One of the principal things on it sector is the data backup. What if a hdd with sensitive data get damaged? An external Hdd? You need to backup daily or weekly your data manually. How to solve this problem, without spending money? If you have active directory system centralized will be more easier for you or if you have the right budget to buy new devices for this purpose.
The solution i will propose will have no cost, or will cost you or your company just a pc, or better if you have a host account will no cost at all, if so skip the installation proces.
What you need is just a pc with normal or higher parameters to make the ftp / sftp server role, and a open source software like ftpbox. Also if you have a personal pc you can implement a part of this solution only if you have a host account who can provide you ftp account. For operating system i choose centos 6 x32bit because it is very stable. I will skip the part for installing centos because it is very simple, just after the installation if you are in lan inside the company network and you are protected from external internet you do not need to enable the firewall of the machine. After you have loged inside the machine ( with ssh or directly ) install the vsftp ( very secure file transfer protocoll ) with this:
[code]yum -y install vsftpd ftp[/code]
After installed , need to put on start up so will start automatically when the machine will boot up. The right command will be:
[code] chkconfig vsftpd on[/code]
Now need to configure some options in order to make secure and with the right privacy. Need to edit nano /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf ( if nano is not installed wirte on terminal – yum -y install nano -) and make the following changes:
[code]anonymous_enable=NO
local_enable=YES
chroot_local_user=YES[/code]
After this just start the vsftpd service with the command :
[code]service vsftpd start[/code]
User How to create user to use the ftp service? You can add or delete a user account just creating a linux user with command
[code] useradd klevin / passwd klevin[/code]
and you will have a new ftp user for your server, and the home directory it is stored at /home/, every user will have it is own directory. But what if a user connect via ssh? Can change the directory and go in every other directory, so will add a new command after created the user, this command will remove the ssh access of the user you will specify
[code] chsh -s /sbin/nologin klevin[/code]
You can create a lot of users and this mean a lot of directory will be created. Now you have a ftp server on your local network ready to use, please note to calculate the size of the hdd you will put on the ftp server and the number of users loged in. On the client side you need to install the ftpbox software. Just follow the installation instructions and choose e folder to synchronize with the server account. In this way you will have a “dropbox” folder with gb limited only by your ftp account. Enjoy your new backup system