Need some email/colo service -- recommedations?

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Didn't see any recommendations yet regarding backups.  I'm a fan of amanda and
recommend configuring a Linux box with an AIT tape drive (do a search on eBay
for those, they are not expensive) and setting it up to do weekly tape backups
of your LAN server(s) plus daily incrementals to disk.  For details, search
the BLU mailing list archive for last year's discussion of amanda tape
software configuration.

If someone knows an affordable way to purchase 40 gigs of offsite backup
storage, and a viable way to pump the bits back and forth in the event you
actually need to do a recovery, I'd love to hear it.  Thus far I've put my
money on the tape drives vs. the online services.

I'll also take a controversial devil's advocate approach to the comments
posted here thus far:  I do not recommend that you hire a permanent IT guy for
a small company in this day and age.  Your needs are very simple and won't
change dramatically until your company is much bigger (as in 50 people).  I'd
say find someone you can trust to come in for a week or two, plus a visit each
of the next few months to do a few hours of fine-tuning, and get the basic
systems set up.  Ask them to write up a site management guide describing how
to add/remove users from the various systems, how to restore from backups, and
various other items.  You also want to make sure the LAN cabling and jacks are
well-labeled and recorded on an easy-to-update diagram.

When you've outgrown a simply Linux email and file server setup, you'll have
money rolling in and can afford to redesign your LAN.

This stuff has become so commoditized that unless you have special needs I
just can't see what you'd assign a full-time IT guy to do after the first
week.

I have direct personal experience with this:  in November a small company
asked me to come in and help set up these services.  I told them 20 hours the
first month and 5 hours the next few months.  They expected 40 to 80 the first
month and more than that the next few months.  But it really didn't take any
more than my estimates.

If you go down the path of hiring an IT guy, he will be put in the position of
creating busy-work for himself, and the net result is that you'll get an
overly-complicated set of hardware and software that will be in need of
redesign even sooner than if you go minimalist with a trustworthy consultant. 
I've seen that happen quite a lot at venture-funded startups:  they can afford
the IT guy and they can afford to buy lots of hardware and software.  The
result is a huge spaghetti pile.  Remember that the VC's are not investing in
local IT "improvements", they are investing in whatever it is the company is
attempting to bring on the market.

-rich