SBS gone poof …Transition Ahead! – Who, What, Why, Where, When

subtitle –  emerging technology innovation train coming through – this just isn’t the right business for stagnation

News is now out …SBS is no more – dramatic shift and what exactly does this mean?  …losing the name SBS, the unique partner certification and designation branding SBSC, and much of the special philosophy that the last decade saw Microsoft reaching for the Small Business as had never happened before. 

Who – the customer, the partner, the vendors, the software developers, the software support …all will be impacted

What – SBS the name and the brand is no more, no SBSC, replaced by a hybrid of Windows Server Essentials 2012 & either a member server of Exchange on premise or Exchange hosted – all the predictable results wizards gone  …it’s a new world

Why – …apparently it was time for a change – life happens …business decisions are made by those that shoulder the rudder and compass

Where – all encompassing across the width and breadth of Microsoft’s landscape

When – SBS 2011 w/ SA stops being sold July 31’st, 2012, SBS 2011 platform stops as OEM December 31’st, 2013, SBS 2011 platform in VL and … stops June 30, 2013 – the Windows Server Essentials 2012 product launches with the Windows 2012 family of server expected in the August-September time frame.

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**other important noteworthy aspects**

none of the new licensing and pricing for this model is out yet -  it is not yet possible to do an accurate cost comparison of whether buying SBS 2011 w/ SA now will be a good decision.  The historical Microsoft trend has been to supply the full next version products and licensing to be at a minimum equivalent to what SA covers; in the case of now defunct Windows Essential Business Server aka WEBS aka EBS, that meant a really incredibly good deal.  With the SBS 2012 platform that will likely mean Exchange, Exchange CALS, and Windows Server Standard 2012 …see the linked FAQ from the preceding post.

a script is under development to help integrate on-premise Exchange on a member server to Windows Server Essentials 2012 so that managing users and their email accounts can be done from the WSE console …sorta SBS-like – this integration script is available in the current downloadable beta http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30327

Windows Server Essentials 2012 will be the evolutionary step product from what is currently named Windows SBS 2011 Essentials and the licensing model of 25 users and no CALS required should carry forward.  WSE 21012 will add Direct Access as a new feature.

WSE will be able to be ‘transmogrified’ aka 25 user limit breakable via a one time purchasable upgrade script.  There will be no unique upper limit as the server essentially become a Windows Standard Server OS.  The de-duplication backup feature will expand up to 75 devices at this point.  Once the ‘transmog’ is applied you still get to keep the RWA, Remote Web Access, and De-dup Backup features.

SBSC is gone …Small Business competency (Silver or Gold) is an available path to consider going.  The benefits are in many ways nicer.  It costs nearly 562% more ($1,850 Silver versus $329 MAPS – as of today for US Partner)  https://mspartner.microsoft.com/en/us/pages/membership/small-business-competency.aspx

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**General Banter**

Ouch that hurt …didn’t see that coming?  Probably because up to a month ago their were reports of development on a product to replace SBS 2011 still underway.

Although the never-ending siren call of ‘go to the cloud’ beckons, many on-premise clients are resisting; their LoB apps, data security requirements, and their bandwidth costs are key factors.  Resistance is futile or so I’ve been told.

So while you can still do on-premise, it isn’t for those that are simpletons or light on their ability to follow complex instructions and do their due diligent preparations to ensure good healthy rollout projects.  We’ve been encouraged and guided to adapt to the SBS mantra of putting everything possible on a single box to maximize value to the customer.  In this era, we can now still do this but can silo the various resource monster products onto their own virtual machine where all the products like Exchange, IIS, and SQL can coexist but yet be constrained by assignment of memory or CPU cores.

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**Silver Lining**

As painful as this transition is, if we can get all the keystone IT infrastructure software components in VM’s under a single Virtual Parent and keep pricing in line with its historical small business affordability; then we will be in a better place.  Having a BDC and redundant DNS is in reach.  Another perk is that ISV’s can design their LoB software for Windows Server and not have to specially accommodate a ‘small’ flavored unique server platform as has been the case.  This also provides the ability to opt into increased DR resiliency by implementing the usage of HyperV clustering with the VM’s on a common NAS.  For those business that never want to be down for long; this is a great new option albeit with a doubled++ price on hardware.

Microsoft has abandoned the Small Business – Cloud resistance is futile

The majority of my small business clients do NOT want cloud based Exchange services.  They very much like their on premise SBS solutions.  Redmond announced today that they are shelving service to that market and solely going to either cloud based Exchange or full product licensed on premise software (no longer bundled appropriate to small business).

When Fonzie jumped the shark, we all knew that an era was over.  Will Microsoft notice that Balmer has taken them out of a market they were vigorously pursuing a mere few years ago?

