Hi, A group of 17 people including myself are working on 3 separate gaming projects but we are currently going through the design phase but eventually we will need some form of collaboration. I believe i need a server that will need to be able run Visual Studio 2008, have some form on sub-version capabilities, and possible support several several users at once. Does anyone know where i can purchase some server space with these capabilities or is it possible to set this up myself by buying a £100 quid server from ebay and installing windows server 2008, visual studio 2008 and then setting the necessary securities? Sorry if i am being vague but a have no experience with networking. It is probably worth noting that this a university society, and our computing department has Linux, Sun and Windows server. Anyone help would be much appreciated :)

You're going to pay a lot for a VPS capable of running Windows and Visual Studio (I assume that requirement is for continuous integration?).

If you're on a uni network where you can set up a server and everyone can access it, do it. Dig up an oldish computer get someone who at least vaguely knows what they're doing to set it up. Depending on your exact needs (eg, if it is just SVN and a CI server), you could probably get by with a copy of WinXP Pro. Take a close look at the server editions of Windows and see if they do anything you actually need.

Why must the server run VS2008?

Just for version control and maybe a project management system (like trac or redmine) you need close to nothing - any old shred with at least 128MB will do if you are running a linux server distro, with windows you will need more ram.

But before actually setting up a physical server, i'd suggest getting a cheap virtual root server. I pay 4,90€/month for a linux v-server with some subversion repositories and trac environments. Ram usage is at 66/256 MB atm. Granted, i only use it for myself, but then again not all of you 17 people will use the server to capacity at the same time.