Hardware for Sharepoint and Exchange

[Snuffkins]

We're looking to host our own Sharepoint and Exchange Servers and also intergrate our VLE into Sharepoint etc.

There's just under a thousand students here and about 140 staff.

I want either a SAN or NAS solution for the storage, probably around 2TB based on current storage plus 500 extra users plus 50% of the total.

Would also like a good backup solution to cope with that amount of storage.

What sort of Spec servers are people using for this, does anyone have any failover in place etc?

Any recommendations would be great .

Cheers

[apearce]

I have a HP AiO 1200 which is a great. It can manage SQL database and Mailbox databases on there with back capabilities as well.

I've installed everything on a ESX 3.5 infrastructure using iSCSI to connect to the AiO.

The servers I have and would recommended for ESX or Windows OSs are HP DL380 G5.

[john]

SharePoint can failry gobbly up ram as well as SQL so plenty of Ram is needed, 4GB minimum to keep it happy, and nice processors. I have mine on a HP Proliant DL380G4 box