Merak on 1 machine?

2025-04-07

Here are my current needs:
space for 8 websites. 7 small ones, and one 100MB+ ASP/Access intensive dynamic site.

Current issues: I'm spending over $100 a month in hosting and still getting mediocre service from the 3 different hosts. My ASP site was OK with Innerhost, but Interland gobbled them up and the service level has dropped way off.

Skills: Basic admin skills with interest in learning more.

Future needs: 25 small websites in addition to the big ASP site having 1000 unique visitors a day. MSSQL as I will reach the Access ceiling in a few months. Email services.

Please tell me if I can get away with MSSQL/Win2K3/Merak mail on the following:
1u case
Dual P4 2.4
1 GB ECC
2x36 GB Mirrored Raid

This evening I spoke with a Dell Salesperson who had experience managing web servers. He basically told me he didn't want to sell me anything because it wouldn't suit my needs. He suggested that I need to have 1 box for each service. If I could not afford the $10k-$15k then I should look at a managed environment.

Any thoughts?

PS: My plan is to colocate.