Help designing small business server/network

To be perfectly honest with you, and the Microsoft people here will hate me, but I highly recommend that you look at open source solutions. You'll end up primarily paying for just the hardware.
Open Office for documents, Linux for your OS (or just server side), and Zimbra for email and collaboration.

And considering your size, why not look at outsourced options. With only six people, I can't imagine it makes much sense to build, support, and maintain things like an exchange infrastructure.

Probably one of the most important components to your network is email and everything tied to it like contacts, calendars, scheduling, and document sharing. I regularly help small businesses realize their options beyond the traditional model of keeping everything in house. I'm sure you'd much prefer to implement more business centric IT projects than having to fuss around with simple stuff like email. Why bother if you don't have to!

azadirect,

Linux is a POWERFUL solution... but be realistic - it's FAR from easy to setup and maintain if you don't know much about computers - especially if you're like some people who hear "linux" and say "what's that?"  (I don't know if rdoving is in that catagory of people, so no offense is intended).

I'm an IT guy who has worked HEAVILY with Windows for years... but I've also dabbled in linux, having setup a few test servers for myself.  I attend probably 6-8 Linux User Group meetings a year where a friend actually runs the group... (he's said he'd vouch for me as knowing "some linux" if I ever needed a reference for a job where that was required, suggesting I know more about linux than some Windows guys).  And in my experience setting up systems, I'm just not confident in MY ability to setup a linux server and ensure it works properly and troubleshoot something when it doesn't... and, (moment of over confidence here) I really know my stuff in most areas.

A small business with no on-staff linux expert would be foolish if they went the Linux route, in my opinion... Yes, the SOFTWARE is free... but what about the implementation time?  The, at best, inconvenience of having to call a consultant whenever you just want to add a user or an email address...

One of the things I love about linux is that there are 500 ways to edit a file - BUILT IN to most distributions... Windows has 20 (both are exaggerations... but not by scale.  This makes it tremendously powerful and flexible... but it also makes it VERY confusing to most non-linux people... and extremely confusing to the end user who just wants to know how to change one line in a text file and gets 50 different answers from 50 different people.

I'm guessing you aren't familiar with SBS... because SBS is a VERY easy system... when setup right, there is VERY little that goes wrong and very little maintenance... and setup isn't THAT difficult and can be done quickly by someone with experience.  I have clients where I touch the server config (outside of adding a user or something) about once every 6 months - clients half the size of this company and twice the size and the same reliability.

Hosted services can make sense... but if you're going to have a file server, you might as well get SBS and avoid the costs of a hosted mail server since SBS is cheaper than standard Windows server, and if you can figure out how to factor in non-obvious costs (such as the amount of TIME required to setup and maintain a linux system and how much that time will cost in consulting services or in time away from the employee's other work activities that, presumably, otherwise contribute to overall profitability), then a Windows system IS cheaper than linux... MOST of the time.  (Again, when you have an on-staff linux expert, then yes, Linux is cheaper and I'd probably recommend it).

And ONE DAY - I honestly hope sooner than later - Linux WILL be easy enough to setup and manage for a business by a non-IT person... but right now, it's not... and if there's any debate about this, I have two words - Package Dependencies.  When you have problems with them... oh boy do you have problems with them...

I'm with Leew.  
We've deployed solutions on AS400, AIX UNIX, Linux, windows (Nt, 2000 and 2003).  I'm a fan of linux, but not a micro/small business environment, unless there is a specific requirement.  And whereas linux may be free, versions such as red hat have a support fee of $3-400 / year for updates etc which you would then find are cost comparable to SBS in a SMB environment.

Thanks for all of the responses!

I am somewhat familiar with Linux.  My main machine at home runs Ubuntu, but I am definitely not comfortable using a Linux server for my business.  I may be able to administer it but I'd have no time left to perform non-IT tasks.

It sounds like it may be best bring in a consultant to design the network and set it up initially before I take over the routine maintenance tasks.  Any recommendations on how to choose a consultant?  Just go by Microsoft's certified partners list?  We're in a primitive industry and unfortunately I don't know anyone with a network more complex than ours.

Thanks again!

Microsoft's partner finder is a great way to find a SBS Specialist.

I can't stress enough how important it is to use a SBS Specialist.  Not just because I am one, but because generally speaking IT people who know about SBS get certified on it and those who don't know about it will end up costing you too much money in poor software choices.

(Before I get flamed I am sure there are some SBS guys who are not SBSC but in general once an IT person learns baout SBS, they love it, they become a specialist)

In general, I agree with tomcahill - SBS is a special beast and people who may be fantastic with Windows but who don't know SPECIFICALLY how to setup and install SBS can actually cost you more in time and misconfigured servers.    SBS Specialists are going to know the differences (or at least know SBS) and be able to set it up properly.  

I know this from experience - I left a position of nearly 10 years to be a consultant and the first network I setup was an SBS network - and I messed it up badly... It was fine for an enterprise... but my way of configuring basically kept them from administering things properly and broke several features.  Since then, I've learned much and rebuilt that system...