Working With Small Business Server 2008

Guest Post by Justin. Justin is a small business owner and computer technician with Protocol16, supporting small and mid-sized businesses as well as consumers in the metro area of Portland, Oregon.

It’s not secret that business customers bring in more money than residential. But, in order to win over some businesses, you need to be familiar with some of the operating systems they use. For larger shops and those with Enterprise level experience, this is second nature. For those stating out, however, it can be something that scares even the most seasoned small-time business owner.

What Is A Server?

A lot of people hear “Server” and instantly freeze. They see it as some scary thing that’s super-expensive and something to stay away from. Most servers that small shop owners will work on will be of the Small Business Server (SBS) variety. While small, these stinkers are powerful by having a handful of applications pre-installed. For the purpose of being modern and updated, I’ll focus on SBS 2008. Here are the two (2) versions of SBS 2008 and their default software packages:

• SBS 2008 Standard Edition: Contains the following software packages as a pre-installation, 1 wizard, install: Exchange, SharePoint WSS & IIS, Forefront Security for Exchange and Office Live Small Biz.
• SBS 2008 Premium Edition: Contains everything from above, but also has SQL Server 2008, Standard Edition for small businesses.

In my experience, nearly all small businesses will use SBS 2008, Standard Edition (at least those that use SBS). Although, there are a few companies here and there that use database driven applications or custom-coded applications inside MSFT Access, you typically won’t see Premium.

SBS is typically not used by the larger end of mid-sized businesses since it will only support up to 75 users. With that many users on one SBS Server, you’ll probably receive complaints of the server being slow.

Requirements

The requirements for SBS 2008 are pretty cut and dry:

• Processor: x64 Single-Core 2GHz or higher OR a Dual-Core 1.5GHz or faster.
• Memory: 4GB, at the minimum
• Disk Space: 60GB in whatever configuration you like.

For actual business use, I’ve learned over the years that the best thing to do is build up an 80GB (or so) partition for the OS to use, in a RAID 1 configuration. All the storage for applications and such should be stored some type of redundant drive configuration like RAID 5 or 10. Your primary goal in this type of configuration is to ensure that the OS has no problems. Your secondary goal is to ensure that your data and storage remains in-tact, but in a faster RAID set for better access. It is always recommended to use Hardware RAID with a battery backup, if you’re custom-building a server for a client.

To test out installs, if you’d like to practice on a decent, but inexpensive server, I’d recommend going with a barebone server off one of the online retailer websites. I put together a dual, Quad-Core XEON server with one 80GB array for the OS and 1 300GB RAID 10 array for data and 12GB of memory for about $1200, a year ago. But, a decent 64-bit home computer will work as well.

Installing SBS 2008

So, now we know what SBS 2008 can do, we know what hardware it runs on, but what about installing it? Some may think that it’s just like installing Server 2008 Standard, which is a bit like installing Vista. It’s not…

SBS 2008 does something out of the box that other Server installs doesn’t. It’s sets up all the programs and Active Directory, all during the initial install. There are two methods to this:

• Attended install. This means that you walk your way through the install process, answering all the questions and prompts, all while clicking “Next” over and over again while it installs.
• Unattended install, with answer file. If you install these servers often, you may want to use this option. It allows you to create the responses to the prompts so that you don’t have to click Next over and over again. You can mix the Unattended, but keep the prompts as well – this is called creating an Answer File. You are required to create an Answer File if you are joining the SBS server to an existing Domain.

There is a downfall to the “install everything at once” option. It’s VERY hard to change the domain name, computer name and other options after you have set the server up, due to the amount of programs installed. It is highly recommended that you have your client think of what they want the domain and computer name to be before you start the install since clients can be picky about what to name the domain and computer. It is also recommended that you print off the screen with the domain and computer name so you can have the client sign off on the options since it’s so hard to change the info. It’s so hard to change these options, in fact, that Microsoft pretty much says it can’t be done.

The other thing is, after everything is installed, be prepared for that smokin’ fast server to turn into a slow-as-molasses server. You’ve got to remember that all those applications need to start-up and initialize when Windows starts up. I’ve seen some servers take as long as 20 minutes to do a full restart. This can be very painful when you’re troubleshooting and need to perform many restarts. Fortunately, Windows 2008 requires less restarts than Server 2003 – in most instances. But, at the same time, you need to let your client know why the server can seem slow at times otherwise they can assume that it’s broke and you broke it.

But Wait, There’s More

I could go on to show you each step and each program, but are other stories for later. If you’re interested in working on servers, I’d recommend that you at least get yourself a cheaper Enterprise Class server to get familiar with the hardware aspect. For software, look into the Microsoft Technet subscription where you can get licensed programs for testing and learning. These two options can help you fill the downtime in your shop to enhance your offerings to clients.