Hi,
I'm here looking for opinions on using xserve in an almost entirely windows environment. We are a small translation company that is moving into a new office and looking at different options for our computing environment. Given our situation, could the Xserve be a better choice than a SBS 2003 server plus managed care?
To date, we've managed with peer-to-peer networking and a SnapServer 1100 (now overworked), a Sonicwall firewall. At the new place we will have 12 desktops (7 xp pro sp3, 5 vista business) and 1 mac laptop (xp pro sp3 via VMware Fusion/Vista via BootCamp). We have eight users on the outside who need access to files. Basic needs--file sharing, VPN, backup, printing, email, maybe some collaboration tools (shared calendars, a wiki).
I'd love to go with something like SBS 2003, but we can't afford dedicated IT staff and I don't have enough knowledge to install, configure and administrate SBS 2003 (with Exchange) with any degree of confidence. We use POP3 through our ISP now, but Exchange and its various collaboration tools looks good.
So we've been looking around for managed care and well, it is not cheap. To my question, managing SBS 2003/Exchange seem pretty intimidating to me, but Xserve seems manageable. Is anyone out there using Xserve in a primarily Windows environment? How is it going? Is connectivity/file sharing, etc. reliable between the Windows and PCs? What do you do for email?
In the end we may go with SBS and managed care, but with Xserve we could avoid a lot of the licensing issues and keep server management in-house. My boss thinks its a bit radical, but it could save us a lot of money. More trouble than it's worth or a real option? What do you think?
Any ideas or advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
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