We have win2k3 server confugired as file server. Its HP DL380 G5 with 3.5 GB of RAM. Server crashes onse a month or so. I was tasked to find out if this server is ok to be a file server, to do server sizing We have about 300 users constantly connected to it working primarily with access and excel files (file sizes are < 20MB). How do i go about doing this, how do I determine what kind of server would be appropriate for such use of 300 people constantly working in files, moving them around, copy+paste operatinos. Also Undelete professional is launched for file recovery its always monitoring file versions. When server crashes it is just a shutdown and when we boot it up again we get error "can not file end of error log file" or somethiing like that and NT error log is in fact empty. Thank you

I would start with event viewer. Also more important is the network cards. The enterprise level cards do a lot of off loading. If you really do have 300 people with intensive file it might be too little for the task. Perfmon would be the best way but you might have to set it up completely to find out. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10