, they build really good equipments. just my two cents

[duhk]

Hmm, I'm starting to get the feeling that Cloud Server means a bunch of servers hooked up together which operate together as clones to distribute data to a client using the closest server.

So I was looking at Ubuntu Cloud Server, it looks like it's made for that purpose. Unless I'm wrong. I'm looking for something more like dropbox.

I'm trying to build only one server, that is a mail, file, print, and web server while also adding a service that operates like dropbox. My server would sync all documents to all the laptops. I know you can do something similar with VPN and Drive mapping, but it doesn't upload to the client device like dropbox does for offline usage.

I'm checking out centOS right now, seeing what it offers.

I'm confused now. Anyone that's built a server before willing to offer up some personal guidence, please message me. :)

----

I just found ownCloud, looks like exactly what I'm looking for. About to see if I can install this on my ubuntu server. Wish me luck. :)

[duhk]

I'm installing or trying to install ownCloud but I'm missing packages.

http://owncloud.org/install/

It tells me to

apt-get install apache2 php5 php5-json php-xml php-mbstring php5-zip php5-gd
apt-get install php5-sqlite curl libcurl3 libcurl3-dev php5-curl php-pdo
[/CODE]

I get the following messege

[CODE]
Note, selecting 'php5-common' instead of 'php5-json'
E: Unable to locate package php5-xml
E: Unable to locate package php-mbstring
E: Unable to locate package php5-zip

Note, selecting ' libcurl4-openssl-dev' instead of 'libcurl3-dev'
E: Unable to locate package php-pdo
[/CODE]

Am I missing sources? What source am I supposed to add to get those packages?

[paxa]

there's plenty of guides for those tasks in the web.

i recommend you check out this page. it has a collection of tutorials on how to setup most of what you want.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

duhk - i think the primary issue here is your budget. do you have a ballpark figure?

in your description, you said that the server will be for cloud storage, but also act as a general office server. i'd highly recommend you separate those duties into multiple servers.

how much storage are you going to need? are you going to use local server storage? do you need to venture into a NAS or SAN? what kind of networking will you need? you'll probably need several switches plus firewalls.

have you looked into a solution like a NAS-based Cloud? if your budget is more restrictive, you could buy a sizeable NAS and use the integrated software to host. i know Synology's software, for example, allows for file sharing over the internet and they have some "cloud" solution too, although i dont know much about that.

(edit) i guess what im getting at is - by reading through this thread, you're kind of diving head first w/o thoroughly planning.

[Biohead]

If you're looking for something with minimal setup, have you considered the pogoplug hardware? You then get as much space as you add to it via external hard drives.

Configuration is limited, but it's straight forward to setup.

[biffon]

Just get Server 2008, Setup Exchange 2010 (Mail for everybodys), Then install sharepoint for your document collabaration. For the hell of it build a website and host it on your server maybe even use SQL and swing a database out the back for people to log into via your snazbang website :)

[Praetor]

A friend has just recieve a grant to start a small local business. The business focuses on helping teens and adults with disabilities to pursue a career and education in college. Instructors will chaperone students to their classes and assist in their learning as well as monitoring their behavior.

He's managed a similar busniness before where a lot of things were documented with paper and pen. He wants to go completely digital with the main focus on cloud storage. Instructors will be equiped with small laptops to do work with, and his goal is to have the work synced with a central server at the office. The server will also operate as the usual office server, printing/network/storage/filesharing. So all instructors will operate out of the office only going to the office when there are meetings.

So he's asked me to take this on. He could pay someone that actually has experience, but he knows I'm into computers and electronics and stuff. So he's allowed me this oppurtunity, which I'd really like to take on, accomplish and gain experience from.

I'm probably in over my head but it's something I've never done before. I've googled and there are soo many options. I really have no idea of where to start or look.

I'd really appreciate any help. Thanks.

so instead of planning, you head jump into a solution?

Good luck

[CPressland]

It'd probably be a good move to talk to somebody about professional services they could provide you with this.

Linode may be a good start for the Server Platform.

[YouWhat]

I'm installing or trying to install ownCloud but I'm missing packages.

http://owncloud.org/install/

It tells me to

apt-get install apache2 php5 php5-json php-xml php-mbstring php5-zip php5-gd
apt-get install php5-sqlite curl libcurl3 libcurl3-dev php5-curl php-pdo
[/CODE]

I get the following messege

[CODE]
Note, selecting 'php5-common' instead of 'php5-json'
E: Unable to locate package php5-xml
E: Unable to locate package php-mbstring
E: Unable to locate package php5-zip

Note, selecting ' libcurl4-openssl-dev' instead of 'libcurl3-dev'
E: Unable to locate package php-pdo
[/CODE]

Am I missing sources? What source am I supposed to add to get those packages?

You need to edit your [b]sources.list[/b] file which is located in [b]/etc/apt[/b]

There are several repositories that are commented out using the [b]#[/b] symbol, try activating these by removing it, then refresh using apt-get update

That should help sort out some of the problems you are experiencing.