Build Advice Windows 2008 Server Hardware setup and general advice

Hello all,

It's been a while since I last came onto bittech as I have been busy trying to setup my own business and generally make stuff happen, so I havn't really checked in. I have now been asked to config and buy a new server to run a small office. I would really like some help in getting a system that meets my needs and will allow for future growth. I will layout my key requirements and if anyone with decent knowledge of small office server setup could help me to build it, that would be great. I have a good general knowledge of computers and I am fully capable of building from scratch as I have built a number of gaming PC's.

General guidelines.
1. I have a budget of roughly £2000 +- 10%
2. I would like to get from a known supplier eg. scan as I want to make sure of good customer service but I am willing to look into other suppliers.
3. I have a number of peripherals eg mouse keyboard and screen so these aren't included in the price / buy list
4. I am conscious of the environment and would like a server that is not massively power hungry as it will be on 24/7
5. It will be within a small office that has roughly 3 PC, 3 Laptops and a Macbook
6. I have a wireless N router that it needs to play nice with, its a Linksys wireless N router

Functional Requirements
1. It will be running win server 2008 R2
2. It will be running a Sharepoint server
3. It will have 2 printers connected, 1 colour 1 bw laser
4. It will have a small NAS box attached to it for backups
5. It will be a file server, mainly work files with a small ammount of films / media. I estimate 2TB will be plenty.
6. RAID is not a necessity unless people really recommend it as the majority of data is not mission critical
7. It needs to be able to run either apache or IIS with PHP MYSQL for Drupal CMS testing
8. It will be connected to the net with a static IP so it can be accessed via the web
9. At the moment we use Gmail as our mail provider, but we could put an exchange server up if we feel it would become more compatible with sharepoint.
10. It will be running active directory and serving up the 5+ users.

Now as you can see its a bit of a general machine thats going to provide alot of functionality for a small office environment. I may have overkilled it with the 2000 budget but I prefer a fast machine that will stay with us for roughly 5 years. It is important that we can use it as a testing environment for websites but not necessarily host the websites and serve them to the web as we will use a larger provider for that. Its really a place to test out sharepoint within the office and maintain our current business of producing and managing drupal sites.

I am slightly unsure of this but can one run Apache with the LAMP stack and SQL server and IIS stack without major conflicts or is this not advisable? Also does apache play nice with server 2008?

Thanks for taking the time
Tom

 

I think in your postion it would be wiser to buy a OEM built server from a big name company like Dell wouldn't it?

They will give you support and if the parts break or fail then atleast you have warranty and there customer support would make like much easier, i would think.

 

Is the premium of going through one of these retailers not vast?

Its for a 5 person company and I would rather get better hardware. I have a medium level of technical expertise and I already have the software through a bizspark so I dont want to pay for 2 licences.

Ill have a look on dell and see what they recommend, but if anyone has any other suppliers ill check them out also.