SBS Hardware Part Deux

[silencio]

The original question:

I'm looking to build a new server to run Small Business Server 2000. I'm interested in a dual CPU system (Tyan K7X PRO and two Athlon 2400 MP's). We are a small distributor w/about 20 employees. I'm going to need to run SQL, Exchange and ISA along with our new inventory management systems, so I want something that will handle it with ease.

Does anyone have any experience or suggestions on this setup?

From the original post:

With 20 people you can probably throw it on a PIII 500 and it'll run fine. Just use RAID 1 for your boot drives, RAID 5 for your data drives (if you plan to have a lot of data to warrant not using your boot drives), a solid, tested, backup system, and a whole lot of RAM. I don't know what the max is on that MOBO but, considering the cost of RAM now, I'd max it out.

Update:

I do have experience with what you're talking about. I've been involved in setting up at least 30 different SBS setups(granted, it was NT) and was part of a team that tested SBS installs for a 180+ server SBS rollout (for a cheap a$$ insurance company). In my experience, 20 people on an SBS box (even though it's a DC, has SQL, Exchange, and ISA running) won't tax a machine's processer much. RAM and drive access will be the first bottlenecks you encounter. RAM is cheap and using a good SCSI RAID solution will offer you speed and fault tolerance. Another item is the NIC. Get a NIC that will do load balanced teaming. It will help with speed but more importantly it will give you some fault tolerance. BTW, the K7X Pro chipset is on the Microsoft HCL.

Hope this helps.