Hello,New to Server Management.I provide IT support for a small lawfirm.They have SBS 2003 with about 10 workstations.As you might imagine, they have a ton of information to search through.They have on the order of several hundreds of thousands of documents, pdfs, emails in public folders to search through.I don't know what is the best indexing and search strategy for them.They have tried using Windows Search 4.0 to index the network shares but it is so time consuming. It seems to me that the server can setup and maintain those indexes. But how do the clients access those indexes?and what about the emails in public folders on Exchange?Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Any version of 2003 Serverhas limited capability for searching and indexing. Instead of using PF , the MOSS would have been a better idea. even 2008 has better searching capabilities. Any ways back to the point for SBS2003 , please have a look on suggestions from MVP's http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/windowsdesktopsearchhelp/thread/a55ab357-1843-49bc-b5a5-f18a0106cf19Raj

Thanks RajI don't understand how the clients would "Query the index remotely".Can you explain.

If you give a very close look on what Ary says, you do the indexing on the server and it will be taken care from the client side also. As you know the indexing service is done by system service."It makes no difference who (if anyone) is logged in since the indexing is done in a system service. There are exceptions to this, however.Some protocols are per-user and require a user to be logged on so their credentials can be used to access the data source"Raj