Windows Server 2003 R2 Components and SBS

Recapping - what parts of Server 2003 R2 are in SBS 2003 R2

David Overton's Blog — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 13:52:59 GMT

This is one question I get asked a lot, which parts of R2 are in SBS 2003 R2. Obviously SBS 2003 R2 has

re: Windows Server 2003 R2 Components and SBS

Mark Stanfill — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 18:19:56 GMT

>What about the print and storage management features? Are they included in SBS R2?

No. None of the R2 features included on CD #2 of Windows Server 2003 R2 are supported on the SBS server itself.

IT

E-Bitz - SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS "Diva" — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 22:53:41 GMT

You see I'm tired of the argument over "IT".&nbsp; Yes I know we don't get "it" in '"IT", but sometimes,...

re: Windows Server 2003 R2 Components and SBS

ray — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 17:25:43 GMT

What about the print and storage management features? Are they included in SBS R2?

Adding a member server that uses R2 bits

E-Bitz - SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS "Diva" — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 04:28:30 GMT

The SBS Podcast gang has a blog post on how to add a R2 member server to the SBS domain and the blog...

re: Windows Server 2003 R2 Components and SBS

Mark Stanfill — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 01:43:41 GMT

Jason,

We see very few SBS deployments implementing standard FRS now. With the popularity of CompanyWeb, a lot of things that were traditionally stored in the file system have been migrated to SharePoint as a more full-featured document management system. Replication isn't even an consideration for the majority of these customers (although a cheap, easy backup solution usually is a high priority). While FRS-R may be useful for some companies dealing with large binary files (CAD, imaging, etc), for the vast majority of small businesses, it is not an appropriate solution because of the increased difficulty in management and the overhead associated with the service. I know that bandwidth is still very much a function of geographic region, but we're just not seeing a huge call from SBS customers to save on bandwidth - most have 128-256K up at a *minimum*, and, let's face it, that's more than adequate for most in the SMB market. In virtually every case I've seen where bandwidth was the over-riding concern, the customer was breaking their TOS by using a home-grade DSL contract for business needs. In the very few incidents we've seen where there were real bandwidth concerns, either the ISP was oversold or the customer had not adequately researched their business requirements before implementing their network solution.

From a technical standpoint, it should be pointed out too that DFS-R does not support SYSVOL, which doesn't make this a choice for AD replication. So, while the initial reaction to DFS-R may be "this is better, it uses bandwidth", this has to be weighed against the data that is being replicated and current load on the server. In most cases, if you are truly going to gain benefit from this service, you're going to want it on a dedicated server.

As to what's in R2, I think http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/evaluation/faq/r2.mspx has the most succint answer:

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What is Windows Small Business Server 2003 Release 2 (R2)?

A. Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 (SBS 2003 R2) is an update release to the award-winning SBS 2003 product, providing new features to address the growing needs of small businesses. SBS 2003 R2 will offer increased productivity and functionality by adding automated network-wide patch and update management, increased mailbox limits to 75 GB, expanded client access license (CAL) rights (for access to additional Exchange Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition servers in the SBS 2003 R2 network), and the inclusion of the new SQL Server 2005 Workgroup Edition in SBS 2003 R2 Premium Edition.
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HTH,
Mark

re: Windows Server 2003 R2 Components and SBS

Jason — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 01:08:08 GMT

"The chances that any SBS customer actually needs ADFS, FRS-R, or UNIX Identity Management are low. Very low."

You don't think that FRS-R would be useful to a small business? Who's more likely to have high-bandwidth connectivity between sites, small businesses using basic DSL connections or the big businesses? I think FRS-R is EXACTLY what small businesses need. There are many, many cases with small businesses having a few or even many remote sites with 2 or 3 users that could (and should have) benefitted from this.

I think Microsoft and the SBS team really dropped the ball with SBS R2. It's barely even a service pack (what does it have that SBS SP1 didn't, as far as new features?), yet requires a new license.