Small company 5-10 employees. Large coverage area (3 physical office locations). We want to host a few websites that customers can order from. We would also like to host our own email. How many servers do we need and what should we be running for the most effective, secure setup? This is my first post. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hello, for a first startup use a consultant or Microsoft support, that way you cover all options including network, storage, licensing etc. This is far to complex to be answered here in the forum.Best regards Meinolf Weber Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

Hi, Thank you for your post here. Yes, a consultant or adviser from Microsoft partner would give you the detailed buy-list which will fulfill your requirement. A typical small organization environment would like: Small company 5-10 employees. Totally up to 10 users? If you will less than 75 users in the organization even in the future, you may consider SBS 2011 which integrate the Exchange Server which provide the internal and external mail delivery. SBS server will be a more cost-effective than you purchase Windows Server and Exchange Server separately. Otherwise, you will need Windows Server 2008 OS and Exchange Server. Large coverage area (3 physical office locations). What kind of resource access you would like to provide in those branch offices? In the other word, would you like to setup servers (Active Directory Domain Controller & Exchange server roles) in every location? We want to host a few websites that customers can order from. What kind of http sites do you have? Is it ASP.net site? Would you need the IIS server farm with NLB to provide the high availability of the HTTP site? · How many servers do we need and what should we be running for the most effective, secure setup? In one word, if you have about 5-10 users a solution with servers in the main location and enabling remote access (VPN/direct access/remote desktop) for users in the remote office would be the most effective way in my opinion.

Thanks for the input, it really helps more you might think.