I try to not associate with trash, so I don't know everything about W2K or W2003. However, I am told that w2x is bulky and slow comparitavely speaking. The little bit I have used them, I've walked away wishing I had been beat in the head with a brick instead.
Netware 5.1 is a solid platform and can't be beat. It's fast, lightweight, and stable. However, it lacks in web components and application support. Getting some web apps to run on it and work together is cumbersome at best.
NetWare 6.5 takes a lot more resources (memory hog), but the web and application support is awesome. Full apache support is much easier to work with than the Netscape Enterprise web server from the old days. Also, the NSS capabilities will make you never want to have to deal with a traditional volume again. Oh, and the IP management is sweet. There are also some cool new things like ifolder, iscsi, netstorage, etc.
As far as Minimums... I wouldn't go with less than 1GB RAM. Really, I'd put 2GB in for a small server and at least 4GB for any large scale production server. More if possible. There is a trend for making the SYS volume 8GB min, but really with NSS it can be flexible unless you have it on it's own pool that can't be expanded. Other than that you can pretty much do whatever you want..
Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting
