We are upgrading out office server, which is just used for testing and some internal data. It's our primary domain server running server 2003 for about 5 people. We also host SQL Server on it. My question is, can I just install server 2008 on a good 8 core desktop instead of getting an expensive server? What advantage is it running SQL Server on a real server vs a powerful desktop with a raid setup. Is it mostly reliability? We will backup and it's not a big deal if the server goes down since it's internal. (And I can't use a virtual desktop hosted somewhere else at this moment).
dan