Branch Office Setup Status

Limited for time, I went with the VPN setup I had originally spoken of (post) and mailed out one of the two workstations. Since we were in donated space and using someone else's network, I changed the VPN connection settings to connect with the local DNS server. This way at least it will limit how much traffic has to come over my T1.

The free version of RealVNC (info) was installed so I could have access to the computer from New York. I like to show the users stuff in their own profile and this allows me to watch what they do so I can figure out what the problems are. This type of setup has worked out great so far.

My only snag has been that Outlook can't find my mail server through the tunnel. (Okay, so that's more than just a snag.) The mail settings resolve the Exchange server's internal IP address to beta.[non-profit].org; that is, the server name on the domain. Outlook can't find the server, I'm assuming, because once resolved it is seeking the website beta.[non-profit].org. I assumed that an entry in the hosts file will solve this. Unfortunately I was not able to test this by the end of the day due to hardware difficulty...

While the workstation had been working fine for me in New York, by the time it reached the branch office one of the fans seemed to have broken. As a result the tower makes some horrible noises and apparently shuts itself down from over-heating. I'll probably have to ship out the other workstation to replace this one. It's a good thing the second employee hasn't started yet.