So VisualSvnServer configures the server for use with Subversion - once you've installed all you have to do is create repositories and off you go and you're ready to serve your Subversion repository over HTTP. Apache configuration is not something I'm very familiar with and every time I do I spend a bit of time fixing some minor setting that I just can't seem to find. That's certainly one headache I DIDN'T want to deal with and VisualSVN makes this part dead easy. Installation and configuration is dead simple and the installer pretty much handles setting up Subversion and Apache to enable HTTP access. One of the distros is VisualSvn Server and since I already use VisualSVN and like it I decided to give it shot.
Since I last did a server install of Subversion things have changed a bit and it looks like you have to pretty much install some third party distro if you don't want to compile the code yourself. Previously I'd been using the built-in SVN service and that's been working Ok, but I've been meaning to open my work repository to allow linking to code more easily and to allow people easier access to some of the code I've published or talked about in Blog posts.
When I moved to my new server about a month ago, I decided that I should also move my Subversion Source Control Repository over to HTTP now finally that I have a box that has a bit more resources to spare. I wrote up steps for getting a Subversion repository going last year and in there I talked about setting up Subversion and creating repositories using the built-in TCP/IP based server and configuring the server with TortoiseSVN. I've been using Subversion for source control for a couple years now and I'm not looking back to SCC style source control in Visual Studio.