Hi Wayne, I admit that SBS2003 is pretty kewl and has everything an admin should have at his fingertips to run a small business with super simple wizards and Server Management Console, plus making the admin who sets up such a box a superstar, demonstrating how fast such a solution can be completed. I will agree that initial price of the solution is inexpensive for a small guy that will provide a big business solution but I don't think that the whole cost solution about SBS is being explained to the client about the initial install to the life-cycle cost. ------- $$$$$ The cost factor for just the basics. A single server solution would require a complete redundancy (power-supply, hot swap RAID-1, RAID-5, tons of memory, mult-proc, and etc.) What about have a spare SBS server in cast the server were to go down or needs to be services that might take a day or two to be completed. This would depend on the recovery policy you have agreed on. But if you have 50 employees down for a day, that's 50 * 8hrs = $$$$$ lost A backup solution for 50 users plus SBS Data storage and how long will your backup retention period be? Lets not forget Anti-virus solution. Not to mention the number of workstations that would also be supported and protected! --------- When it comes to cost for a small guy, and I might be generalizing here, but it seems that security takes the back seat. The company will invest a pretty penny for what we would consider the essentials but I would go out of my way to protect the services and resources by not putting a firewall solution on the same server it does not make sense. Yes, this would break SBS Server Management console, so you can't take advantage completely of their monitor reporting tool but the advantage of having your firewall separate from the resources you are protecting and the extra cost to implement a two server solution would be well worth it. I know SBS2003 is using RRAS as their firewall and I understand the advantage of ISA's caching capability is a huge benefit for you, but this goes to show that Microsoft is making the responsible decision to not have ISA on the same box and are concern about their products not being secure enough. Just looking at the basic essential cost for both HW & SW for SBS shows the argument for the need to have a Firewall solution (either ISA 2000 or other firewall solutions) added to the cost of SBS2003 would not impact the whole solution cost, it may be an extra $2k-$4k. I really like the idea of SBS but there is a significant cost to implement, support, and the life-cycle for this solution. Singling out ISA should not be the factor of keeping the cost down, it should be the last thing to consider. Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.