Linux Data Server..

1.  Redundancy.  Linux (or FreeBSD, or just about
    any Unix) offers phenomenal uptimes.  HOWEVER,
    since this is a new, out-on-a-limb, not-what-
    everybody-else-is-doing thing you're doing, the
    first time that the company runs out of toner
    for the photocopier (or water for the water
    cooler), Linux will be blamed.

    See if you can spend a little of that $2k on
    things like hot-swappable power supplies,
    multiple NICs, a separate warm-spare system,
    yada yada yada.

    There are some high availability (IP failover)
    packages for Linux and FreeBSD, but I haven't
    tried them.

2.  Storage.  Related to (1).  Hardware RAID would
    be nice, a separate storage unit (like a Network
    Appliance Filer or one of its wannabes) would
    be nicer.

C.  Slackware is good, but I don't know how easy it
    would be management-wise to keep a Slackware
    box updated, let alone an entire Slackware cluster.

    I do know that it is pretty easy to keep a Debian
    cluster updated, and that Progeny (an offshoot of
    Debian started by the "Ian" in Deb_Ian_) is supposed
    to have some pretty cool clustering stuff that you
    may want to take a look at.

5.  You may want to take a look at OpenLDAP, as it
    seems that more and more systems and programs
    are becoming LDAP-compliant.  Linux does LDAP,
    FreeBSD does LDAP, Solaris does LDAP...

F.  From another box, use netsaint to monitor the health
    of your mission critical system(s), and have it page
    you when something goes awry.  Hopefully, you'll fix
    the anomaly quickly enough that noone will know there
    was a problem.  Erm, challenge.

>          I usually hang out on the lists and don't say much, but I've been 
> happy using linux for 3 years now!! Anyway, I am always pushing our CEO to 
> shift to linux, and now it has paid off. When faced with a $2K upgrade 
> price for NT Server and me simply saying FREE he has changed his ways.. Now 
> I get to build a data server in the next couple of days.
>          I am familiar with Linux so installing is cake. I prefer 
> Slackware, but I look at this as a huge transition for our company. We have 
> several computers that are running linux, but this computer is setting the 
> stage for all future Linux computing, because this is "mission critical", 
> and dependant from the whole company. My plan was to install slack 7.1 
> base, get samba, use NIS / NFS for all other Linux boxes. Eventually we 
> will shift PDC from NT to Linux but not now. One of the things I'm 
> considering is to install redhat, simply for it's PAM integration. Granted, 
> I could install Slack then PAM, but it appears there are some quirks. 
> (Troll deja and see for yourself.. IF I am mistaken PLEASE let me know)