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. For additional details, please see the Windows Server 2012 Essentials FAQ. I hope to see you at the 2012 Worldwide Partner Conference starting July 8 in Toronto, Canada, where we’ll be talking more about Windows Server 2012 Essentials, and we’ll also let you know when you can try it out.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2012/07/05/windows-small-business-server-essentials-becomes-windows-server-2012-essentials.aspx

SBS 2011 launches – get your USB Flash Drives out – the big ones

SBS 2011 has gone gold with OEM’s expected to have them loaded for purchase sometime mid January 2011. For those of us who can download the .iso from TechNet you can build your test machine today. Just be prepared to use a 8GB Flash Drive or larger to create a bootable piece of media to install it. DVD’s are too small for the over 6GB .iso file download. How do I do that? Well to start head over to Tim Barret’s blog. http://www.nogeekleftbehind.com/2010/12/22/how-to-install-sbs-2011-with-a-bootable-usb-drive

 Additionally I’ve tried a recommendation to build the bootable USB drive with the UNetbootin tool and it worked just as well as the very manual Tim Barret method.  Expect the creation of the bootable USB drive to take well over 30 minutes once you click to initiate that process.

The Infancy of SBS and Dr. Seuss – Hear a Who? – Codename Historical Factoid

Did you know? …

SBS was once known as SAM or more correctly “Sam”.  This is much the same as “Cougar” was to SBS 2008 or also recently how “Longhorn” was to Vista

SBS was also once known as “Horton”. Do you hear a ‘who’? I do, I do.

in honor and memory of recently deceased radio legend Paul Harvey:
“Here’s the rest of the story.”

After being offered the opportunity via a MVP Summit 2009 proxy to submit requests to the SBS Team in Redmond I took the chance to expand the scope of some of my questions to learn a little about the history of the software product.  Yesterday I had just read something that I wanted to clarify.  Was this story truth or a myth or urban legend?

A recent SBS article I web-stumbled upon was claiming this historical name was once due to intensions to distribute it through SAM’s Club and for it to be so simple as to not require any technical skill to install.  So I wanted some answers and I got everything I wanted “in spades” and from a DIRECT source.  …let me explain

First, I’d like to thank MVP Kevin Royalty for acting as a researcher and go between.

****key in some 2001 Space Odyssey music and dim and then ever so slowly raise the lights to dramatic effect****

(Narrator deep dramatic voice)
So originally SBS is an idea and then it became a reality.

In the beginning …a guy named Keith Logan came up with the SBS idea.  Also Paul Fitzgerald coworker with Keith Logan , SBS Dev Team founding and current member, was directly involved with the genesis of the SBS product at that moment of inception.  Here’s his very helpful emailed response (sparingly shortened and chronologically re-ordered) today that was given to me:

From: Dale Unroe
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009
To: Kevin Royalty

Yesterday, I stumbled onto a story that stated that historically the very first version of SBS was in fact something called SAM because it was to be solely distributed through Sam’s Club and wasn’t to require any technical knowledge to install.  Can you verify if these are the facts?  What can you uncover while there in the bowels of the SBS secret archives?

From: Paul Fitzgerald
Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009
To: Kevin Royalty
Subject: RE: sbs was “SAM”?

4.0 was called Sam.  (as in Sam I Am the Dr Seuss book. The original creator of the SBS idea was a guy named Keith Logan and he was a Dr. Seuss fan

4.5 was called Horton (again in the same Dr. Seuss theme)

There is some truth to the sam’s club thinking but the code name was really from Dr. Seuss.

From: Kevin Royalty
To: Paul Fitzgerald

May I pass this on to Dale?

From: Paul Fitzgerald

Sure.

 

********Wow!! – so there we have it and right from an SBS inception & development member Paul Fitzgerald – SBS was named “Sam” and not “SAM”.

having just found this today I laughed out a loud – woohooo
…and so perhaps Google, like Horton, gives a ‘who’ too!

<roll credits and raise the house lights>

***and that smashes the weakly researched story and busts this short-lived myth***

BTW – I didn’t mention SBS 2003 codename ‘Bobcat’, also SBS 2000’s codename  is nothing as there never was one given which was common to the Windows 2000 product family

Fax sent but not received – SBS Sending Fax Gotcha

An issue with the SBS Fax Server I’ve recently rediscovered is that there is a condition that can render a previously outbound functioning Fax Server inoperable and you won’t receive any errors or alerts to this fact until someone doesn’t get the fax they were intended.  You will appear to successfully send the fax from the workstation but it never make it onto the phone line to the outside world.  Here’s why and how to remedy it.

Condition:
Fax Device got unplugged (intentionally or otherwise) and server reboots without it connected.  Fax device plugged back in – server stays running without rebooting.  Fax powers on and receives faxes.  When sending a fax it never gets received.

Issue:
SBS Fax uses Outgoing Routing Groups and Rules.  The previously configured Group and Rule do not automatically add the fax device that had previously been associated even when the system can recognize the device.

Solution:
Manually use the fax manager to select the Target Device for all needed associated Rules.