Hi folks. We are going to buy a webserver to run our soon to be released ASP.NET with VFP COM web app. There will be 71 users who input a small amount of data sporadically throughout the day and run 1-2 reports (about 5 seconds long) throughout the day.

I temporarily have a desktop P4 800MHz PC with 512megs of RAM that I am using to test the app on and it performs well enough. Just mentioning this to give some sort of baseline.

I think I will buy a Dell webserver because they are popular, cheap and the support appears to be good. Could I get some recommendations on what I should buy? This is what I am thinking. I'll embed the questions below. Note: I have never purchased a webserver or run one in production before.

SERVER BRAND: DELL
- any problems with Dell?
- I don't think I need rack moutable, just a tower is fine
- are the extended support packages worth the cost?

CPU: Pentium 4
- should I get a server capable of having a 2nd processor added?
- what advantage is there to getting a XEON processor?
- what is the percent performance boost from adding a 2nd processor?

RAM: 1 gig
- any reason to get more?

OS: Windows 2000 Server
- what is the practical advantage of getting Advanced server or Data Centre Server?

NICS: 2
- can these be set up to be redundant?
- do I get a preformance boost from reundant nics, or does the 2nd one start working when the 1st fails?
- how much does it cost to have them hot swapable? Is this worth the cost?

DRIVES: 2 (or 3), 30 GIGs in RAID
- what practical advantage is RAID5 (3 disks) over RAID1 (2 disks)
- what is the extra cost for hot swappable? Is this worth the cost?

INTERFACE (mouse, keyboard, monitor)
- do people find it is a pain in the neck to dispense with these.
- Is PCAnywhere fine for remote console access?

UPS
- I am planning a small UPS that will shut down the server after 5 minutes without power, just to prevent data corruption.

BACKUP
- any recommendation for tape drives (or other media) and backup software?
- are tape drives and tapes still the best way to go?
- ideally backups would be done on live data without having to shut down the web app, but I can live making the web app release its hold on the VFP tables for 1 hour at night to do a backup without locking issues.

Spare Parts:
- should I keep a spare nic and hard drive for failures?