No more Windows Small Business Server

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hawk82

[H]ard|Gawd
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Microsoft is ending SBS product with the new Server 2012 product comes out. SBSe will become Windows Server 2012 Essentials (tying into Office 365 and other MS cloud solutions. SBS Standard will be eliminated. So I guess this means a more traditional two DC setup, separate Exchange server for my small business clients who want or require in-house servers.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/arch...s-becomes-windows-server-2012-essentials.aspx

I'm not terribly happy with this decision.
 
I think it fits in with their strategy of pushing small businesses to Office 365. Personally I've never been a fan of SBS - it broke too many best practices by putting so many roles on one server.
 
shabazkilla said:
I think it fits in with their strategy of pushing small businesses to Office 365. Personally I've never been a fan of SBS - it broke too many best practices by putting so many roles on one server.
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I never liked SBS much either, granted I've only used 03. But that was plenty enough for me to never want to work with it again. :)
 
I'm kinda torn, SBS and WHS were great but had zero in the way of configuring HA or redundancy. It seems MS finally realized that computer hardware was cheap enough that even tiny businesses can easily afford two servers and might want to for reliability in case one crashed. So SBS2011 Essentials -> WS2012 Essentials might actually be a good thing. On the other end the SBS Standard was a cheap, easy way to get an exchange and sharepoint server which now apparently need to be purchased seperately which is a bit of a kick in the pants.
 
Yeah... I've never been a fan really. It's OK, but I'd recommend against it whenever possible.

I'm not terribly sad to see it go, we have the majority of our clients on hosted Exchange anyways.
 
It was a great product...been working on it since its inception with Back Office 4.0 and 4.5....morphing into SBS2000 which is when it got danged good.

Never understood the enterprise guys dislike of all that stuff on just one server. Yes..just one server...most small businesss are gonna keep their stuff on just one server. Learn to bundle SBS on good true server hardware, and you don't have problems. I've seen SBS on crummy servers fail...and even then...it's a small business..they can live through the brief outage...it isn't an enterprise environment with millions of dollars an hour at stake.

Anyways....looks like the consulting/setup opportunity will still be there for consultants....MS is just offloading many of the services to their cloud. Makes sense. Less running on the local box is better.
 
SBS in one way is really good but in another its just crazy... SQL and exchange on a Domain Controller! WTF!
 
Jay_oasis said:
SBS in one way is really good but in another its just crazy... SQL and exchange on a Domain Controller! WTF!
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Most of the big "no-no's" is really in an enterprise environment....performance issues of having those roles on the same box (but then again...enterprise does that now with virtualizing)....and single point of failure (heh...virtualizing is now doing this frequently too).

Performance wise..it can still work. I have an old client...they're going to close the doors soon and retire, but they've been running SBS 2K3 on an old ML350 G3 for 11 years now....for 70 users...running SQL too on the same box. Runs fairly well considering its age.

In an enterprise environment where every minute of server downtime costs massive amounts of money...yeah, true. But in typical small biz....it's not a biggie...they can live for a day or two or three.

Kinda like when the Cisco guys insist households should have some big ASA appliance because an 80 dollar off the shelf router sucks.
 
well that does kinda sucks. i never put my clients on hosted exchange when over the 5-10 user mark. so more virtualization and a license of exchange, wont kill pricing that much.

sucks, but is what it is.

im suprised YeOlde isnt more upset, both our busisness are all about SBS Server pretty mcuh.
 
I like SBS I think its a great product, again MS is pushing their cloud bullshit just in Windows 8. Lots of my customers DON'T want re-occuring costs. They just want to purchase and that's it.

You know SQL only comes in premium package. You do get a STD server License with that as well.

Also some organization have a great social responsibility but can't afford standalone products such as exchange.
Certain laws in Canada forbid data location, especially provincial/municpal/government institutions, healthcare works the same, I can name quite a few. Biggest issue Cloud services are in the USA 99% of the time. That means people are subjected
to USA laws and can have their data confiscated and snooped on by USA.

I am not huge public cloud fan especially when I can't control its location, and the fact cloud services REQUIRE internet connection. What happens to office 365? Storage is expensive. Not to mention Datacaps.

You guys also over do the HA and clustering to death. With Virtualization and a good backup solution I can have a server running back in 5 minutes. 99% SBS is a stable and a reliable platform, of course the biggest enemy to sbs is incompetent system admins that break sbs servers on a constant basis.

