2k or not 2k?

[lifegard2]

I've been a sysadmin for awhile now, and I guess there's been some things I have just taken for granted. For instance, if you have a network with more than a few machines, you have a server and an NT domain, etc, etc.

Now, I find myself in the wonderful world of consulting where I need to be able to justify installing a server OS into an office with between 10 and 20 machines. I've honestly never given it much thought other than the server is what you're "supposed" to do.

1. Can anyone throw me some tips and ideas on justifying a server OS?

2. Also, can anyone throw out some ideas on justifying upgrading from NT server to 2k server?

TIA!

 

[Tragdor]

"Also, can anyone throw out some ideas on justifying upgrading from NT server to 2k server?"

A quick and dirty answer to that: Microsoft is doing a phased retirement of NT. Details follow.

http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/ProductInfo/Availability/Retiring.asp

 

[Clifty]

I always sell it on the additional functionality available within Outlook. It can be a remarkbly easy sell!!

Outlook 2002 requires Exchange Server, which in turn requires W2K server to to facilitate shared calendars etc.

 

[ecafracs]

Workgroup sharing requires that each workstation handling the share would mean that each station handling the resource would have to be configured for the share (file / print) individually. Also , workgroup editions can only handle up to 10 simultaneous connections, and anything beyond that would not be able to establish a connection unless a user logs out. If somekind of user authentication would have to be establish in a workgroup, each resource would have each separate user database to whom the shares would have to be granted permission. In a server based environment all of the shares as well as users can be configured in a centralized locations and permissions can be set in a more granular fashion (up to the file level in NTFS ).
Windows 2000 has more enhanced features including utilities such as plug and play capabilities,disk quota,disk defragmenter, etc.