Time Machine Server backup speed

Has anyone used time machine on OS X 10.5.8 Server to backup 50+ client machines at one time?
We have a project where we will be binding 50 Macs to AD and migrating user data.  We have a process for the migration and will have done extensive testing by the time the migration happens, so if I have any questions about that it will be in a different forum.
We would like to have a solid backup that is easy to restore if we run into issues.  We have Retrospect backups yet the backup server is a Windows 2008 Server and sometimes even restoring small amounts of data can be troublesome.  I would rather not restore a user's account using Retrospect if at all possible.
We don't want to goto each machine and use Carbon Copy Cloner if possible, yet we are looking into using CCC over the network for backups/restores.
One backup plan is to setup a Time Machine server on one of our OD masters with an external RAID.
Next we touch every machine and direct each client to the Time Machine Backup drive on the network and they all start backing up.
How long would you think it takes for 50+ machines averaging 10GB of data to backup using Time Machine on a new Gigabit LAN with CAT 5e cables and a Cisco managed switch setup?
Is there a way in ARD to send a command to set clients to choose a Time Machine Backup server?
If you were in my position and needed to backup 50+ machines in the shortest amount of time with the quickest/easiest restore process, how would you do it?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Well SAM
It actually worked. THANKS A BUNCH! I trying again as root, allthough I thought sudo did it.
I needed to first do some repairing (permissions and so on), change the host name and bind all the machines anew to server.
Anyway it finall works. The disk is available form startup prior to ANY login.
So aganin: thank you. I am sorry I can't find how to change the appraisal of your answer from 'helped' to 'solved' to give you more credit(s).
Francesco

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