Did you guys try and work with Exchange/Sharepoint on line? Its a fucking headache.

I have roughly 20 networks with Variants of SBS running just fine supporting a lot of users.
 
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really though if you factor in software assurance (I know you don't have to take it) there is always a re-occuring costs.
 
I use SBS08 in a single server office because it was a great deal for the cost and frankly our workload just isn't that high, 5-8 users at the peak most of the time. As far as redundancy, I've got other hardware I could have up and running enough within a couple of hours while the primary is being repaired. Most of the work we do isn't really all that time sensitive so it's a valid strategy for us. I'll be sorry to see the SBS product go, I really think it's just MS vying to get a higher adoption of 365. I like 365, I use it for another business that has people frequently traveling and spread all over creation and its great, but for the business with the server it really doesn't make a lot of sense.
 
Wrench00 said:
I am not huge public cloud fan especially when I can't control its location, and the fact cloud services REQUIRE internet connection. What happens to office 365? Storage is expensive. Not to mention Datacaps.
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I'm with you on most of your sentiments of public clouds, especially for gov't or healthcare clients. On thing you are wrong about though is storage being expensive, especially with Office 365. 25gig mailbox for $6/mo isn't expensive at all. Most companies that run Exchange internally don't offer anywhere near that size mailbox. The mega-financial company I consult for now gives us 100meg by default. We can go up to 300meg if our manager approves the additional cost. Granted this is way smaller then average; I'd say most places I've worked averaged about 1gig for 'power users'.
 
There is also the fact that no every one can get a decent internet connection. Cloud is fantastic when you can actually connect to it, usless on a T1
 
shabazkilla said:
I'm with you on most of your sentiments of public clouds, especially for gov't or healthcare clients. On thing you are wrong about though is storage being expensive, especially with Office 365. 25gig mailbox for $6/mo isn't expensive at all. Most companies that run Exchange internally don't offer anywhere near that size mailbox. The mega-financial company I consult for now gives us 100meg by default. We can go up to 300meg if our manager approves the additional cost. Granted this is way smaller then average; I'd say most places I've worked averaged about 1gig for 'power users'.
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Don't forget about retention. If I have a 5 or longer year retention, it'll get very costly to have idle data. You could say for a small business that $6/mo isn't expensive but look at it this way, lets say you have 30 users. Now it's more like $2k a year just for mailboxes. With a SBS you would have a worthwhile ROI.
 
marley1 said:
well that does kinda sucks. i never put my clients on hosted exchange when over the 5-10 user mark. so more virtualization and a license of exchange, wont kill pricing that much.

sucks, but is what it is.

im suprised YeOlde isnt more upset, both our busisness are all about SBS Server pretty mcuh.
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I feel that clients will still need my consulting time..hence still my fees. Instead of having Exchange running locally, it's running up in the cloud...so what..they're still paying me to add users, setup the server, deal with the data, network, configure Outlook, etc. To me...I don't see it taking away much of our consulting time...we still make our money via management/time/labor, and other services like antivirus...and backup. (Just had some Datto guys visit our office...fun meeting with them, great guys, great product).
 
I'm pretty dissapointed by this. To me, it's a step backwards. Most of my SBS users have it because they are running on-premise LOB software and it was only a little more money for SBS than standard, but added a TON of extra functionality. Given the choice now, they will likely just use standard for the LOB software and forget about Exchange & Sharepoint. The existing customers that use Exchange and Sharepoint heavily will migrate to 365 and keep an LOB server, but it's going to be much tougher to sell it to new customers.
 
Most of my clients prefer to have their data in house vs. hosted. There aren't many reliable options for internet access in my area. At least with your data in-house you can still operate, queue up e-mails to send, once the internet comes back online.

I've built some of my IT consulting business around the SBS product. It kind of hurts to get this deep into SBS with best way to set them up, administering it, learning the Ins and Outs, and now its going away. I will say that SBS2011, I think, finally has it right. It just works. I've even done several SBS2003 to SBS2011 migrations and for the most part went smoothly.

I see this costing my clients a good chunk of change come time to replace their SBS2008 or SBS2011 servers in a couple of years. Win 2012 license + Exchange license + CALs + Exchange CALs. Whereas with SBS2011 you had it all rolled into one CAL. Was a lot easier to license.
 
I'm disappointed to see it go also. The cloud/365 makes sense for the smallest firms I work with (like 5 people), but for the 30 person firms, it's just too expensive compared to sbs. $2k a year just for hosted 365, and they'll still have to buy a server and windows anyway for local storage/AD/etc.

