Small Business Server 2008

Right… Im gonna summarise this for you into a brief but accurate sentance “NOT WORTH THE EFFORT !!!”

Thats it, job done…. You can hang around for the small print, but i wouldnt bother….

Long story short, iv been running SBS 2003 for the last 4 years as the main infrastructure behind my home network, its served me well and for all its little annoyances, it keeps ticking on with the absolute minimum of tweaking by its administrator (AKA : Me)… But, i (Me) have fallen (as many of you have) in love with the iPhone, that little gadget that keeps on giving (and taking battery life)…

iPhone supports exchange server… Exchange server 2003 is compatable with this (but a nightmare to get working reliably)… Exchange 2007 has funky features designed to allow mobile devices (iPhone <- for those not paying attention) to connect with the least ammount of effort (yay)….

Alas, all the effort microsoft took out of setting up the mobile device support, they imported into the setup and usage of Server 2008. Everything has moved, nothing is centralised, there are more wizards/consoles and widgets than you can shake a 3.5″ floppy at, and to top it all of, it sucks more RAM than a disturbed zoo keeper !

Suffice to say, the benefits of SBS2008 come no where near the costs you will have to endure (least of which is the fact its entire look and feel comes from windows 7, yes thats the one that your nephew helped Microsoft design with that pack of crayons you stopped him eating last year).

Okay, details.

• Installation process provides NO interactivity, all options are preset and cannot be altered during install (without configuring some answers file which is ‘beyond’ stupid for an installation…)
• Installation process disabled administrator account immediatly after installation… its nice to have it around for a while (i mean common, if were installing a server operating system, its nice to be given the benefit of the doubt and trusted with our own admin accounts)
• Look and feel is windows 7 (whaaa!)
• Active directory Users and Computers has no exchange features built into it (meaning all exchange functionality has to be done from exchange console, no more right clicking on a user and doing exchange tasks)
• Exchange console is painfully wizard based… Every-dam-thing does not have to a wizard microsoft…
• SBS Console is about the only way to create users with full attributes (aka, if you want them to have a PC assigned, Mailbox creating, etc) creating a user in ADUC does not create a mailbox, and does NOT give you the option to add one !
• Operating system grabs way too much RAM (granted i was running this in VM, so some of that could of been dedicated allocation… but i feel its maybe not)
• POP3 Connector finally allows sheduling to happen more often than 15 mins (despite microsofts desperate warning that this would cause the end of the world), BUT does not allow advanced schedules to be created (aka, acc1, 2, 3 check every 5 mins, acc4, 5, 6  every 10 mins… So still kinda limited (but now supports SSL)… Do yourself a favour, go grab a copy of POPCON (brilliant little app)
• Exporting of 2003 pst files do NOT  import correctly into 2008, my test import of my mailbox ended up with dozens of strange calendar entries which were not reccuring, but now are… my contacts have no pictures, my tasks list is all ‘not done’ (pretty sure i did some of those things), etc, etc, etc….
• Outlook web access still only runs in light access mode for Firefox, and IE really doesnt have any additional features that 2003 didnt have… (looks a little better, but nothing to get excited about :(

Im sure there are more annoying things going on, and some good features too… But im still playing around with it, and no where near ready to format my 2003 box to update just yet…