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Originally Posted by leggom
Thanks for the replies, I will probably go with SBS. I'm still looking for a decent machine as I do not want to go for a branded make, I might look at building one up.
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A server is a business critical component. If it falls over, even for a second, the whole company is disrupted. There are numerous reasons why failure can occur, but you don't want hardware to be high up that list. Can you really afford to build it your self, and will that show savings on a branded make. Plus are you then going to be offering support on this. Servers need at least 8 hour on site response, and ideally a lot lot more. Bear in mind, particularly with SBS all your eggs are in one basket. Files, email, web, even printing can all need the server. Even in default setup, the network's DNS addresses of individual PCs are assigned by the server so if it falls over the PCs cannot communicate with each other so you don't have a network. SBS is an excellent product, IMO, but you must understand its limitations and the demands it can place on a server.
Your server must have RAID drives, a means of backup, loads of memory (Exchange eats the stuff), and ideally fast processors. Plenty of room for expansion and cooling is, as indicated above, a must. The preferred setup, if you are going to use ISA is two network cards (one connects to the LAN, the other to the Web such that the only way PCs can get tot he web is via the server). The LAN card should be Gigabyte fast connected to a fast switched managed network hub so your LAN runs at max speed. Also consider peripherals like the modem. SBS offers shared fax facilities, quite neat once you work it out) but doesn't like many of the software type internal modems.
Simply configuring the server software and integrating that into the company will be a major sea change to what they have now. There will be disruption for which they will need virtually 24/7 support. Having set up a SBS network from scratch, when previously all we had was a peer to peer Win98 based network, I've been there. Just adapting the SBS software from it's default settings (which work) to your specific companies needs, takes experimentation. Worse once you are up and running, tinkering with the setup can often only be done "out of hours". VPN allows you do do a little of this but a lot of the time the only choice can be to burn the midnight oil at the office.
Top tip, if you are running with SBS. set the internal domain up as "domainname.local", not domainname.com It makes life a lot easier runign the wizards and stuff when you later want to setup your web server.
Do understand the limitations of the SBS licence. Particularly for the web server, you can run a site for your own company, but cannot host for others. But if you were going to do the latter then you should really have dedicated boxes, separate from your LAN.
A very useful book on SBS is
Small Business Server Best Practices: Harry Breselford. A useful website on SBS configuration issues:
Smallbizserver, plus the M$ newsgroups are good for a trawl through.
I may have got this wrong but it looks like the organisation you are assisting is trying to do this on the cheap. Bad move.