Originally Posted by johnhook

spec_r,

While Windows NT is the kernel on which Windows 200, Windows XP Windows Server 2003 and even Vista have been designed around, I consider NT v4.0 to be a legacy OS. Windows SBS 2003 is designed for small business environments. Given the description of your hardware, applications and user-load, I'm not sure if SBS 2003 is the way to go. MS Server 2008 is fairly new - and I'd avoid ANY MS OS that doesn't have a LEAST 2 Service Packs released.

All of that said - I would migrate BOTH of your servers to MS Sever 2003 Enterprise Edition - making sure you purchase the approriate licenses (CALS) for the users and/or workstations using each server.

SBS 2003 probably doesn't communicate well with NT because so much has been implemented on Server 2003 and SBS 2003 since your version of NT was released. The entire domain handling has been replaced with Active Directory Services.

Before you make any final decisions - make sure your Oracle and other 3rd party applications are certified to run on MS Server 2003 Enterprise. If all of your apps are compatible with MS Server 2003 Enterprise - this is the way to go on BOTH of your servers. SBS is good - but can cause problems due to the bundled SharePoint services and imbedded version of MS SQL Server 2000.

Upgrading to such an environment might involve establishing a new Domain structure in the MS Server 2003 environment. The time involved will be worth it as both server will be able to share common domain attributes (user, computer, application security and policies).

I'm not bashing Server 2008 - but based on 18+ years of experience, I don't implement new MS Windows OSs until they've been around for at least 2 years or there are at least 2 Service Pack updates.

Hope this helps.

- John