PE6800's should be sufficient for all three tasks.
Depends on your budget. You could go a little higher to future proof it.
Quad Dual Cores @ 2.66
4GB Ram
5 x 73gb 10K's
Maybe just 2 x Dual Core 2.66's and 2 73gb HDD's.
You're looking at about $7,000/per.

Message Edited by jayunsplanet on 07-25-200612:18 PM

Oi. 6800's are a little overkill for what he's doing. On top of that he'd need to make sure to have 208V outlets.

For your DC's I'd heavily recommend two seperate servers, if one goes down you're completly hosed at both offices (unless each is a GC, but even then you'll get into some replication issues with FSMO roles). If you are running Small Business Server you'll DC and Exchange can be on one server, however if you aren't running SBS you'll need a seperate server for each.

My suggestion would actually be going with a PE2900 for the mail server. Couple of things to look for on that.
- Dual processors
- at least 2GB ram
- RAID-1 for the system/exchange log drive
- RAID-5 for the data drive

For the DC's a PE1800 should be more than sufficient. I'd go with a minimum of
- Dual processors (again, for both redundancy and speed)
- at least 1GB ram
- RAID-1 for the system drive

Additionally I'd put file/print on the mail server and DNS/DHCP and Symantec on the DC for the main office. Branch office all together should be fine, since they'll be getting their mail from the main office.

I would stay with the initial idea of 3 seperate servers, instead of 1 giant.

Personally I love the pe2650s and pe2850s.

3 pe2850s

Dc1 -2 dual cores/2 gb mem. raid 5 scsi- partitioned into a c & d, c for os and d for other data (like user folders, apps, shared data)

dc2 -1 dual core/2 gb mem. raid 5 scsi same part. table for drives.

exchange server you dont wanna skim on thou..

2 dual core/4gb mem, raid 5 scsi, same part. table for drives.

vpn the offices and you have 1 main office the dc, office 2 the child domain, all users will be centralized at dc 1 and you would have your main dns at site 1, local dns site 2,dhcp both, wins, sit back and do it from the desk!!!

ha i just seen you need towers, go with a small rack :)

Message Edited by buymeforabucky on 07-31-200607:06 PM