First Network set up

[thelostboy]

Hi All

I have recently just decided to take on this work part time for a charity free of charge they have requested the below:

. They have 3 PCs running Vista and Windows 7. They would like them to be networked so that files can be stored centrally and so that the files can be accessed remotely.

Just wondering what way you guys would go? surely I cant justify a huge new server and a server OS for a charity that has 3 PC.

I was thinking of maybe installing High Spec PC and setting up file sharing on this which also means someone can used this PC if needs be really i think it would save them money and allow them to have central sotrage for there files.

But also how could I allow Remote access to this computer from outside network?

[JorgeM]

You could store the files on one PC then share the resource for the other two. However, this requires that this one PC be turned on for the other two to access it. Another low cost solution is to purchase a network capable hard drive, rather than a dedicated server. These storage solutions can hook up to the network and allows you to add multiple hard drives to create a redudant, fault tolerant NAS system.

With regard to remote access, you could install an internet router that provides a VPN service. This will allow one or more users to connect from outside the network and access internal resources. Or if all you need is a remote desktop for one PC, you could simply create a port forwarding rule on the internet router. Open port 3389 on the router and map that to the private IP/3389 for the target computer. Then on the remote computer, just start the RDP application and type in the public IP or better yet, fully qualified host name that maps to the public IP address of the router.