Topic: Setup very small ISP

[icemannz]

Hi, I have been given the job of setting up a very small ISP. I am very new to this and somewhat out of my depth.
I have used SME 6 for some time and love the ease of the product.
I will probably just start off using one SME 6 server and build from there.
I would like to know if anyone has any suggestions on the best way to setup multiple PC's for running an isp. Backups and high availability will oviously be important.
I may need to use different versions of linux and clustering.
I realise these questions are not all really to do with the SME server but please forgive my lack of knowlege
Any suggestions on how to best go about it would be appreciated.

[SSBN]

What type of ISP do you want to run? Will you be selling DLS or dial up connections to clients? Or do you mean you just want to set up a server farm for hosting web pages and emails. If the later is your goal you won’t have a huge problem. But if you really want to set up an internet service provider (ISP) you may have a lot of work ahead of you.

[icemannz]

I have become involved with a group who are putting in Wirless networks around the country side. The Wireless network will provide the connectivity required and I think we can just set them up with capped connection speeds ie: 256kb unlimited connection.
I will have to setup some email servers and web servers to host the appropriate email and web pages for these customers. Starting with SME probably but this will soon outgrow a single computer.
I am interested in how to go ahout it - for a start what OS do most people use. redhat - debian ?
Also how to setup so that you can add to the network without much down time.
Backups are an important part but not really sure where to start.
Any suggestions appreciated.

[SSBN]

A lot of your questions depend on a lot of factors. Money, time and expertise are the biggest ones. SME is the very good for email and hosting. I use it for my company and have no problems. Expanding can be easy. I use a Cisco Local Director to load balance the web and email servers. We have no downtime as we can just throw in another server and enter it in the local director.

SME is a great start and to be honest it scales up very well.  

For hosting take a look at http://www.ruby-project.net/
And http://bluequartz.org/
It is the open source version of the Cobalt server.  It is for just web and email hosting.

[icemannz]

Thanks ssbn for your replys,
I will definately give the Ruby Project a try.
Can you tell me if I use the Cisco Director and then put the servers behind it - would I then have multiple servers with the same image ie: web pages and email and the director load balances it.
Also how do I backup the system.
I am a little worried about having to explain to someone if I lost there email for example.

Your information is appreciated

[SSBN]

This should explain the local director.
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/751/lodir/local_dir.html
It requires flash I think.

What I do for email backup is take advantage of a service offered by www.no-ip.com. There primary function is to let you host on dynamic IP's. But I have a static ip and a T1 and I still use them. The reason is they will cash you email for you if your server goes down. They will also forward to another server in a different location if your primary one goes down. This includes web pages and email. It happens very fast as well. So if you are very concerned about down time you can have a SME server at another location as a hot backup. You can have this hosted by a server farm or from your home if you like.

One thing that may also help if money is something you want to save is to consider Compaq proliants 1600 and 1850r servers. They are dual 500 with 512 ram and SCSI hardware raid arrays that will run 7500rpm at 10000rpm. You can get them on e-bay for 300 or so us. They run very fast with Linux.   They also work out of the box for the most part with SME 6.0.1 and 5.6.

[smeghead]

.. re the Proliants, they are good buys and work well but try to get something slightly newer if poss (DL380, ML370) as they are a bit easier to get stuff for (ie memory).

Get a good SCSI RAID controller with battery backup and away you go.  Linux works great on multi processor systems.

HTH