server advice

Ubuntu has a free Server edition. I'm not sure why you'd pay for a license unless you're actually using the extra tech support.

If you ask 10 people, you'll get 11 different answers. :-)

SuSE used to be, in my opinion, the greatest Linux distribution in existence in the late 1990s. It was the first and only "it just works" distribution. Insert CD, graphical install, no fuss, no worries.

Over the years, it has become somewhat bloated, mostly because it still does an "it just works" thing. Which is ok for a desktop system, but for a server it's kind of an ugly fat pig in my opinion. On the other hand, RAM and CPU are becoming cheaper, and most servers are less than 1% loaded anyway, so it probably doesn't really matter so much. It's probably more about "religion" than about actual technical reasons.

Personally, for a server, I prever Debian for it is much more lightweight, but not nearly as time consuming and painful to set up as a "hardcore" distro, such as for example gentoo. You could probably squeeze out another 5-6% by using a more hardcore distro, but Debian really works nicely, and is a breeze to set up and maintain. Plus, there's about a million installable packages that "just work". No matter what you might possibly need one day, it's one apt-get install away.

What it comes down to for me is ease of use and cost. The server is a dell server with some fancy built ins such as wake on lan and RAID-1. Since SLES is what it shipped with I know sles works. Would Ubunto's free server edition or Debian take the RAID into account. Also the server is 64-bit.
I agree, I don't want to spend money just so that I can get a few updates that are mainly open source anyway. It's a lot of work to format and reinstall all the software I'm using but I'd do it if you guys think it will result in the same end result for no subscription.
Let me lay down a quick list that the server needs. Apart from basics of web hosting, ssh etc. it is 64-bit, RAID-1, needs YaST, mail server and it shouldn't need much tweaking.
EDIT: Another question is whether Ubunto Server supports the x86 architecture, their download implies AMD.

If you're currently on SLES, why not use OpenSUSE ?

I think that is what I'll do. From what I've read so far that seems to be the right thing to do. Thanks guys! Appreciate the honest inputs.