New Setup - Number of Roles/Servers

[Westyfield2]

Small Business. And I really mean small.

Completely starting from scratch with nothing inherited sounds great... until you also hear the budget. I would be thinking of running SBS, but I don't like the idea of everything on one server... and with the new version I guess Microsoft thought the same!

So I'm looking at PowerEdge/ProLiant, running ESXi and a few Server 2008 (or Server 2012) VMs. I say a few, but my Sys-Admin experience is wanting me to have eleventy million VMs each for one and only one role... and then you remember the budget.

I'm thinking:

Server 1

• Active Directory Domain Controller
• DHCP
• DNS

I'd rather run nothing else on the DC, but surely DHCP and DNS will be okay? Oh and no, I won't be DHCPing the DC .


Server 2

• Print Server

Server 3

• File Server

Server 4

• SQL & IIS

Server 5

• Exchange

TBH I'm tempted by "cloud" Exchange Online/Office 365 rather than hosting Exchange on-premises.


Anything else *needed*? Any comments on running DC/HDCP/DNS together? And any comment on where to do Exchange? Oh and any SBS fans?