VPN newbie-needing advice

I am a desktop support guy and i'm growing in my skillset. I've just got my
MCSA but the real world problem is that I am the only person in our IT
Department so I don't have any on-the-job mentoring. I work for a small
company that is now growing. When I started here a year ago, we had around 30
employees and now we're at 55. In the future, we will be opening new
branches. I want to setup site-to-site VPNs to all of them from our main
location. My question is on the limitation of data transfer. Lets say these
new locations will have DSL/Cable business broadband with static IPs. I will
be setting up hardware VPN routers at each site. I'd still like to keep as
much information as possible on the data server at our main location. Lets
say that these new locations will have a max of 6-7 employees each with an
average total 2-3 employees. I want to backup the docs and settings of each
remote office employee to our data server. What limitations and/or
alternatives are there to my plan? I think it's impractical to setup a
file/print server at each location based upon the small amount of employees.
But there may be no other course. Please advise me.

I think you should look into DFS.

Overview of DFS:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;812487

How To Set File Permissions for Shares in DFS Replica Sets to Apply to All
Replicas:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;308568

--
Todd J Heron, MCSE
Windows Server 2003/2000/NT; CCA
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties and confers no rights.

Isn't this better suited to a situation where you have many servers and want
one "portal" or centralized area to display those shares especially if they
are redundant across the servers? Unless I missed something about DFS, how
would this help my situation?

"Todd J Heron" wrote:

> I think you should look into DFS.
>
> Overview of DFS:
> http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;812487
>
> How To Set File Permissions for Shares in DFS Replica Sets to Apply to All
> Replicas:
> http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;308568
>
> --
> Todd J Heron, MCSE
> Windows Server 2003/2000/NT; CCA
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties and confers no rights.
>
>

Depends on the "experience" you want your remote users to have, and just how
snappy the Internet service you end up with at your remote locations. I've
got a remote location that is similiar to your scenario, 3 to 5 remote
users. Instead of having them access files (sometimes big spreadsheets,
etc.) over the VPN, I setup a DFS with replication such that the files they
need to access are replicated to/from the main site. The remote users always
experience Ethernet speed access to their files, but the contents are
replicated to the main site for backup and access there... Depends if the
files your remote users will access will support this scenario. If they need
to access a shared database like MS Access that might be open by a main site
user at the same time, then this wouldn't work too well...

"rich" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:B2ACE83F-DD99-4F5B-8A62-(E-Mail Removed)...
> Isn't this better suited to a situation where you have many servers and
> want
> one "portal" or centralized area to display those shares especially if
> they
> are redundant across the servers? Unless I missed something about DFS, how
> would this help my situation?
>
> "Todd J Heron" wrote:
>
>> I think you should look into DFS.
>>
>> Overview of DFS:
>> http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;812487
>>
>> How To Set File Permissions for Shares in DFS Replica Sets to Apply to
>> All
>> Replicas:
>> http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;308568
>>
>> --
>> Todd J Heron, MCSE
>> Windows Server 2003/2000/NT; CCA
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> This posting is provided "as is" with no warranties and confers no
>> rights.
>>
>>