TAM is my main management system developed by AppliedSystems Inc wwww.appliedsystems.com Yes i have windows licenses, my Entire environtment is windows. As my company grows and does acquisitions ( i believe i will have two more remote offices at the end of the year) i will need more machines. if i could use linux instead of windows and save on their licenses, that would be great. as for the server share, my current server has all 8 SAS drive slots in use and i dont have much room. i was thinking of hosting all of my mail (.pst) files on the v-server and having backup exec or ultra bac or acronis back it up to an LTO4 drive. I guess i could setup a v-server to use instead of exchange, would be nice, but i would have to invest in a little better box than my decent 2.6Ghz dual core with 2GB DDR2. so many options. i could vpn into work and do some of that code but ive been there all week, im waiting until monday. thanks for all the advice, i will post what happens. thanks