First sorry that I will talk about more general concepts than specific product questions.
We are a small company and we want to build our internal messaging solution. We have less than 50 users and we don't plan to host our website internally.
We use only Microsoft products (Windows, Office, MS Projects...). Now I have a question about the general network architecture:
-Should we buy a server (Windows 2008 R2) dedicated only to emails? Or we can use the same server for different purposes in the future (dns, storage and sharing, databases,...)?
-Is virtualization recommended in my case? Or should we only use one server and add roles as necessary?
-What about active directory? should it be implemented in the same Exchange server?
For information, we plan to integrate some kind of ERP in the future (in the next 2 years...)
Also can you please recommend me books or articles about how to design enterprise architecture from scratch, and how to estimate server capacities and so?
Thanks in advance!