Submitted by “This tutorial shows how to set up a fileserver for small and medium enterprises with SME Server 7.1. SME Server is an open-source Linux server distribution (released under the GPL) based on CentOS that can turn a computer into a gateway, firewall, fileserver, printserver, mailserver (including webmail), etc. In this article we will focus on the fileserver aspect of SME Server.”
Looks good enough to give it a try, web management seems ideal for anyone who does not know linux but knows what he/she wants to get from server.
It could be just me, but I’d feel rather uncomfortable using software that’s 2 steps away from the original source. For small appliance-type applications, perhaps it’s a great fit (www.freenas.org comes to mind), but for a full-featured server? Personally, it sounds too scary for me.
But then again, I’m a Debian guy who thinks that distros based on Ubuntu sound scary too…
SME is really fantastic, I’ve been using it for a number of years now in a School Environment.
It’s rock solid, makes it easy to add users and automatically creates email address’s and can handle groups, SMB PDC, Virus scanning and Spam filtering.
Does a whole lot of things.
Anyone planning on doing it for multiple users, make sure you install “lat Tools” lets you import users from CSV files etc.
Well done to the guys over at contribs.org
The main weakness as a file server for me is that SME is built for Windows clients, and I don’t have any; my main file server runs NFS.
It is easy to manage, the mail and web server are robust and secure, the product includes a stateful firewall. There are lots of logs generated, so I can see intrusion attempts.
I pay a little extra to get a static IP and have registered a domain name — there is built-in virus scanning and spam filtering; both work quite well.
This is without doubt the the most trouble-free box I run.