I'll still keep things local for them with virtualized exchange, it will just cost more. At least server 2012 standard will get me 2 licenses to run virtually, that helps a bit.
 
I honestly don't like the new Licencing on the lower end either. High end seems better but the mid range sucks as well. Enterprise is now gone.

I haven't deployed a virtualized err physical server in two years. Easier to backup easier to recover no hardware gotchas. The people that are still on P servers are getting converted to V for that reason. Saved my bacon many times.

MS even said that their cloud services are met for less then 25 users, windows intune 14/month. Problem is that these 25 users is way to expensive in the long run. Most SBS server run 5+ (most run 8 in my experience)years that means (25*6)*(12*5) = 9K for a 5 year run (14.5k for 8 year+hst= 17.3K). Thats a lot, hell if you can SPLA SBS its cheaper then that by a long shot. Worse yet MS wants money for the whole year up front its not pay as you go, what happens if your company downsizes? In this economy getting 100 dollars out of a client is like getting water from a rock, how the fuck do they expect to suck 2k a year?


I am getting pretty good feeling that this is gone LEAD to a lot of Negative feedback and one exchange 2k13 they will make new sbs.

I honestly would look at alternatives like Zimbra for Email if SBS is killed. Much cheaper then exchange and extremely good functionality.

Has any one deployed a Essentials server? I tested it but its a pretty lame duck compared SBS STD
 
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Wow. I am amazed by this. it just shows that MS doesn't understand or care how SMB works, or wants to work. SBS is a great product- it just plain works. My clients have no desire for cloud solutions. Zero. They want all of it in-house, they want control of it. Particularly Exchange. This is an epic blunder.
 
twwabw said:
Wow. I am amazed by this. it just shows that MS doesn't understand or care how SMB works, or wants to work. SBS is a great product- it just plain works. My clients have no desire for cloud solutions. Zero. They want all of it in-house, they want control of it. Particularly Exchange. This is an epic blunder.
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Hey Tim....getting some good boating in this year up there?

I've yet to really read more about 2012.....but noticed this in the link above:
" If you prefer a fully on-premises solution, you have the option of running Exchange Server on a second server (either as a physical or virtual machine) alongside Essentials with the same integrated management experience"

One way to look at it....how many people (typically more enterprise server guys) frown upon SBS running Exchange on a DC? Moving it off....alleviates that compliant?

As far as most of my clients are concerned....I don't think the majority will care if Exchange is running right there locally (//points to their server)...or across the internet up in the MS cloud (//points up to the sky). As long as their Outlook is running and giving them the full "My own mail server experience"...they'll be happy.

As far as it goes for us....less for us to deal with. Less backup needs (thus less costs), less antivirus needs (thus a little less cost...no Exchange component). Less horsepower needs on their server (thus less costs). Less support calls/worries for us....info store tripping the 18 gig barries so dismounted, or some antivirus update tripped the infostore AV component and crashed it, less worry about RevDNS/PTR, less cost because no need for a mail bastion/SMTP smart host (ex...Postini/MXLogic/MyAppRiver, etc). IMO (and in my experience so far with O365)...it will make our jobs easier...and we still need to be there to manage it and get paid for that)

Curious if MS will lower the price of Exchange if bundled with 2012 Essentials..
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Hey Tim....getting some good boating in this year up there?

I've yet to really read more about 2012.....but noticed this in the link above:
" If you prefer a fully on-premises solution, you have the option of running Exchange Server on a second server (either as a physical or virtual machine) alongside Essentials with the same integrated management experience"

One way to look at it....how many people (typically more enterprise server guys) frown upon SBS running Exchange on a DC? Moving it off....alleviates that compliant?

As far as most of my clients are concerned....I don't think the majority will care if Exchange is running right there locally (//points to their server)...or across the internet up in the MS cloud (//points up to the sky). As long as their Outlook is running and giving them the full "My own mail server experience"...they'll be happy.

