The Cost of Moving to Small Business Server vs. Moving to Leopard Server

In my previous article, I looked at the option of replacing my Windows Small Business Server 2003 with Mac OS X 10.5 Server, comparing features, ease of use, and security.

In features Windows, with its full Exchange server, wins easily, but the other two more than make up for any lost capabilities.

The one factor that I did not look at is price, which as I already own SBS 2003 is not the same equation as for someone buying new. I paid for my Dell server three years ago, and it has fully depreciated, meaning that every day that it sits in my office, it costs nothing.

Mac OS X Server (10-user-edition) costs $500 for the software, and anywhere between $600 (Mac mini) to over $4,000 (decked-out Mac Pro) for the hardware. I'm leaning toward a $3,000 configuration (plus server OS) of the Mac Pro as my server, meaning the price difference is $3,500 more to go Mac than stay with Windows.

Cost to Upgrade

This is not an entirely fair comparison, as my Windows server is three years old, and both the technology and my needs have moved on. For example, my Dell is powered by a Pentium D dual-core processor, which is adequate in terms of speed with my 32-bit operating system. Unfortunately, I am frequently bumping up against my 2 GB of installed RAM and want to at least double it to have some breathing room, which means I need a 64-bit operating system to properly recognize and fully utilize 4 GB.

SBS 2003 is 32-bit only, so my only options are migrating to the regular Windows server (expensive) or upgrading to the new SBS 2008, which is 64-bit. SBS 2008, which includes 5 licenses, costs about $1,100 - or $100 more than the unlimited license version of OS X Server. The 10 user version of OS X Server is only $500, and any time that I need more than 10 users, I can upgrade to unlimited for $500.

I currently have five users on my network, and with SBS 2008, every user that I add will require a $77 license, which at ten users comes out to just under $1,500 - three times the cost of Apple's 10 user solution. (My current SBS 2003 system only can add licenses in groups of 5, which cost $400.)

Equally expensive are the hardware costs. RAM is cheap these days, so perhaps another $100 to bump up to 4 GB or $300 to get 8 GB. This cost is identical to a Mac Pro used as a server, which also needs a (non-Apple) RAM upgrade from its base 2 GB. The Mac uses slightly more expensive RAM, but the difference is minimal.

The Pentium D is 64-bit capable, so it will run SBS 2008, but its 64-bit support is not ideal. I'm no engineer, but the way I understand it, the Pentium D is a 32-bit processor that emulates 64-bit by running 64-bit instructions twice, half at a time. I'm not sure how significant of a bottleneck, if any, this would be, as my slowdowns are mostly caused by RAM. It may also be that adding a second Pentium D speeds it up enough at lower cost. I've seen Xeon 3050 series 2.16 GHz dual-core processors for $200 each, which would still fall short of the current Mac Pro, but would more than triple the processing power I have now and be fully 64-bit capable.

So the total is $3,500 for a nice Mac Pro with Leopard Server ($3,000 if I go with a single quad-core CPU instead of dual quads), compared to the following to bring my 3-year-old server up-to-date with 64-bit SBS 2008 and processing power equivalent to last-year's Mac Pro quad.

• $400 for two Xeon 3050 processors
• $200 for an additional 2 GB of RAM
• $1,100 for SBS 2008
• Total of $1,700

That means that by spending $1,800 more than upgrading my current server, I get a much more powerful - not to mention brand new - Mac Pro server with the benefits of OS X and room to add five more users.

That isn't even looking at the cost of hard drive upgrades. I have dual 160 GB drives on a hardware RAID 1 card for the Dell, and the Mac Pro I configured has dual 320 GB drives (or double the storage), but with software RAID. Hardware RAID costs $800 for the Mac Pro, while upgrading my drive capacity to 320 GB would be far less, but still not insignificant. I could buy two 320 GB SATA drives at about $75 each and then make back up disks of my existing pair of 160 GB drives.

Planning for Tomorrow

Now let's look three years into the future. The Dell can handle up to 8 GB of RAM, and the pair of Xeons are about the most processor power that this system will ever support. In contrast, the Mac Pro with its dual quads (or second quad if I start with one) can address up to 32 GB of RAM. I don't need that kind of power now, but you never know what the future will bring.

What I like most about the Mac Pro option is that one the very rare instance where I have some serious horsepower-eating task, such as if I choose to stream video on my website or conduct client consultations remotely over iChat, it's all built into Leopard Server, while with SBS 2003 or 2008 I probably wouldn't risk trying something like that.

Chalk one up to stability and confidence.

So while the balance sheet suggests upgrading what I have now, I will probably make the move to Leopard Server. The good thing about depreciation is that I can offset some of the cost by selling what I already have. Windows SBS 2003 is still selling for $600 with a 5-user license, so I can probably get at least that.

In my next installment, I'll be looking at the workstations, an iMac or Mac mini for my legal secretary, and a new laptop for me.