In my opinion it all depends on how big your SSIS process is going to be and if the existing servers have a window where the SSIS jobs can run...

These would be my toasters

Agent Ransack - searching for files is a must.

Vim ... (unix guy here so a must)

7zip

works only partially - does not take in consideration that fact that some countries do have Accented alphas so the code as is removes them.

Select dbo.fnTrimNonAlphaCharacters('âáÉéôô') will just return an...

nice post.

I have just one question which may help others also.

Does the fact that you are referencing the Excel object on SSIS require a Excel install on the server?