I like to feature good, well-written comments to previous stories. The comment below is in response to the recent post about Small Business Server 2008.
Hey, I’m on the SBS 2008 beta, and I thought I would share some comments.
1. Not Watered Down
SBS 2008 components aren’t watered down or lite versions — they’re technically the same versions that ship outside of SBS. There is one exception with the Active Directory in that you can’t establish domain trusts, but I can’t see small businesses doing that.2. Full Admin tools do exist.
SBS does provide a streamlined admin console that makes something like the top 20 tasks easy to complete. However, in addition to those tools, all of the native management tools for Windows Server Exchange Server, SharePoint, etc, exist. So, you aren’t prevented from doing anything — it’s more like you get extra tools designed for the small business than anything else.3. SBS Premium app compat story.
Premium contains a 2nd version of windows standalone for software apps. This one was a change from SBS 2003, specifically to address the application compatibility issues you listed above. Bascially, with premium, you get a 2nd copy of windows server to run the apps on, and with hyper-v, I think that server can be virtually run on a single piece of hardware along with the SBS server.
I appreciate this feedback. Please feel free to comment if you have any thoughts or experience with Windows Small Business Server.