Ideal Architecture...

Still a newbie after a year, but know enough to be really dangerous.
I'm migrating my Small Business customers away from Microsoft to SUSE.
Accordingly, I've determined this architecture as the best and have implemented it. Please feel free to comment as I'm hoping I can learn from them.
- SUSE
- OpenLDAP for all authentication
- Samba TLS
- Apache 2 TLS
- PHP
- Postfix TLS
- Procmail
- IMAP TLS
- MySQL
- SSL
- PAM
- NSS

The biggest obstacle and steepest learning curve has been the security and certificates. Admittedly, it was trial-and-error (in each package) before I got something to work.

My next obstacle:
I was hoping to build a RAID server using the SX4000, but it gets complex on how best to "integrate" it.
1. Should I make it a separate Samba server and use LDAP for authentication?
2. Is there a way to "mount" it locally (to my primary Linux server) and then use Samba for my Window clients to access it?
3. Is there a way to turn it into a NAS or SAN so that it truly does become a mountable drive? and again use Samba to make it accesible to the Windows clients?

Thanks in advance for your input ... and comments.

1. I usually separate services as much as possible, based on budget, available equipment, and the amount of load you think the machine will get.

2. You can mount any samba share locally (if you have permissions for the share) using smbmnt. Then you can share it out using samba if you like; if you're going to make it a separate machine, though, you should probably share it from that machine.

3. Not sure exactly what you're asking here, but any samba share is "mountable".

for the suggestions. As always when considering "alternatives" there are so many options to choose from. Hence, the vague request. Sorry about that. Regardless, per your suggestion, I'll use Samba on the remote RAID server and have LDAP authenticate. Thanks again!