I would second that.

Around five years ago I needed to add servers into a couple of charity offices that I support. They are Windows shops, so the line of least resistance would have been to use MS Small Business Server on a couple of PCs. However, I was concerned about a combination of the high per-seat costs of SBS; the limited space available in one of the two offices; and the ongoing costs of maintaining MSCE professional support. MSCEs don't come cheap, so I'd have to get some training, and then the charity would be vulnerable to the proverbial bus that waits for careless IT support people.

I figured that OS X Servers would get us up and running with a minimal learning curve, and would be maintainable by the existing staff in the event of my disappearance. Using a couple of Mac Minis with external hard drives, and with Apple's discounted prices for charities - similar to education discounts - we had two servers working for well under £1,500.

I was able to script rsync to maintain offsite backups between the two servers, using SSH tunnelling between their Internet connections, and they support our WIndows users with ease using the integrated samba server. For another few hundred pounds, I have a spare Mac Mini sitting in a drawer in case of hardware failure. It's still not been used in anger. The server software is well integrated, and "just works". The user interfaces for user and access management are easy for a competent office administrator to understand.

This used PPC Mac Minis running OS X 10.4 Tiger Server. The server software has come a long way since then, and I'd love to replace the hardware with the Intel-based systems. But I have no real justification to buy replacements given the service these puppies are providing.

Lion server, at the pricing we have seen, could be a killer in a small office running on new Mac Mini hardware with external server-grade hard drives. Apple have replaced the older samba WIndows server with one they've rolled themselves and it is so well integrated that it looks to be practically invisible. I wondered where it had gone when I first looked at it, but Windows clients saw the server immediately when I tried it out using my MacBook Pro.

While I realise a larger office would want redundant everything, the service levels we get are perfectly acceptable for our activities.

These Mini Servers do fall into the gap between typical SOHO needs (low cost file/web/mail/print-servers) and enterprise needs (redundancy, rack-mounting, virtualisation). Their USP is that they are Macs which means they are particularly attractive to add to a Mac network, and I assume easier to administer than the alternatives.

Nowadays SSH tunneling and rsync scripting can be done by the of appliance I am buying for half the cost of the current Mac equivalent, albeit with a greater degree of technical fiddling because the UI is browser-based. However, at the time you did it appliances were a lot less functional and the Mac option cheaper than now.

Anyway my new idea is to get myself a second-hand Mac Mini for experimentation, with my boss's permission by selling off some of my old business kit. I think this one is the sweet spot on price v performance for second-hand models, and CEX often have one or two for sale at £265. I will probably wait till Lion comes out to make sure they will run it OK and to see if the new stratum of machines pushes the price down further.

If I want to get a server version of Lion to put on it, it's actually only likely to be £50 more expensive than the client, instead of £400 in total. I think that's a brilliant move by Apple.

Thanks bosie that is a really interesting post. I am now thinking I will get a cheap used Mac Mini for my interest but press ahead with the Synology for the boring stuff.