Monday, June 1, 2009

Small Business Server 2008 Build day with www.wmsbtug.org

 

Big learning curve ahead of us.

  As the eat the own dog food goes, I am a couple of weeks later still trying to move my old sbs2k3/piii/500/512m-ram/40g-hd to the new sbs2k8 with a totally new install (vmware) not a migration.  I think after wasting the 2-4 hours last night on the email issue via the wizard way, I am ready to finish adding the rest of my users and import their exchange boxes from pst’s.

  On the May 16th, eight of us from our www.wmsbtug.org group got together to do some sbs installs from 10am to 10pm, we kind of had four projects going:

Projects:
1. Mine
  a. enterprise w2k8s as root
  b. free vmware server 2.0 for vm
  c. new sbs2k8 in 1st vm with 4gig
  d. new w2k8s+ts in 2nd vm 2gig

2. Rafael
  a. Vmware esxi for vm
  b. Sbs2k8

3. Leon
  a. Enterprise w2k8s as root
  b. Hyper-v for vm
  c. P2V SBS2k8 migration

4. Steve
  a. w2k8s as root
  b. Hyper-v and vmware
  c. New install(s)

  We all have seen/touched/played with sbs2k8 and all had the feeling that we lost stuff (ex isa), price went up and seemed more difficult for setup.

  We all went in with projects to learn from, get better acquainted with sbs2k8 and vm’s, to share each other’s experiences for the day.

Status:

#1 successful, installed and ready for tweaking.

  a. Not specific sbs2k8-Could not get the remote apps stuff to work externally, bought a recommend book which did not resolve the issue, finally I manually changed the ts gateway and it started working in and out

  b. Followed same recommend book to add additional domains and emails, again book went in one direction that did not even work, spent couple of hours on it before going back to basics and manually changing the default “windows sbs email address policy”, working now.

#2 had issues with dhcp and nic card issues but finally got a base sbs2k8 installed.  Has since whack it and did another reinstall

#3 was total crash and burn, tried several methods of p2v - acronis, storagecraft and real microsoft migration method, nothing worked.  Tho I just got his email today and after another week of messing around and a call to support, he thinks the microsoft method finally has the p2v working.

#4 had some disk drives to spare and was just installing stuff as the rest of us were

  Thru this whole venture, we kept trying to think in the back of our minds that we were the admin person, computer literate doctor or the in-house computer expert in the office that would be setting this up in their small office “Small Business Server 2008”.  None of us came away with a feeling that it could be done successfully. 

Things that hit home for me:

1. inability to add email addresses to a user without leaving the sbs console and having to find the exchange management console

   a. the user alias vs the user login id causing issues with email address creation

2. inability to add all the pc’s first and then do the connect at each pc with the ability to select from a list and change the computer name on the fly

3. sbs console now has “configure a smart host” and “add a trusted certificate” that does not have a check box for “not applicable”, now I have two boxes that will always be ‘not completed’

  I have had Windows Home Server for a while and that is really easy to setup and configure.  Thinking that sbs2k8 with the whs type console would be easier is a wrong way of thinking

  Went from sbs4.5 to sbs2k to sbs2k3 and now to sbs2k8, sbs2k3 was the biggest “WOW” for a awesome product with the coolest new stuff yet seemed to stick in the same management method.  SBS2k8 seems to start completely over.

  The ts remote apps is totally cool (ability to run a excel or outlook in a ts window is freaking amazing) yet “this feature is not even part of sbs2k8”, one would have to add a second server, windows sk2k8, ts and volume licensed office.  Not something a small/medium office will do during these economic times

Positive new Features of SBS2k8:

1. ability to associate the user to his/her internal remote desktop directly for rww usage.

2. Imaging backup

  SBS2k3 and WHS rock!

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