As far as it goes for us....less for us to deal with. Less backup needs (thus less costs), less antivirus needs (thus a little less cost...no Exchange component). Less horsepower needs on their server (thus less costs). Less support calls/worries for us....info store tripping the 18 gig barries so dismounted, or some antivirus update tripped the infostore AV component and crashed it, less worry about RevDNS/PTR, less cost because no need for a mail bastion/SMTP smart host (ex...Postini/MXLogic/MyAppRiver, etc). IMO (and in my experience so far with O365)...it will make our jobs easier...and we still need to be there to manage it and get paid for that)

Curious if MS will lower the price of Exchange if bundled with 2012 Essentials..
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except essentials has no vm licence and another server os and exchange will add up to about 3k. Another thing is that people may say fuck you ms and go with everything but O365. Google apps is way better deal then O365. So MS bid might drive awya potential business. Does O365 support BB?

Honestley i dont think this solution will resolve problems its going to cause more, and companies that have SLA agreements will end up getting screwed in the end.
 
Wrench00 said:
except essentials has no vm licence and another server os and exchange will add up to about 3k. Another thing is that people may say fuck you ms and go with everything but O365. Google apps is way better deal then O365. So MS bid might drive awya potential business. Does O365 support BB?

Honestley i dont think this solution will resolve problems its going to cause more, and companies that have SLA agreements will end up getting screwed in the end.
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no one is going to support bb soon, bb is about to die with in a year IF THAT! bb = garbage, they failed and they are going down hill FAST!!
 
twwabw said:
Wow. I am amazed by this. it just shows that MS doesn't understand or care how SMB works, or wants to work. SBS is a great product- it just plain works. My clients have no desire for cloud solutions. Zero. They want all of it in-house, they want control of it. Particularly Exchange. This is an epic blunder.
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I don't think MS thinks there isn't a market for this anymore, I think they want the recurring revenue from pushing people to 365. SBS undoing might have been it was too cheap.
 
dashpuppy said:
no one is going to support bb soon, bb is about to die with in a year IF THAT! bb = garbage, they failed and they are going down hill FAST!!
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I would like to see that as well but sad fact is that a lot of companies depend on it.
Coastguard, Port Authorities, Banks, government institutions, certain CSOX mandated companies etc.
 
Well here's a time for the Linux community to get together and make a distro "Linux Small Business Server" :p Really I'm surprised no one has done this yet. Basically a distro that has email, domain etc... and appropriate clients to go on windows machines. What would make it even better is no artificial user/connection limitations like MS likes to do. Maybe this is a project I should take on some day. *ponders*.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Well here's a time for the Linux community to get together and make a distro "Linux Small Business Server" :p Really I'm surprised no one has done this yet. Basically a distro that has email, domain etc... and appropriate clients to go on windows machines. What would make it even better is no artificial user/connection limitations like MS likes to do. Maybe this is a project I should take on some day. *ponders*.
Click to expand...
There are a bunch of systems like that. Zentyal is one that pops into my mind right away.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Well here's a time for the Linux community to get together and make a distro "Linux Small Business Server" :p Really I'm surprised no one has done this yet. Basically a distro that has email, domain etc... and appropriate clients to go on windows machines. What would make it even better is no artificial user/connection limitations like MS likes to do. Maybe this is a project I should take on some day. *ponders*.
Click to expand...

I'm really surprised you don't know about the ones already out there. In addition to the one mentioned in above reply...there is ClearOS
 
marley1 said:
well that does kinda sucks. i never put my clients on hosted exchange when over the 5-10 user mark. so more virtualization and a license of exchange, wont kill pricing that much.

sucks, but is what it is.

im suprised YeOlde isnt more upset, both our busisness are all about SBS Server pretty mcuh.
Click to expand...

Yea I've usually stayed away from hosted exchange when you can put a sbs server in instead. Guess for many it will just be a second server or std running exchange on the dc.
 
shabazkilla said:
I think it fits in with their strategy of pushing small businesses to Office 365. Personally I've never been a fan of SBS - it broke too many best practices by putting so many roles on one server.
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this, i never pushed SBS
 
dashpuppy said:
no one is going to support bb soon, bb is about to die with in a year IF THAT! bb = garbage, they failed and they are going down hill FAST!!
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I just saw that BB is being supported on Office 365 (Really Exchange Online).. I logged in last week and saw it there. I have yet to test it, but I plan on doing so soon.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Well here's a time for the Linux community to get together and make a distro "Linux Small Business Server" :p Really I'm surprised no one has done this yet. Basically a distro that has email, domain etc... and appropriate clients to go on windows machines. What would make it even better is no artificial user/connection limitations like MS likes to do. Maybe this is a project I should take on some day. *ponders*.
Click to expand...

You know what looks like an interesting and cost effective product to me?
http://www.apple.com/server/
 
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