Microsoft Windows SBS Product Line to be Retired

Discussion in 'SBS' started by GSteer, Jul 5, 2012.

  1. GSteer

    GSteer Megabyte Poster

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    According to the following blog: Windows Small Business Server Essentials becomes Windows Server 2012 Essentials - The Official SBS Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

    Windows SBS Essentials will turn into Server 2012 Essentials

    Windows SBS 2011 will be the last of it's line and retired end of year 2013:

    "Windows SBS 2011 Standard, which includes Exchange Server and SharePoint Foundation, will be the final such Windows SBS offering. It will remain available through the OEM channel until December 31, 2013, and will remain available in all other current channels until June 30, 2013."

    So, I'll remove the SBS cert from my roadmap. I wonder how this will affect existing Small Business Specialists?
     
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  2. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    I think Sparky is the SBS King! No doubt he'll shed a tear when this goes :(
     
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  3. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    A sad day! :(

    I’m surprised at this as SBS was an easy product to sell, a server that offers enterprise level features for a competitive price.

    Been working with SBS since NT and I’ve lost count of the number of migrations\installs I’ve done with SBS.
     
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  4. Bluerinse
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    Bluerinse Exabyte Poster

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    Same here, i have seen heaps of SBS product being used, seems a shame to me.
     
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  5. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    On the plus side the 2012 equivalent has some cool features like Hyper-V although it looks like you would be expected to create an exchange server VM on there as opposed to having a cut down version running on SBS. I'm not sure but I'd imagine if you did have Hyper-V VM's you'd need additional licences...
     
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  6. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    SBS 2008 came with hyper-v which was a big bonus. There was always some crappy application that had to be hosted on a server and in many cases the SBS is the only server on the network so having a VM available was great.

    More expensive to do this with SBS 2011 but the option was always there.

    For me I think the on-site server might now just be a basic DC\File\Print with all other SBS features going to the cloud with Office 365.
     
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  7. DC Pr0Mo

    DC Pr0Mo Kilobyte Poster

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    For me it's not the change in Tech that's annoying, It's explaining to the client(s) of the massive hike in price if they want to keep there current IT systems as is on their next server upgrade.

    Most small businesses use broadband with no Service Level Agreement as there internet connection so cloud computing for small businesses can do one as far as I'm concerned, the UK infrastructure is far from ready for this push to the cloud for that market.

    The Vast majority of BT Openreach engineers are about as useful as a chocolate fire-guard, any time I see there van near one of our client sites I dont have to wait long for the inevitably phone call from the client stating their broadband has gone down.
     
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  8. GSteer

    GSteer Megabyte Poster

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  9. GSteer

    GSteer Megabyte Poster

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    I think the expectation is for you to use Office 365 in MS's cloud rather than a local Exchange setup with the Essentials version as it's 25 user limited and heavy integrated into their cloud offerings.
     
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  10. vilcadude

    vilcadude New Member

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    Absolutely ropeable about this decision by M$

    You tube link "watch?v=if52s9wH_U0"

    and spread the word!
     
  11. Boycie
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    Boycie Senior Beer Tester

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    I think that's exactly what MS are pushing for Sparks. I know their are good reasons to go for 365, but its not for everyone, so the people that don't want to go for it, will have to pay through the nose to keep it "local".
     
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  12. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    It’s a strange one mate – we did a cost comparison with SBS vs Cloud and the SBS was cheaper. This is just looking at it from a cost point of view – ignore the technical side of things for now.

    The customer still wanted the cloud solution and it has been a nightmare uploading 60GB mail into the cloud over a crappy ADSL connection. They have no servers on-site now so it’s just one big workgroup so people are kinda tied to one machine with their user profile.
     
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  13. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    Bit of a thread bump but I installed my last SBS 2011 for a customer last week. They are a legal firm and there was “no chance” they were moving anything to the cloud.

    In regard to other customers I have started migrating them to Office 365 and also cloud based phone systems. So basically each member of staff will cost X per month for their phone and Office 365 subscription. Seems to work well when you are talking to customers on how they cost their cloud strategy.

