Microsoft Small Business Server 2003

[wilfredw]

Anyone using Microsoft Small Business Server 2003? If the answer is yes, how has your experience been?


Wilfred

[Richard Conyard]

I've installed a fair few systems with SBS 2K3 and 2K - it's a good system.

One thing to think about though is the lock in on the number of servers. SBS 2K3 can be the only server within it's controlling AD group. If you think you are going to expand rapidly and need to buy more servers you might run into trouble.

[steveej1]

As it's name suggest it is ideal for Small Businesses.

We have used it & installed it for a few of our clients and it has been great. For some of our larger clients we would suggest using separate physical servers & individual Microsoft Servers.

If you qualify for the Microsoft Action Pack (see their site) then you get licenses for this plus loads more for less than £200/year.

Steve

[confused]

It does what it says on the tin !
But as mentioned already, it depends on the size of your network, and what the role of the server is to be.

[DuaneJackson]

We use it and we love it.

[Cornish Steve]

Can someone explain in a nutshell what it is and what it does?

(And no jokes about it being a software kernel, please.)

[Richard Conyard]

Centralised (and secure if set up properly), file storage for your office
E-mail for your office
Shared calendars, task lists etc. for your office
Firewall, proxy server for your office

and in the pro version also SQL server I believe.

[confused]

It basically provides a central administration point for your network, imagine you have say 5 pc's and no server. Joe bloggs logs onto 1 pc, he gets full functionality (forget about XP's limited user and admin user) he creates a few documents, then changes his password. The next day he is working in another part of the office, he logs on to a pc - his password is different, and where are his documents? on the other pc !
What if you got a new member of staff, you would have to create user accounts on all your pc's for this user, and as previously mentioned, they have pretty much an open workstation,i.e. no restrictions, again, the server can be configured to basically say what user (or group) does what, right down to taking certain items off the start menu such as the RUN command, and of course the users documents are there wherever they logon.
Then theres printer sharing/management. I could go on but I dont want to bore you, but please post back should you have any more queries.

[KM-Tiger]

SBS works fine, by and large.

But very nearly everything it does can be had for free using Opensource software. Chances are that you will pay someone a fee to setup and configure for you. Why not just pay this fee and not have to pay M$ as well? Also with Opensource there are no client licences to consider. As you expand you just add workstations.

I run my business entirely with Opensource servers supplied by this firm (http://www.tiger-computing.co.uk/). Desktops are still Windows, but that is another story.

[Richard Conyard]

Kent,
It really comes down to what they want out of it and the management interface they use. We have a smattering of linux around the place here, but unless a company had either onsite IT or a flexable maintenance contract I'd be loathed to recommend going that route.

[confused]

I must agree, I dont think I'd go down that route either, I dont know about your area, but wher I live there are not many unix/linux admins about, and the few that there are charge the earth, so the few hundred pounds saved may well be spent on support.
If anyone is considering SBS, I'd strongly reccomend that you pay someone to set it up for you, althought it looks straight forward and may appear to be running fine, it is very easy to have an insecure unstable server.
One thing I dont like about it and thismay be just me, but having a firewall on the same box as a server is really not a good idea, that said, it does seem to work well so who am I to say otherwise ! Just my opinion that a firewall should be a seperate box.

[DuaneJackson]

Nothing to stop you having a seperate box as a firewall too, infact I'd highly recommend it.

Re the cost of engineers. It comes down to the usual argument of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) - yes, linux is cheaper to get, but not always cheaper to run/mantain/support.

[Richard Conyard]

Reminds me of my favourite quote regarding open source:
Open source software is only ever free if you don't value your time

[KM-Tiger]

Yes, agreed Opensource isn't free, just free of licence fees forever.

It does come down to TCO from a business point of view, and I've certainly reduced mine, and my own time expenditure has gone down too. Our servers have very long uptimes - the best was 1 year 76 days until a power cut. I used to spend much more time on Win2k Server.

As regards Linux consultants, geography is not really an issue. My servers in Rochester are maintained in Reading using SSH, and that has included a version upgrade of the OS done remotely without rebooting. This at a modest cost.

But more importantly, once you move to opensource software and open standards, you regain ownership of your own data, and a competitive marketplace can supply the services to deal with it. Right now that marketplace is immature, but time will tell.

How should a business obtain the supply of a service? By locking itself into a single source agreement with a monopolist? I think not.