I will be buying a new Dell server for a client soon to replace a 5yr old Novell Server. After kicking around Windows 2003 server or Novell Server yet again, I have leaned toward using Suse 10 instead. Of course this would save them money but my question is should it be adequate ? There will be no email, hosting, databases etc, just simple file sharing. My main question is there any configuration in Suse for turning the OS into a full file server instead of just a workstation ? I mean I would think that the OS would need to lean more toward background processes instead of foreground, or am I thinking Windows centric ?

Also I would like to do Raid 5 for them. Should I lean toward hardware raid or just use software raid ? I know there are considerations and I need to test all of there applications with Suse before going live, also need a backup option, probably tape drive yet again.

As far as I know, any linux distro (at least, all of the major ones) are ready servers. I use a headless Slackware box, thatI ssh into when needed, that serves music, videos, pictures and a storage drive to both windows and linux machines. I use both NFS and Samba and I have no problems at all. This sounds like what you are trying to accomplish minus the RAID setup.

I believe the standard advice is that for heavier use, you probably should get a hardware raid controller. Tapes work well for backups if you want to keep them for a while, or if you have lots of data you want to keep.

If you are not already considering compatibility, I think it would be wise to check what features of the raid controller and tape drive are supported and which ones are not.

A friend told me of the Highpoint 2310 Rocket Raid, and it is supposed to be Linux compliant according to the web site. Since Dell preloads Suse Enterprise 10 on the Poweredge 840, we went with that.