    In regard on onsite installs customers have moved from SBS to a Hyper-V box with a VM as DC and another Exchange 2013 VM. This has worked out ok for charity organisations but a bit of a financial hit for other customers.

    I will bump this thread in another two years! :)
     
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  14. madman045

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    Hi mate, i was wondering what the options are for the small businesses with single SBS servers

    I can see Office 365 for email and office 2013 subs, but what are the options for servers, currently i am toying with a single 2012 r2 essentials server as i cannot see a feasible setup with a worth while redundant VM infrastructure that does not cost a small fortune.
     
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  15. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    Yeah – a failover type VM solution will cost too much when moving away from SBS. All of my smaller customers have gone through the whole SBS 2000, SBS 2003 and finally SBS 2011/2008 upgrades so now they are on different setups depending on what was on the original SBS.

    I have gone for Server 2012 standard with DC\File\Print\AV management roles. Email to Office 365 and also streaming data (file shares) and system state to the cloud for backup.

    A few years ago I was approached by a Cloud consultant to implement some of his solutions which I agreed to do (the money was good!). Anyways he would basically rip out all servers and move *everything* to the cloud which caused me a world of pain.

    When a domain is in place (say 10 to 30 users) and you remove it then it is a fecking nightmare to support and manage. Users can’t move between PCs and setting up printers\logon scripts takes time – forget making quick changes.

    Also after going through all the hassle there was always some piece of software that would need a central location to host a file\database – say Sage Accounts for example. This would mean mapping a drive between PCs to share data which again is going to be problematic.

    Before people start posting replies I know the files can be hosted on a NAS but is that as good as a server running with AD permissions? No : )

    I went to a cloud computing conference last year and the common theme was “hybrid solutions”. Looks like when all the hype around cloud computing calmed down a bit people realised that some onsite servers won’t cause the whole world to end. :)
     
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  16. Josiahb

    Josiahb Gigabyte Poster

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    I've implemented a hybrid environment for a number of smaller clients, Office 365 and Server 2012 r2 Essentials on an HP MicroServer. Its worked really well for our smaller outfits.

    Those who have been interested in on-site solutions have been quoted on single physical host with 2 VMs, however no ones gone for this yet as the expense is fairly spectacular when compared to Office 365.
     
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  17. Shinigami

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    There is the option of extending AD to Azure, could be used to get rid of any remaining on-prem servers, yet giving you group policy control and remote management of the workstations.

    I'll spend the majority of my holidays this winter cramming my head with our internal training options around all the Azure options as I'm still lacking in that... I've been working a fair bit on O365 hybrid scenarios due to the size of my customers and haven't been able to do the SMB scenarios where one offloads everything to the cloud :\
     
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  18. Sparky
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    Sparky Zettabyte Poster Moderator

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    Cool – I’m finding lack of bandwidth is causing the biggest issue for our SMB customers to move servers to the cloud. Slowly changing with high speed connection prices coming down and availability going up also. Will see what happens in 2015 :)
     
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  19. Shinigami

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    Indeed, it certainly depends on the bandwidth capabilities that the customer has. And latency plays a big part... Granted, some companies may just buy a fast, cheap DSL line :)

    Now, the SLA's may not be quite as good as with business-grade lines, and I've seen instances where ISP's will not provide a household-grade DSL or cable connection for companies and upload limits are almost always much slower than download speed (and in the past, they used to be limited to just a few devices as well), but things have become more liberal in some countries and with some ISP's.

    Some of my larger customers with a hundred or so sites, indeed have an MPLS cloud throughout the company. But they run a multi-hundred mbit line from their HQ and end up configuring the smaller sites with a second, cheaper and very fast DSL line that provides email connectivity over Outlook Anywhere (rather than having the clients connect over the much slower, and much more expensive internal MPLS line).

    It's an interesting strategy, and it works. The MPLS is often configured as the fallback if the cheap DSL goes down :)
     
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  20. Shinigami

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