I have a HP ProLiant at work which only runs two 36 GB SCSI disks (RAID 1, big enough for the OS plus standard applications), 4 GB RAM and two 3 GHz Xeon CPUs with HyperThreading. I'd usually trust such a machine to host 30 to 50 concurrent users running Outlook, Word and Excel.
The Win2003 Terminal Server has quite an optimized memory management concept, so it's not as if each session automatically allocates hundreds of megabytes. Microsoft and Citrix did a very good job with their Terminal Services.
I've been working in Windows-based systems development and systems administration throughout the last decade, and I won't say "run for your life". Windows Server 2003 --IS-- very stable and reliable and except for one encounter with W32.Blaster it never failed on me. Windows XP is a stable client OS these days - not really user friendly, but stable. And since SP1, even Vista is almost acceptable, except for the few random blue screens that it still fires.
It won't be the system software that will drive you crazy in such a job. In my experience, it's some of your users that ultimately will. That, and the boredom of an admin position. You -will- get bored with your work, and that in combination with one or two annoying users is the most difficult part to handle on the long run.
Hearing "Winni, I don't know how to print an email" from an administrative assistant who has a higher salary than me still is my favorite one. And the one business trip she made to Russia also was, hm, "interesting": She really expected her notebook to have a "built-in Internet" and was furious on the phone and screamed and yelled at me when she turned it on and the Outlook Web Access did not magically work. Oh, she's always been good at losing her temper and screaming and shouting. Must be her Russian temperament.
The good news is that there is such a huge demand for IT staff out there that you just don't have to stay in a work place that turned sour (which is what they usually do). So in case you wonder: After sucking it all up for three and a half years, I finally resigned from that job three weeks ago and at the moment it pretty much looks as if I will be going back to Technical Documentation in an interesting software development company. I'd still rather found an own startup company, but I am not getting the financial side sorted out at the moment, so this probably won't work. Anyway, that's another story.
The Win2003 Terminal Server has quite an optimized memory management concept, so it's not as if each session automatically allocates hundreds of megabytes. Microsoft and Citrix did a very good job with their Terminal Services.
I've been working in Windows-based systems development and systems administration throughout the last decade, and I won't say "run for your life". Windows Server 2003 --IS-- very stable and reliable and except for one encounter with W32.Blaster it never failed on me. Windows XP is a stable client OS these days - not really user friendly, but stable. And since SP1, even Vista is almost acceptable, except for the few random blue screens that it still fires.
It won't be the system software that will drive you crazy in such a job. In my experience, it's some of your users that ultimately will. That, and the boredom of an admin position. You -will- get bored with your work, and that in combination with one or two annoying users is the most difficult part to handle on the long run.
Hearing "Winni, I don't know how to print an email" from an administrative assistant who has a higher salary than me still is my favorite one. And the one business trip she made to Russia also was, hm, "interesting": She really expected her notebook to have a "built-in Internet" and was furious on the phone and screamed and yelled at me when she turned it on and the Outlook Web Access did not magically work. Oh, she's always been good at losing her temper and screaming and shouting. Must be her Russian temperament.
The good news is that there is such a huge demand for IT staff out there that you just don't have to stay in a work place that turned sour (which is what they usually do). So in case you wonder: After sucking it all up for three and a half years, I finally resigned from that job three weeks ago and at the moment it pretty much looks as if I will be going back to Technical Documentation in an interesting software development company. I'd still rather found an own startup company, but I am not getting the financial side sorted out at the moment, so this probably won't work. Anyway, that's another story.