A few pages a day of my SBS 2003 book

Hey gang - I thought I would start to post a few pages a day from my SBS 2003 Best Practices book and get the good stuff out in the wild! Enjoy the read and come back daily!

Here is my first attempt :)


Chapter 1 Welcome to Small Business Server

Howdy and welcome to Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, better known as SBS. SBS, now in its fourth major revision, solidifies Microsoft’s position in the small business space. In past editions of my SBS books, I wrote that Microsoft was starting to “get there” technically with early SBS versions and beginning to understand the small business space. With SBS 2003, such historical talk is exactly that: legacy chatter. It’s time to look forward and not only appreciate the product maturity, but also appreciate its repositioning into two versions (standard and premium) with pricing that best meets the needs of different types of small businesses.
With the SBS 2003 release, it’s safe to say it’s NOW time—to borrow from crowd chants at NBA (National Basketball Association) games. It’s NOW time to go forth and implement SBS 2003 without the hesitations you justifiably had with the younger SBS versions.
SBS clearly represents Microsoft’s strongest commitment to the small business market, which, as you will see later in the chapter, represents the largest computing market when measured by sheer number of businesses. With a single Microsoft networking product such as SBS, it is possible to “right-size” a small business networking solution, and all with one reasonably priced and powerful personal computer known as a server.
BEST PRACTICE: This will be one of the only “before SBS” points in this book. But, before SBS, trying to implement Microsoft’s default business networking solution at a small business site was a frustrating exercise in budget creep, much like placing too big of an engine in a small car! I share this point with you because folks who look at implementing the full complement of Microsoft Server products at
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a small business today are in many ways demonstrating pre-SBS
Neanderthal business ways. Enough said. Go forth with SBS!
A properly set-up SBS network can improve the way you run your business (or the way your clients run their businesses if you’re an SBS/SMB consultant), help lower computing costs, and, perhaps most important, make it easier for you, the technology consultant or SBS administrator, and your users to use and enjoy computers.
Defining SBS
Exactly what is SBS? Actually, there is more than one answer to that question. I like to think of defining SBS as akin to being a tax attorney: everyone’s situation is different and tax codes can be interpreted differently by different people. Note this section speaks towards both the standard and premium editions of SBS. Specific SBS constituencies, further described below, include:
• Cost-effective, cost-efficient crowd
• Larger-than-life image crowd
• SBS feature creatures
• SBS Zen crowd
• The Big B crowd: Small BUSINESS Server
• Converters and others

BEST PRACTICE: As you delve deeper into this book, there is no better time to expand on my comment in passing above about the standard and premium editions of SBS. The premium edition most closely resembles the predecessor SBS 2000 release in both price and bundled features and applications. It includes everything! The standard edition is much cheaper and doesn’t include Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000 (ISA) or SQL Server 2000.
Table 1-1 below defines the components, and the premium edition
is discussed much more in Section Four.
Cost-Effective, Cost-Efficient Crowd
SBS provides a cheap, robust, reliable, and easy-to-manage small business networking solution. The small business crowd wants to work with business applications, send and receive e-mail, print, and make sure the data is backed up and protected from viruses. Properly deployed, SBS scores high marks in these respects. SBS offers a cost-effective way of bundling full Microsoft Server applications and the Windows Server 2003 operating system. Here the emphasis in on bang-for-buck, and SBS is viewed as just a different Microsoft stock keeping unit (SKU).
Larger-Than-Life Image Crowd
Presenting a larger-than-life image is the goal of some SBS clients who use SBS to look more impressive and bigger than their small business size warrants. With a high-speed Internet connection and SBS, these businesses look and act as if they are much larger entities. More than once, customers who’ve conducted business with these small businesses, thinking they’re engaging in transactions with a larger firm, are surprised to learn it’s been just three buddies, a pizza, and an SBS network all along. And get out your digital camera, for when these customers visit such an SBS site, a photograph of the look on their faces when they discover the firm that appeared to be a big-time organization is just an incredibly efficient small business is priceless.
Another take on the larger-than-life crowd is keeping up with the Joneses. SBS is sexy and allows you to use and show off the latest Microsoft Servers products. You too can be part of the hip, happenin’ SBS crowd on your block.
SBS Feature Creatures
Many view SBS as a set of mini-Microsoft Servers or “mini-me” (to quote from the popular Austin Power movie) and like to fully exploit SBS applications, such as Microsoft Exchange 2003 and SQL Server 2000. This group, the SBS feature creatures, are going to be most interested in Table 1-1, which is divided, as much as possible, into the server-side (the powerful computer that typically resides in a closet) and the client-side (user workstations) components. Almost
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to a fault, this group is sometimes more interested in SBS as a technology rather than as a device for running a more sophisticated and efficient business. That is a dangerous and ominous warning sign to beware, as any college business professor will tell you. Anytime you start to get more excited about the technology instead of your core business, then please set the book down and take a slight break. While the SBS technology is cool, it’s still just a business tool.
Each SBS component is discussed further in later chapters in this book, so don’t worry if you don’t understand, much less master, each one right now. Such comfort levels and expertise will be developed over the next several hundred pages and in your career as an SBSer. For example, each server component is defined in great detail in its own chapter. Take Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. You’ll learn much more about this e-mail messaging solution in Chapter 6.