NAS or SL Server

[Marshall]

We were using an IBM 206m server with SBS 2003 for our business, which has got to expensive to maintain and been Microsoft is slow and a pain to use. I'm wondering weather to replace it with a NAS or a Mac mini and Snow leopard server?
I'm thinking a NAS would be easier to manage and maintain, so far I'm looking at the
Synology CS407e,
QNAP TS-419P,
Netgear ReadyNAS NV+,
Buffalo TeraStation Pro III NAS 2TB,
Thecus N0503 comboNAS

We use iMacs has our desktop computers running snow leopard, and would like a NAS with either Raid 1 or 5, and the NAS should be able to hold up to 4 drives.
We need a server or NAS that is fast, quiet and reliable for backups.
So would you recommend SL server and mac mini or if a NAS which one from the list above. If you want to recommend another NAS our price range is up to $1900.

 

[thiggins]

Are you running any applications on the server that won't run on either a Mac or NAS?

How much storage do you need?

What are you doing for backup (for the server)?

 

[Marshall]

No theres no applications I need that wont run on a Mac or a NAS.

How much storage do we need, 1TB

For backup on the server, we were using a Tape drive, problems with the tape drive was, first it is slow and second we can't replace the hard drives with larger hard drives without replacing the tape backup drive to a larger model which we can't afford.
We have stopped using the server, antivirus, security software, and the maintenance got to costly, we are now just using a Maxtor shared storage II, it does the job but is a little slow. We're backing up off site and to an external drive.
After reading reviews I'm thinking the apple server software is overkill for us, but I think it will be either the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ or the QNAP TS-439 Pro.
They both look Mac friendly.

 

[thiggins]

Unless your Macs depend on AFP, any NAS will serve them and Windows machines just fine via SMB/CIFs.

If you need only 1 TB, why are you looking at four-drive RAID 5 NASes?