I’ve recently set up a small Windows Server 2008 R2 domain for a non-profit. I made some notes as there’s nothing really basic on the internet that skips the 90% of information you don’t need, and concentrates on the 10% you do need.
Hopefully this will be helpful to someone trying to do something similar. It will start out pretty basic, but I will flesh it out with plenty of details when I have a few minutes.
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 - This is available very cheaply thanks to a Microsoft program which donates copies to charity and non-profit businesses.
- Nas4Free - A linux distribution which allows you to create a NAS on which to store backups.
- pfSense - Another free linux distribution, this one a fully featured firewall / network appliance. Because of the nature of the users there is a need to provide filtered internet; this is done using the Dansguardian filter package and Snort as a proxy, both installed as packages on top of the pfSense system.
- VMWare vSphere - A virtualisation solution used to allow us to run all of these servers on one physical hardware device.
All of the software runs on a HP Proliant MicroServer N54L, which was purchased for £199.99, but had a £100 cashback offer on it at the time. Once it had some extra disks and a bit more RAM in it, it’s a very capable vSphere/ESXi host.
Q&A
How can I get a notification when users try to store MP3s on our file shares?
If you are using Windows Server 2008 R2, you can use the “File System Resource Management” feature. This tool can either block the write of files, or allow the write then log a message. You can also produce reports showing who, how, when, where and what the user tried to do. I will write up a tutorial for this once I have got it all figured out.
How do I filter out undesirable websites?
Currently this is handled by a Dansguardian proxy on the pfSense firewall. Configuration details will be provided when I get a chance to check them and upload them.