Quote from SyndBroker:
Just curious, do you run these servers locally or remotely? I could never put with the noise that the fans and drives make.
I can run them either way. But when at home, they don't bother me as they sit inside their server cabinets (insulated somewhat) which greatly baffles the sound. The room was also set up with this purpose in mind so there is sound absorbing materials on the walls.
I have not heard the fans in so long though as the music server runs 24/7. And when we're gaming...well...

Setting up Server 2003 is actually a piece of cake. If you get a server with multiple hot swap drives you can configure them in a raid array that gives you a ton of abilities. As an example, on one of my ten drive machines I have set up two 36 gig drives (mirrored) for the OS and programs and eight drives for data. On another I have the mirrored drives for OS and the eight other drives are broken into two separate storage areas (main and mirror).