Many years ago I installed a SBS 2003 server at our small office which has 4 staff, and I am planning on upgrading to SBS 2011 Standard before MS stop selling it at the end of this year (i.e. before they remove Exchange). I have a few questions:
Firewall
Our SBS 2003 has 2 NICs and acts as a gateway / firewall. I understand that this is no longer they way to do it, and will need a separate "proper" firewall (we connect to the internet via a consumer level ADSL router that can block ports but not a lot else). Can anyone recommend a suitable firewall to sit between our ADSL router and our lan?
I was thinking of something like this http://o-www.sonicwall.com/us/en/products/TZ_100.html but I might go for one with more gigabit ports to replace our current switch which seems to have an intermittent problem. I would like it to be good enough to deal with spam and AV (I plan on not running AV on the SBS 2011, and just MS Security Essentials on the clients), but I can’t work out if I need an annual subscription for this service, or how much it would be?
Would a better option be to salvage our old server hardware and run untangle (or similar) on it? The free version of untangle seems to be enough for our purposes, but I don’t know how it compares to a hardware one. This route would be preferable as it would be free!
RWW / OWA
I think RWW is now called Remote Web Access, but apart from making the login look a bit prettier have there been any usability changes? What about OWA – has the access to Public Folders via OWA been improved (currently we can view Public Folders via OWA, but can’t file emails to them, or forward them)?
Hard Drives
Most people seem to recommend RAID, but I have never been a fan as it doesn’t remove the need for backups, and I think it just switches the risk of a drive failing to the risk of your raid controller failing (and if the controller failed in 5 years time, how easy would it be to find a replacement that can read the array?). I was thinking of 4 drives (non-RAID) – one for OS, one for Exchange DB, one for shared files, and one for snapshots of the shared files. Backups would be daily to an external USB drive kept offsite (and possibly online as well if someone can recommend a service). Thoughts?
SSL Certificate
We currently only have a self certified cert, which as far as I can tell just means a warning on login via OWA/RWW. Am I correct in thinking that recommended set up is now to purchase a certified cert? What benefits do we get from having one (I have no experience with SSL certs, and can’t seem to work out the benefits for us)? Seems to be an annual cost for not much benefit?
Thanks
Rick