[itdiscuss] VMware - Exchange datastore

[Travis P]

I'm going to be installing an SBS 2003 server for my church (10-20 users) and am really wanting to virtualize the entire environment, but I can't figure out how best to setup the storage.  I'm on an extremely tight budget (i.e. Can't spend money).

I have two physical machines (poweredge 2500, dual proc, 3GB RAM, loaded with internal drives) that were donated.

For those that are using free VMware server, how do you have your larger file storage and exchange datastores setup?  Do you create large (say 100GB or more) virtual drives?  Or do you just attach external storage (via iSCSI or NFS or other) and present that storage as a local device to the VM?

My current thought process is to use one of the machines with OpenFiler (Open source SAN/NAS software) and then put all the VMs on the other machine using a minimalistic Linux install as the base OS (to save money).

Any advice you can offer?