Home Office Network Design Thoughs

[alpha88]

I'm working on restructuring my network. I have the following devices:

Laptop - Vista Business
Desktop - Vista Ultimate 64
Backup Machine - Windows Home Server
Development Machine - Server2k3, running VMWare OS's (which happen to also be 2k3)
Media PC - Vista Home Premium
PDA - Palm Centro

This setup works well, except for my email situation. I have my own domain name, hosted elsewhere, that provides POP3 email. Right now, all my email goes to Outlook 2007, running on laptop. I want to be able to access my email when I'm not home (ie, webmail), and access it via my PDA. However, since I get a lot of email, its important that I'm able to delete/categorize/add to calendar and not just read email from any location.

In the past, I had just told outlook to leave email on server, so I could check it remotely, but that occassionally caused problems, resulting in massive duplications. No can I check old email.

My plan is to replace the Development Machine with ESXi. Then I'll add a new virtual machine, running Exchange (2003 or 2007, not sure).

What I don't know:
a) Will this work?
b) Do I need to set up a domain/active directory - only one user.
c) Any other suggestions or alternate solutions.

Thanks

 

[RebateMonger]

Consider getting a hosted Exchange mailbox. They are available for $7 to $12 a month.

If you decide to virtualize Exchange, I'd do it with Exchange 2003, but folks certainly have virtualized Exchange 2007.

You'll need Active Directory, but none of your PCs need to join the Domain if you don't want to.

 

[alpha88]

Any particular reason to virtualize 2003 vs 2007?

Just more people have done it? or is it the need for a 64 bit OS?

 

[DrGreen2007]

That should work, I just consolodated all my home PC's down to 2 laptops and 1 beefy server running ESXi (down from 3 laptops, 1 NAS, 1 desktop and 2 servers)

as long as the dev box is beefy, you should be able to run a home domain on Exchange without a negative impact