Building A Server for an Office

Hi,

I was hoping you could all help me as my knowledge of servers is quite limited. We are looking in to building a server for our workplace. There will be 10 Workstations, and 3 Laptops at first, but I want to have the capacity for around 20+ as we'll be adding several more workstations for our ERP system and new employees in the next few years. The server will also have some people VPNing in to it and it requires reliable functionality (potentially an uninterruptible power supply)

The current plan is to use a virtualized server for the following things

1. Remote Desktop Services for some of our key software - May run these on SSDs if it is significantly faster
a. Our ERP software - Seradex
b. Our Accounting Software - Accpac
c. Our Design Software if Possible - Giza and AutoCad
c. Microsoft Word/Office (not Mandatory to be on the server)
d. A few other things here and there that I may be missing, but shouldn't be resource intensive

2. SQL Server

3. A file storage server for all of our files - A few terabytes is probably enough. We'll be using RAID for redundancy, as we can not risk losing the information.

4. Domain Management

5. Potentially our own mailsever and phplist

6. I'm probably missing a few things, but they shouldn't be too resource intensive

We were considering thin clients and using VDI, but we decided against it because of our lack of resources to properly use it and complications with software that require security keys. Not all of the above will work properly with it from my understanding.

I would also very much appreciate any recommendations in server management server, redundancy solutions and backup solutions.

The current plan for server software is to purchase Windows Server 2012 once it is released for the sake of Remote Desktop Services. We will also be installing new workstations for everyone which will likely use Windows 8 upon release as long as we can find a way to make our software compatible with it (The $40 upgrade is very enticing as we're currently using xp pro.) Those will all have an ssd drive, and i5 processor, etc, a decently powerful $400-500 workstation overall.

For the most part right now I need to understand what price range I'm looking at and what hardware to purchase for a solution like the above. We are willing to pay what needs to be paid to obtain a proper solution, and will likely seek help in actually setting up portions of the server, but a lot of it will be conducted by me.

I can't stress enough how appreciative I am for any assistance you can provide with all of this. It is helping us significantly as we have limited resources and need to maximize our efforts.

Thank you again for the help!

Cheers