I was just told by our off-site IT guy (who is also a friend of the boss' family)that we should put the following programs onthree different servers.Two of which are actually desktop machines named as servers in the same closet:MS Exchange SBS 2003 on S1Time Matters (a legal database program) on S2 - (not really a server)Quick Books (financial software) on S3 - not really a serverServer1 specs:500GB HDIntel(R) Xeon2.00GHz, 4GB of RAMhe is saying the data and usage is too much for one computer and should be spread out.This seems pretty silly to me. Aren't servers BUILT to manage items like this all at once? We have about 15 users in the office and i just can't imagine why it would be an issue to run these all on our new server instead of the 4-yo desktops that are humming back there, and crashing at least once a week. none of these programs are extremely data intensive, as far as i know!can somebody just give me basic input on this? do i really need to spread these programs over three different machines? or am i right in thinking that is the intended use for a server?

Well, it would probably work installed on one server, but SBS is a different beast. I would ask this there and get some real-world answers:https://connect.microsoft.com/sbs08/community/discussion/richui/default.aspx

Hello, Ideally, it would be nice to get a BRAND NEW second server to host the apps and let the SBS box host Exchange, DNS, etc. You could set up the second server as an additional DC and add some redundancy to your network. Now, back to the real world: One one hand, spreading out the apps means less cpu/memory overhead for each box. If 1 box dies, then at least 2 out of your 3 apps are still running. On the other hand, spreading the apps out means three boxes to maintain, three backup sets to worry about and 3x more likely to be a problem. The server sound like it's powerful enough and 15 users is not that much. I don't know Time Matters but I have similar scenarios in the field where I run QB DB manager, Exchange and SQL Express all on a SBS 2003 and it works just dandy. Occasionally when the spam filter or SMTP service gets overwhelmed, the apps can slow down slightly but unless your end users are drinking coffee all day they probably won't notice it. Another important thing to look at is if the non-servers are 4+ years old, the HDD's are reaching their MTBF limits. If they are constantly crashing then you definitely don't want your QB and Timekeeping databases to reside on machines that crash since that could corrupt the DB's. Lastly comes politics.. Mmmm, no comment. MiguelMiguel Fra / Falcon ITS Computer and Network Service and Support, Miami, Fl