Since this is SBS 2000 you are hosting from, I'll start by clarifying to
anyone who isn't familiar with the SBS platform (but maybe was cross-posted
into this discussion) that the SBS suite include ISA Server (firewall), SQL
Server, Exchange Server and the SBS is required to be the root AD server as
a Domain Controller.
I'm replying at this point of the thread just to "include" the previous
comments made by others. As John Timney stated succinctly, I wools say you
probably can do this technically, you probably shouldn't do it
professionally.
SBS is a very busy box by default, a lot of stuff going on. Some people
consider SBS to be a house of cards, ready to collapse if you aren't
careful. I don't really subscribe to that thought, but it's a fair comment,
particularly when you start to extend the included technologies in the way
you have indicated....frankly, in the wrong way.
SBS 2000 is intended to be a server that is a gateway to the web as a
firewall via ISA, and to provide intranet functionality to the LAN with up
to 50 users. This is what you are doing. The problem is that you are then
wanting to do all that....and next you want to make it a fully functional
public web server, except you don't want to do that in the efficient way
that webservers would be designed....using SQL under the hood, nor are you
proposing to do that in the secure manner that represents a best
practice....a web server in DMZ.
Therefore, if I were being called in as a consultant, I would look at what
you are outlining and play the devils advocate of why this is a bad idea.
You are taking technology and not using it the way any best practice for the
individual components would be recommended. This is a lot like not using
best practices like never use a sharp knife and cut toward your hand, never
user a screwdriver as a chisel, never store dangerous chemicals in a reach
of children in your house. It's fine if you say...but I'm only slicing
butter, I'm just knocking caulk off of a tile, and I don't have any kids.
Let's look at a few of the best practice concepts that you aren't following:
- Don't expose shared resources on a DC to the web
- Don't expose and intranet site to the web
- Always place public IIS webserver in DMZ
- Isolate your front-end and backend web servers, and use a secure method
for handling the backend server such as SQL
- Minimize the functions on a webserver so that you can lock it down as much
as possible if it's exposed to the public, and particularly don't install
any applications not required for it's role as a web server.
- Don't run ISA on a server on a DNS server, DC, Exchange Server, or SQL
Server, and particularly not on one that you are exposing. (This is that
special rule about SBS servers where you are violating every rule of
deployment with ISA, except that the SBS product is tuned to use ISA as a
firewall to protect this server in those roles. However, at the point that
you expose all of these functions to traffic entering from all interfaces,
you really have gone over the edge of sanity in deployment.
- Don't place business critical assets on a server directly hosting public
and non-authenticated access.
- Avoid placing business critical assets required to keep your company
running hour by hour in a role that increases the risk of critical failures,
or extended recovery times. Diffuse your risk by protecting and simplifying
the most critical assets you have to improve your management options, and
critical response repair options.
I know, this is the point where someone asking the questions you are asking
typically says "But if all this is such a bad set of practices, them MS
should be telling people that they can buy an SBS to run their whole office
from in this way." Well, yeah, that's true, and I personally wish that MS
didn't give people the impression that what you are asking is even
plausible, much less supported. The fact is that SBS includes a broad range
of products, but I can assure you that it's not the thought that MS dev has
that anyone is going to deploy a server using everything that is possible to
do with any individual component, and yet do all of those things
concurrently on a single machine. It's not that the technology would prevent
it, it's more that common sense would suggest to you that at some point you
have to look at the cost of the entire company depending upon a group of
critical technologies.....and you have to see that you are overextending.
A company with 20 users internally and another 10 users remotely is
presumably paying something on the order of $3000-8000 per day in salary,
right? Oh, I suppose it could be less than that, but realistically, if this
company existed only to pay 20 people $5/hr each, and it had no other
business assets, therefore no other cashflow considerations, well then you
might have an argument for why you don't see the return on investment
arguments for adding more assets in order to better protect the assets you
are already producing income with.
Far to many small businesses fail to realize when they are underfunding
their business in terms of technology investments. Many SMBs see only cost
with the equipment, and they don't see productivity, or perhaps they don't
see how to measure the productivity as a separate distinction from "what if
this stopped working". The fact that SBS is as reliable as it is makes it
seem that it would be reasonable to run this one server right up to the
point that you have the CPU at 70%, the disk drives at 80% capacity, and the
users all being delayed just about 30 milliseconds less than the time it
takes for them to not lose their attention to their tasks. That's just
insane. There's no room to grow the business, or extend to the next
opportunity.
It's inherent in any business that there's a point where you have to look at
what you have that is working really well and then decide that you don't
push it further, you reinvest in the next place to grow the next thing to
support your business needs continuing to be met without increasing risk or
dramatically complicating the complexity of maintaining the overall
environment.
With all these things considered in total, I think you really should be
looking at a minimum of one more server, possible two, plus another firewall
to create a DMZ. You probably need a dedicated IIS server if that's the best
way to deploy your applications forward to the web. However, I would
question whether or not you really are doing yourself a favor by using a web
server interface to front end an Access database if the Access database is
really that critical to your customer solution and not something you can
work around with separate SQL presentation. Maybe you need to look at
putting a Terminal Server in for the external connections, but this could
depend upon whether the remote connections are by trusted and authenticated
users, or not.
The situation you describe sounds to me more like a scenario where I'm not
sure that you are looking at a big enough picture to understand what your
best options are for the company.....not for the technology, but for the
company. I would be inclined to want to know more about where this company
is going...and coming from...to understand if the way that you are handling
this process is leading you into a box you will regret, and maybe your best
options need to be putting a lot more on the table than just another IIS
server.
