Setting up a file server - Windows 2008

[Jeremy]

One of the offline poker companies I am working with just bought a new file server with Windows Server 2008 Standard.

They want to obviously transfer all their files to this server and have a nice structure set up with folder, etc. The company does several land based poker tournaments and as you can imagine there is some down time. With that they want to have remote access to the file server so they can essentially work from wherever they want.

In a perfect world for what they are trying to accomplish, this server may be overkill. But it's bought and paid for, so they may as well use it.

Being a non-techie I am going to outsource the set-up of this. What would a reasonable amount of time for someone to set this up be. Likewise, what would a reasonable amount of money to pay someone be?

Thanks in advance. I'm subscribed to this thread so I'll respond ASAP if you have any questions. Cheers.

[cprpoker]

I would ballpark:

Install OS, Setup File Structure/Users/Permissions: 5h
Transfer Files: 2h
Setup Firewall/Server for remote access*: 3h

* 3 hours if straight VPN access to open the remote files locally on their PC's. Longer if setting up terminal server to allow users to remote into the system and have a console with Microsoft Office and work "locally". Longer would be maybe 6 hours.

About 10 hours if it is straight forward. I only dabbled with 2008 before I left consulting but that is about right for Server 2003.

Other things they will want to consider:
- Backup software and hardware (I like Symantec BackupExec and tape backups sized properly for data to be backed up. A holy war wages on between tape backup and backup to external HDD, but I prefer tape.)
- Antivirus (I'm partial to Trend)
- Firewall that supports VPN (I've always used SonicWall)
- UPS (uninterruptible power supply)
- RAID setup for hard drives. If 2 drives were purchased, mirror them to prevent a disk failure from bringing system down. If 3 drives, RAID 5. If possible, keep operating system on one set of drives and data on another set.